Felting and Fiber Studio

Making a Shell

April 11, 2026 Shepherdessann Comments 7 comments

After seeing Helene use some prefelt ribbon, I decided to give it a try too. I am thinking of differential shrinkage to get the shape of a shell. I thought it might work well with a spider conch shell to make the ridges.

I got my ribbon from the Olive Sparrow in Toronto. She doesn’t have it on her Etsy, but if you contact her, she has it. You can, of course, make prefelt and cut strips. But this is a fast and easy way to get going.

I made a 2-part resist so there would be an overlap on one side.

I made the inside pink, then added strips of the prefelt ribbon.

I added some blue for the outside. Sorry for the really bad picture.

Then of course the was lots of rubbing. I am using a rubbing tool from Moose Hill. It has a nice weight, not too heavy like others I have tried. I like to start gently. It does have a nice, wide handle, so it’s easy to hold and press down when that is what you want. Jan used my phone to take many of these pictures for me. She took about a dozen of this one, complaining that I was not smiling. Seems I do not smile when I am working.

Once it had shrunk a little, I cut out the resist and removed the non-spined side of the extra resist. If I left it, I think there would have been too much to curl inside for the middle of the shell. Then of course, fulling and shaping.

It wasn’t long into the fulling when I knew I had not used enough prefelt to get the differential shrinkage I wanted. I suppose I should have known better. But often that’s the way. You need to be reminded of what you already know.

Still, it didn’t turn out so bad

When I got home, I fulled the ridges in some and then clipped it all into shape to dry. As you can see, this made the base of the folded part pointy, and that remained after I took the clips off and let it spread out.

I wet just that part and fulled it back to round in a very short time. I had been anticipating a fight with it. I had tried to shrink this part more before clipping it with no success. This just reminded me of how, sometimes, it is easy to get more shrinkage after it has rested or dried and is rewet. I have no idea why that works, but it does.

After it was dry again, I was not happy with how the top with the points wanted to curl around instead of standing out, so I put a couple of invisible stitches at each end to hold it in position.

And finished. I like the finished shell, even if it didn’t go the way I planned.

I may give it another try over the summer, but as spring slowly arrives here( we had a little snow again the other day), I find I have lots of ideas and more energy to do things. I have things to make for the guild sale in the fall.

Nuno felted "watercolor" landscape with couched yarn tree, close up of branches.

Embellished “Watercolor” Landscape

April 8, 2026 ruthlane Comments 18 comments

I am still working on the “watercolor landscape” samples that I created. This one is nuno felted paper that has had watercolor applied after the felting process. It needs a bit more, doesn’t it?

I scanned the piece on my printer so I had the exact size of the piece printed out. I then drew a tree over the landscape in pencil. Instead of trying to transfer the design of the tree on to the piece, I decided to just mark where the edges of the trunk were on the top and bottom.

I didn’t get any photos of the stitching process as I stitched it mainly while traveling. I had found a variety of grey yarn that I couched down with a dark grey cotton machine thread. I tried to give an impression of depth of the tree with the values of grey. I followed my sketch but “edited” out some of the smaller branches.

Nuno felted "watercolor" landscape with couched yarn tree, close up of trunk.

Here’s a couple of close ups of the stitching.

The next step was to find a piece of background (matte) fabric. I stitched the felt piece on to this hand dyed grey background that I already had in my stash. Luckily, it was a blue grey tone that matched the watercolors. The piece was then stretched and laced around matte board. Then it’s ready for a frame.

Here it is in the frame and ready to go to the gallery. This piece in the frame is 8″ x 10″ and I have decided to name it “Solitude”.

Knitting adventure continued.

April 5, 2026 mariees26 Comments 19 comments

My post this month is another mixture of things. I have continued my reacquaintance with knitting, and I want to become a more skilled hand knitter. It is such a comfortable task to sit with in the evenings, and time passes very easily. I have made another hat, and an asymmetric triangular scarf. I loved the hat that Carlene wears sometimes, and Ann suggested where to get the pattern. This hat has a wonderful name “Anemone Hat”, the main body looks so complicated, but is quite straightforward really.

Pattern obtained, then some time spent studying it, especially the rib, or the Moebius half-twist as it is called. However, I have only just become familiar working with a circular needle, so this form of beginning the hat was a stretch too far for me, or a little like ‘double dutch’ as the expression goes, so I did some plain knit and purl rows instead. I may try the moebius another time. The yarn used was from my sister, and is King Cole stylecraft, 50% wool and 50% acrylic. There is a much wider variety of yarn types today than was available when I was younger.

Leonor connected me to a free pattern for a scarf on her website, that promised to be easy to knit. I had one skein of wool, from West Yorkshire spinners 70% Falkland wool, 20% lyocell, and 10% Cashmere, in a lovely soft green shade, and is soft to touch. I was hoping it would be soft around my neck, because sometimes wool can be prickly.

I needed help with a scarf because I could not figure out how the triangular shape would be achieved; in the end this achievement was actually quite simple really. So I began knitting, starting with a few stitches and ended up with over 150 or so, and I could carry on until I was happy with the length, with enough yarn to continue, and in the end I had a triangular scarf. Then a cool wash and pinned it onto the ironing board to block it. I practiced some simple lace pattern stitches to break up the plain knitting.

Early on during the winter, the Dean of Gloucester Cathedral put out a call for some volunteer embroidery people to help repair an altar cloth that has a lot of wear and tear from use over the years. I belong to a group of women who do crewel work; we meet twice a month for two hours each time, to work on our own projects, or just to stitch. Four of us decided to help out with this task, and we car share twice a month over to the Cathedral. The Dean provides use with tea and coffee! Gloucester is about a 45 minute drive from me.

The altar cloth needs repair to many areas. All of the embroidered motifs have been appliqued onto a base of hard wearing linen. Many of the motifs have become loose, and some of the motif threads are degrading almost as soon as they are touched. There is a lot of gold work on the cloth too, much of this is also loose, and takes time to stitch back down, but so worth the effort, and it makes for a lovely sheen on the work. We are using cotton embroidery thread, and some silk thread.

The cloth will be returned to use as an altar cloth, we are repairing it for use during church services, and not to museum conservation quality.

No one is quite sure how old the cloth is, the embroidery thread is disintegrating in places, and the only thread that is not perishing is the white thread that is couched around each motif. This is an example to us of how likely it is that the dye used could be the main reason for the coloured threads to perish.

This work will keep us all busy for some months, but I do enjoy it. A sample of my stitching is the featured image – practice work really.

Two skeins of hand spun alpaca fibre side by side, the one on the left hasn't been washed and the one on the right has.

My wheel gets some maintenance and the alpaca gets a bath

April 2, 2026 Leonor Comments 22 comments

How often do you do maintenance on your craft/hobby/fibre/work-related objects? That is, how often do you oil your wheel, change the needle on your sewing machine, clean your carding brushes? I bet this isn’t a type of question that gets asked much outside woolly circles (although “how often do you wash your hairbrush” really should be a thing in my opinion!)

A while ago, my Lendrum spinning wheel started squeaking a bit. Every rotation, I’d get a “squee, squee, squee” sound that annoyed me to no end. It finally dawned on me that it may be time to show it some love and add a few drops of machine oil onto its metal bits. I pretended I knew what I was doing, hummed and harrumphed a few times (like how I imagined a seasoned mechanic would when looking at an old car) and what do you know? The squeak was gone. Hoorah!

Then it dawned on me that other parts of the wheel might also be in need of some TLC. I bought a WooLee Winder a number of years ago and although that, too, had been subjected to some oiling in the past, I had never once disassembled the thing to do a deep cleaning. To put things in better context, I’ve been spinning raw alpaca… If you know your camelids, you’ll know those adorable guys can get very dusty! My winder had started to stutter and stop in one specific place lately, and I could see dirt accumulating on the outside of the shuttle groove, so I really needed to do something about it.

WooLee Winder on a Lendrum wheel — Photo courtesy of the WooLee Winder website. This one looks pristine, mine looked dirtyyyyy.

Being the independent woman that I am, I forged a plan: watch a couple of YouTube videos, dismantle the thing, clean it thoroughly, drink a well-deserved cup of tea afterwards and enjoy my feminist success.

I did Step One very successfully, then immediately changed tact: I delegated the task to Husband (meaning: I chickened out of playing with an expensive piece of equipment and asked him to do it for me, so I could blame him in case it all went awry).

Two hands are shown in the process of taking apart the WooLee Winder — I was offering useful supervision the whole thing (meaning: I was the backseat driver)

Trust me, the photo doesn’t begin to show how terribly dusty the whole thing was. Once it all came apart, I was aghast at how a piece of shiny metal could actually look dull and brownish. See the amount of fibre I removed from the inside!

Closeup of my hand holding some fluff I removed from the WooLee Winder — This was the fluff that was preventing my winder from working properly. Or so I thought.

Now the plot twist: once the WooLee Winder was reassembled, I was happily back at my wheel and ready to gunk it up with more alpaca; I was spinning away, when the thing kept stopping exactly in the same spot as before it was cleaned. Why, ye gods, why?!

The answer? I only thought I’d cleaned it correctly. Turns out, the amount of fluff you see in the pic was just the tip of the iceberg. Husband, I require your services and tools once again! This time we spent time really looking at every nook and cranny, and managed to remove some more debris. It wasn’t actually much more, but it was enough to prevent the mechanism from moving as it should.

It was finally working like a charm. I felt I went from driving a beaten-up Alfa Romeo to a Ferrari – that thing was faster than I remember and I had to adjust my wheel’s settings because as it turns out, I’d been making my Lendrum work harder than it needed to compensate for my inadequate maintenance efforts.

Now, to illustrate how much dust I’d been adding to the WooLee Winder, I present one of my alpaca skein baths. This was the second wash.

A skein of alpaca hand spun yarn is under very dirty brown, soapy water — Ew.

Is it any wonder my equipment needed some TLC? You’ll be surprised to know I am now planning on cleaning the winder again after I am done spinning this fleece…

Finally, a picture of two skeins of hand spun alpaca side by side. The left one is before washing and the right one is after; notice how the fibre has bloomed. I’m never short of amazed at how much fibres transform after a warm soak.

Next on my cleaning list is coming up with a way to clean my (currently very dusty) wool carders without water. Any ideas? How do you maintain yours?

I hope this post has inspired you to look at your precious tools and offering them some love. They help us be better at our crafts, after all. We need to keep them in top condition! Don’t be like me…

WHERE ART MEETS EMBROIDERY PART 2 (LEVEL 3 STUDENT’S WORK)

March 30, 2026 tesivaara Comments 16 comments

Earlier this month, Ruth Lane’s blog post covered work done by Gail Harker’s Level 4 students. Check that post out here.

https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2026/03/21/where-art-meets-embroidery/

My post will cover work done by two of the five Level 3 students, Gloria Shelton and myself.

Here we are at the Opening Reception which was held on February 28th.

4 women — Tesi Vaara, Penny Peters, Gail Harker, Gloria Shelton

The exhibition Where Art Meets Embroidery is currently on display at the Pacific Northwest Quilt and Fiber Art Museum (QFA) in LaConner, Washington USA through May 31st.

As Ruth stated in her post, if you live locally, please do try to visit the museum to see our exhibition in person. Photos don’t really do this work justice.

I’ve been on this creative journey with Gail Harker since about 2013. I finished Level 3 Art and Design in 2019. At the completion of that course, we had our exhibition in her studio in LaConner. That was more of a hands-on exhibition for the students as we learned how to display our own work. The museum handled the displays for this exhibition.

We did, however, have the opportunity to rent a space across the street from the museum for two days right after the exhibition opened so that we could share our working notebooks, samples and other artwork that was not at the museum. This was my favorite part as we got to share the story of our work process with people one on one. When you work on a piece for so many hours, it’s nice to see the process from a different person’s perspective. Visitors spent hours going through all of our sketchbooks. Some even bounced back and forth between the two venues several times.

One of my tables had work from Level 3 Art and Design and Level 3 Experimental Stitch.

artwork and sketchbook information

L3 Art and Design work against the wall and L3 Experimental Stitch on the table

Table display of working sketchbooks — Table display of color schemes and print to stitch sampling

Here is a photo of Gloria’s table items.

Gloria Shelton’s table with work samples of her Paris piece

Now, let’s move over to the actual museum exhibit…

Gloria made a poster-type wall hanging after visiting Paris. Her husband took the photo of the three policemen on skates.

The policemen were printed onto fabric and are heavily stitched. The rest of the components of this piece are also heavily stitched.

artist with stitched artwork of Paris memorabilia — Gloria Shelton with her Paris piece

artist with collaged fabric pieces — Gloria with three of her monochromatic color schemes holding her pansy

artist with stitched pansy in pink and purple threads — Gloria’s lovely pansy stitched with silk thread

Gloria LOVES pansies and does a wonderful job of stitching them in a variety of ways.

Here I am with My Secret Garden…

artist next to framed garden scene — My Secret Garden

Here is a closer view.

mixed media piece of a garden scene — My Secret Garden

closeup of sunflower area — Closeup of sunflowers, crocosmia and foxglove

Here are the other pieces I had in the exhibition.

artist with 4 framed pieces — Myrtle, Hazel, Andy and Cattails

These were all constructed using a Print-to-Stitch method. I really learned a lot from making the three pieces of the people. These were made from old black and white photos taken in the 1920’s of my grandmother, mother, and grandfather.

Myrtle (My maternal grandmother. AKA Gram)

Hazel (My mom)

Andy (My maternal grandfather. AKA Dedaddy)

man standing on planks — Andy original photo

I have two more photos that I would like to add to these three. Hopefully someday I will get them completed and framed as well.

man and woman standing — Andy and Myrtle

I am blessed to live on a small lake. These cattails are in front of my property. This time of year, the red winged blackbirds are nesting in this area and it’s fun to see them blowing in the wind while they are hanging onto the reeds.

The exhibition has been a wonderful way to showcase our current work done over the last 3+ years of study with Gail (and Penny). I hope you get an opportunity to visit the exhibition while it is at the museum. I hope you enjoyed the “tour”!

Happy creating!

Tesi Vaara

Mega-Stega March Break Sampling

March 27, 2026 Jan Comments 7 comments

March 2026 has been busy with Guild library work, questionable weather (is it spring yet? It must be spring, I feel so ill (stupid snow mould allergy), no, it’s snowing again). There was a bit of needle felting. There was even my birthday, I had forgotten to have one last year with all the anaesthetic (but math caught up to me on this one, so I am older than I originally thought).

1.1) Arriving at the guild with my trusty vehicle, laden down with fibre, camera, and cookie.

This month, we had a chance to have a mid-week felting day in the local guild studio during the March school break. We had a few of the local felters (Wet and Dry) drop in for part or all of the day. We each had our own projects, and it was fun to do them together. We chatted and it was great to have others to discuss our projects with. Ann had a sculptural project using differential shrinkage, and I returned to the Mega-stegosaurus-bag, this time it would be a bit less mega (smaller) but remain Stega.

My goal was to figure out the correct size for the pattern and do a bit of sampling to make a final decision on colours.

Ann and I discussed more of the mechanics for the legs. When I put the bag down, I want it to stand on its own. Who wants a stegosaurus that falls over? Originally, I was going to put large wooden dowels in the legs and a base inside the bag. This would make the legs wool on the outside with a wooden centre. While chatting with Ann, we discussed removing the hollow legs and making the wood legs a feature, showing them.

I had planned a wooden base to hold the legs, but I can adjust this to the new plan. It will give a strong attachment site and keep the bottom of the bag flat.

2.1) Diagram of the side view of Mega-Stega leg design with four separate leg blocks

Since I want to have Mega-Stega stand when put down, he or she will need 4 legs screwed into the wooden base inside the bag. I may have to add 2 screws per leg to keep the legs from rotating or unscrewing. If I want to have fewer screws, I can use a block with a carved groove to represent the 2 front legs and another block to represent the 2 back legs.

2.2) Front view of Mega-Stega bag with separate legs vs 2 carved blocks representing 2 adjacent legs

2.3) Dropping legs and adding belly to the general shape of Stegosaurus

2.4) Ann suggested changing the angle of the neck and lengthening the tail.

Since I will need a way to get into the bag, I am considering the evil zipper. I am not fond of sewing zippers. I have done it before, but most of what I enjoy sewing are historical costumes, which don’t have them.

Because of the shape of Mega-Stega, having a head/neck end and a tail end, I have the option of making a pocket in each space or stuffing them to make them firm appendages. I also have the option of adding a partial armature so I can curl the head and or tail so it will hug the body rather than stick out in front of or behind. I will think about this more as I work through the rest of the design.

Ann reminded me that I should expand my pattern, but not as much as the last one. As you saw above, we removed the legs and added more belly to allow the belly to flatten to create the bottom of the bag.

3.1) Ann helped me create the floor underlay resist shape.

As you already know, a Stegosaurus has 2 rows of large plates running adjacent to the spine, and spikes at the end of its tail.

When I was in kindergarten, I got up very early (6 am) on Saturday mornings in the hopes that the TV would be showing the Palaeontology lectures from the University of the Air. (I was disappointed if the Math or English courses played.) One of the best classes had a gest Geologist discussing a new discovery: blood vessels in the plates of Stegosaurus. He suggested that this suggested that the plate might be a cooling system, which was unnecessary in cold-blooded creatures. By the time my parents woke up, I was finished with dinosaurs and was happily watching cartoons.

A year later, in grade 1, when the teacher said all dinosaurs are cold-blooded, I asked about Stegosaurus’ plates. She didn’t know what a stegosaurus was. Ah, yes, I see the problem! Adults don’t get up until after 7 am on Saturdays, so she must have missed the cool University lectures.

I will add plates, but I need to inset them slightly down the body, so I will have space to add the zipper.

3.2) Considering plate locations. Ann’s multi-part resist is on the other side of the table.

3.3) close up of plate location considerations

I want to give the suggestion of the flushing colours that a blood vessel system might have. I dug through my bag of red/orange. I have this braid of BFL/Silk, and I have a small amount of pure silk in a similar colourway.

4.1) Blue Faced Leicester (BFL) and silk 100 gr in shades from yellow through orange into red

I had considered a white base layer. Let’s make a sample.

4.2) Sampling over white wool

I found a bag of fibre that I thought was Corriedale. Whatever the fibre was, it seemed a bit spongy rather than firm as it felted. Hummm. That is not quite what I wanted in either the firmness or colour.

Let me try again. I have a half bump of black, it may be Merino. Why is it not labelled? I used the plate shapes I had cut out of the floor underlay as a template. I don’t need them to be hollow, so I don’t need to add a resist to the plate.

I lay out the shape in many thin layers of black, then added wisps of yellow, orange, and Red BFL/Silk. I then flipped the plate and put the top colours on the other side.

4.3) sample on black wool

Yes, that is more what I was thinking. Essence of blushing blood vessels! I made more samples in the various plate sizes I had cut out. I tried to leave the bottom part loose so I can attach it to the body eventually.

4.4) Samples of pates

I will have to make more, but this is a good beginning. I like the colours with the black under layer. I should be able to trim the tip on the one that is a bit messy.

4.5) samples and templates for the plate

I now have a colour scheme, a pattern which I think will work, and samples at least some of which I should be able to use. Now I just need a bit of free time and table space to try to create my Mega –Stega bag.

I will have to put this aside for a little while, as I finish the preparations for a new workshop I will be giving next week. I hope to show you more progress in the near future, have fun and keep felting.

Felted Vessel Workshop

March 24, 2026 Shepherdessann Comments 10 comments

A few weeks ago, I taught a felted vessel class. A lovely bunch of ladies full of enthusiasm. As usual, I didn’t take as many pictures as I wanted, but here you can see the setup.

After everyone had their base ready, people got to work on embellishments. This is the hardest part, but also the most fun for most people. So many choices of wool and silk. They have to think about where they will cut their felt to take the resist out, to open it up, how big they want the opening and whether they want a very round pot or a flattish one. Where is the top, and where is the bottom?

I didn’t take as many pictures as I wanted to, so we jump to the end.

Two ladies decided to cut slits and make their vessels into small bags. They need to work on the edges some more.

And one lady decided to turn hers into two small bowls. One was turned inside out so you can see the pattern better.

All in all, I think they did very well having never felted before, I don’t think any of them had ever handled fibre before.

Christina, Ruth, Penny, Gail, Moira and Nancy at the Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Arts Museum

Where Art Meets Embroidery

March 21, 2026 ruthlane Comments 29 comments

The exhibition Where Art Meets Embroidery is currently on display at the Pacific Northwest Quilt and Fiber Art Museum (QFA) in LaConner, Washington USA through May 31st. The exhibit, for me, is the culmination of 16 years of classes that I have taken at the Gail Harker Center for Creative Arts. The exhibition includes work from both Level 3 and 4 textile art graduates. My post is about the Level 4 Experimental Stitch and Multimedia, including my work and my classmates. Tesi will be posting at the end of the month about the Level 3 Experimental Stitch student’s work.

When the exhibition opened, we had a concurrent show for the first couple of days that was across the street from the quilt museum. In this part of the exhibition, participating students filled their tables with working notebooks, samples and pieces of artwork that didn’t end up in the exhibition at the quilt museum. Visitors could sit down and browse through the documentation of the process that most people never see with completed works of art. The working notebooks show the thought process, the inspiration behind the ideas and the work that goes into creating a large work of textile art.

Here’s a part of the set up for my space showing a variety of notebooks, samples and smaller stitch pieces. My theme is about the spirituality of trees. It was really interesting to talk to visitors about the process and how some of my pieces were created.

This is part of Nancy Drake’s table showing a couple of notebooks, some canvas work boxes and a flower that wasn’t included in the other exhibition. Nancy’s theme is about nature, leaves and trees.

Here is one of Christina Fairley Erickson’s tables showing some of her Advanced Research in Art and Design. Christina’s theme is about animals of all kinds. The large tall piece in the back is based on a giraffe (if you hadn’t figured that out already).

Now on to the exhibition at the QFA Museum. If you are in the northwest Washington area, I hope you will get a chance to visit the exhibition in the next couple of months. I will be showing only a couple of pieces of work from each student. There is much more to see at the museum.

Each student created a “large” artwork as part of the course curriculum. This is Christina Fairley Erickson in front of her machine stitched horse sculpture. Christina has traveled many times to Turkey to visit part of her family and the floral designs on the horse are based on Turkish inspiration.

Detail of stitched horse head by Christina Fairley Erickson

Detail of stitching - horse head by Christina Fairley Erickson

Here are a couple of detail shots of Christina’s amazing stitching that has been turned into a lifesize horse head.

Another portion of Christina’s studies were based on eyes of birds and animals. These are two of her stitched pieces of an Indian Peacock Eye and a Military Macaw Eye.

Moira Gutteridge Kloster grew up in East Africa and based her theme on remembrances of her childhood as well as recent visits to the area. Moira mainly works with photos printed on fabric which she transforms with stitch.

This is a closer view of one of her pieces from the wall shot above.

This is a detail of Moira’s blackwork lizard. These blackwork patterns are a way to create various values to give the stitching more depth.

Moira has many photos taken in Africa. The one on the left is based on a papaya and the one on the right is all photos of elephants (and one of my favorites, the elephant footprints).

Lynette Barnes created ‘Forest Floor’ with a variety of machine needle felting, hand dyeing, machine embroidery, burning, fusing and fraying. Her theme is the Pacific Coast Forest Floor.

Detail of Forest Floor by Lynette Barnes

Detail of stitched and felted Forest Floor by Lynette Barnes

Here’s a closer view of a couple of small areas on this almost five foot wide piece.

Nancy Drake’s theme was based on the natural world, specifically leaves and trees. The piece above is created with metal and gold threads.

A closer view of the stitchwork and metal elements reveals the abundance of color variety in the metal threads.

Stitched front placard of tabard by Nancy Drake

Nanci also created this tabard, developing the pattern, hand stitching the design and then machine stitching the garment together. (In the video of my talk at the end of the post, you will see Nanci’s tabard and her hanging leaf sculpture, on either side of me.)

My theme about the spirituality of trees, led me to develop a series of tree spirits. These are two of the stitched portraits that I created. The top one is machine stitched over layers of tulle. The bottom piece was created from nuno felting a printed photo on sheer fabric of one of my original paintings and then adding hand stitch.

The majority of my time spent over the last two years was creating this ten foot tall tree spirit called ‘The Forgotten One’. His outer layers were made with silk, wool and tea bags that were nuno felted and then hand stitched into place on the inner structure. The sculpture comes apart into four pieces so that I could travel back and forth from Montana to Washington with it.

Detail of face of The Forgotten One by Ruth Lane

Detail of The Forgotten One sculpture by Ruth Lane

Here are a couple of closer photos to see the face and the texture of the sculpture.

On the first Saturday after the exibition opened, an artist talk took place at the QFA museum. Each student talked about their work, inspiration and theme. The video above is my talk and Gail showing photos of my work.

I hope you enjoyed this peek at our exhibition. If you’re in the area, please stop by and see it in person.

Inspiration from world travels – Part 2

March 18, 2026 Antje Comments 17 comments

Following on from my last post, this one continues with our travels, from Vietnam via The Mekong River into Cambodia. In all, it was four weeks of exploration – witnessing active community industries, whether on the waterside or further inland, to individuals hard at work to support their families.

Silk

Seri-culture

Twig bundles enclosing the caterpillars

Drawing the filaments from the cocoons

Spinners Plying the silk threads

Women doing Trad handloom weaving

silk fabric produced by Jacquard loom weaving

Jacquard weaving looms workshop

Having done much research, our own two weeks of solo exploration took us into rural Cambodia away from all the tourist routes and centres. From our last hotel (where we said goodbye to our group as they returned home), we undertook a tour roughly the shape of a question mark (north, then east, before turning south).

Coconuts

Throughout a very verdant Cambodia there are always coconut and banana palms to be seen. They are everywhere in every restaurant and every roadside stand. There are also large plantations of coconut and banana palms, casava, and trees for rubber tapping etc, even pepper! Oh, amongst other fruits, I mustn’t forget the smelly durian!

Whilst bananas are a more local commodity, we saw coconuts being transported further distances -shipped by boat along The Mekong and also by the truckload inland to be processed.

1 Coconut de-husking

2 Parts of the coconut

3 Coir and shipment

Rice

The growing of rice is everywhere and at our time of travel it was harvest time (3 per year). Every rural family grows some, and harvests it usually by hiring a harvesting crew with small machines. The families then dry the grain by spreading it out on plastic sheeting anywhere they have flat space….even on the roads! There was drying rice everywhere we explored.

Rice is a staple, as we all know, not only as a savoury carbohydrate, but as a grain it is used for so much more – puffed (who doesn’t know rice Krispies!), not to mention alcohol production (!), along with sweets, and more.

After harvesting rice is found drying everywhere even on the road

Making rice paper for sweets

Making rice Krispie sweets

If you're drinking to forget - please pay in advance sign

Inspiration was everywhere and we were often in total awe of our surroundings. But inspiration of a different sort….is that with limited resources, since the war, everything has multiple uses, there is little wastage.

‘Seeing’

I can only repeat what I said in Part 1 –

As this post is entitled ‘Inspiration’, and most reading this will be working with textiles, I have some thoughts on I how I see creative ideas everywhere in terms of shape, colour and design etc. These can be translated into – sewing, embroidery, landscape stitching, patchwork, felting, painting, weaving to name but a few.

Rectilinear v curvaceous

Organic

Patterns overhead

Rice-paper pattern

Finding patterns

Princely colours

Manipulation

The people are open, generous and friendly particularly once they have been greeted with the traditional greeting of ‘Susadei’ complete with praying hands and a nod of the head. During our solo explorations we were welcomed into fields to see ploughing, rice planting, salt production, lotus paddies and even into private homes.

Everyday life

Humble home

Wedding invite

Along the way we learned so very much….simplicity, humility, hard work, dedication, colour, pattern, and ingenuity are just a few key words that spring to mind. I’ve already been back home a couple of months, and this post has been a welcome and timely reminder of them.

The key point of travel, whether in one’s own country or further afield, particularly for anyone creative, is to explore, to be open to everything around you and see….really ‘SEE’

I wish you many ‘seeing’ adventures in the future.

My sample pieces from the class (last on left, first on right)

Tapestry Class

March 15, 2026 carleneruns Comments 9 comments

I have signed up for a number of classes from the Ottawa Valley Weavers and Spinners Guild this year. The first was a 4 week introduction to tapestry class taught by Liane Thiry-Smith.

Our first loom was a DIY frame made out of a canvas frame with the canvas removed. (Note that the teacher left canvas over the stretcher bars so that we did not have to sand the frames.) She taught us how to warp the frame and secure the warp threads at the top and bottom of the frame. Then she encouraged us to wind up some butterflies of yarn and start weaving. I opted to do a simple gradient with part of the colour wheel.

DIY tapestry frame with butterflies of yarn

DIY tapestry frame with weaving in progress

DIY tapestry frame with weaving complete

In week 2 we took our first pieces off the loom and we were onto another piece. I had a small tapestry loom that I had purchased online but had not yet used. So I warped up that loom and drew a small sketch of a landscape scene that I wanted to weave. Next I wound up some butterflies of yarn and set to work.

In week 3 I decided to warp up another colour study. I studied the sample piece by our teacher Liane Thiry-Smith and I could see that she used many smaller blocks of colour in her piece. This time I used a darker warp and selected my colours more carefully to create a nice gradient. I wove it up and was very pleased with how it turned out.

Inspiration weaving my Liane Thiry-Smith

Butterflies of yarn for the colour study

My teacher encouraged me to try a larger piece. (My other class mates were working on much larger pieces.) She had a loom warped up with some cartoon markings transferred to the warp that she encouraged me to take home and weave on. In the first photo you can see what I started with. I used this piece to experiment with different shapes and techniques. It was fun to do something with no expectations of how it should look.

In the last class we worked on finishing up our pieces. I sewed in the tails on my pieces and blocked them using a very hot iron and a damp cloth. I sewed one piece onto a dowel. I think I will look for some nice branches to mount the other pieces. But that will have to wait for the snow to melt. (As I write this there is still a solid 2 feet of snow in my yard.) We also took a group photo where we showed off some of our pieces.

It was a great class. I had lots of fun and learned a whole lot of things. (Though I still struggle with that slip knot used to start the warp.) I look forward to experimenting more with my tapestry loom.

Felting and Fiber Studio

An International Collective of Felt and Fiber Artists

Making a Shell

April 11, 2026 Shepherdessann Comments 7 comments

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Embellished “Watercolor” Landscape

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Knitting adventure continued.

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My wheel gets some maintenance and the alpaca gets a bath

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WHERE ART MEETS EMBROIDERY PART 2 (LEVEL 3 STUDENT’S WORK)

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Mega-Stega March Break Sampling

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Felted Vessel Workshop

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Where Art Meets Embroidery

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Inspiration from world travels – Part 2

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Tapestry Class

March 15, 2026 carleneruns Comments 9 comments

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