Felting and Fiber Studio

Hello all!

This time I am taking you through my preparations for my local art group Spring exhibition coming next week (wish me luck).

All the entries in our exhibitions have to be original art that had not been shown before in our group’s other exhibitions, so I was looking through the many works that I had not shown and I had almost decided on a few older works. And then I found 4 small round canvases that just called to me to be used and changed my mind!

Of course, I just needed to make something new and untested, that I was not even sure was going to work at all, because, as you all know, I am the queen of planning ahead and keeping to schedules, making samples, never doing more work that I can help and all of that.

I saw those round canvases and thought about tondo works in art, and that got me thinking about traditional artworks and oil paintings. It made me think about being in my home country, Italy, and getting to be surrounded by old artworks for most of my life (my parents like art and we used to be regulars at museums as well).  It got me thinking about art that one remembers and that becomes meaningful to you because it is linked to your upbringing and to your memories, and the art itself becomes tangled into homesickness and a lot of complicated feelings.

Tondi are not very common in art in general, and I find that they get your attention in a particular way because of that. There must be a reason why the artist has chosen that particular circular shape for their work, if only to show off that they could.

There are a few oil paintings of still lifes that are in my parents’ house to this day and that I remember from childhood. One of them also has a frame that makes it be a tondo, so that it came to my mind thinking about round artworks: I decided that I wanted to make some felt pieces that would be in a dialogue through time and across art forms with those still lifes, a way to talk about perception, memories and emotional impact of art in our lives.

So, I asked my family to send me pictures of those artworks as reference, and here they are:

 

 

 

The four paintings are very different and from different authors in different times, so I had to treat each one differently, though I wanted the underlying theme to be one and the same. My aim, as I said, was not to make a realistic copy of the original oil paintings, but to reinterpret them through emotion and memory. The different medium and the different shape of the canvas were both a clear way to keep an unambiguous distance from the originals, and the circular shape is also to be a recurring element unifying my still lifes.

I started from preparing a surface, a background to felt on. I wanted my background to help me set the tone of each single tondo, so I looked very attentively at the photos to try and find a background theme colour for each one, and I prepared 4 circular backgrounds in the size that I needed by using a bubblewrap circle as guide of size while laying out my wool for wet felting. I like my artworks to be noticeably smaller than the canvas or board that I fix them onto, so I went for a bubblewrap circle that was the same size than the canvas, knowing that the wool will shrink and the final result be smaller than that.

For the actual works I needed to mix my own colours, as the shop bought ones were not adequately close to the paintings. I do not have a machine for that, I have to card my colours by hand in small quantities, but luckily I did not need big amounts of special colours.

I not only prepared carded wool for, mainly, the parts that I wanted flat, such as background areas, but I also wet felted small pieces of prefelt in different mixed colours for the parts that I wanted to pop out of the surface, such as the flowers themselves, as flowers are what I look at, get emotionally attached and remember more of a still life painting.

 

It took ages to get enough of the wool mixed and ready both for the carded wool and for the prefelts, but I was very glad to have it done before actual working on the pieces, as it let me work in the way that I like best and find more natural: by adding colours and shapes in “big strokes” regardless of the small details and just following my emotions. I like to be in the flow, and not having to stop in the middle of it to mix up my colours (which I sometimes have to do) for a couple of hours, or, worse, realise that I needed prefelts that I have not prepared in advance.

Once everything was ready, I worked on the first two of the paintings and managed them together in one go, that is what it means to have a background and your wool and prefelts already prepped and waiting for you. I completed the layout and the rubbing on each of them, rubbing in the prefelt bits particularly, before putting them together and rolling them together at the same time, cutting on the total rolling time.

The first one is this:

And here is the second one:

On a second round in a different day I managed to complete the other two pieces:

 

I really am not enthusiastic about the third piece: I feel that it is just a jumble. That probably comes from the fact that I always thought that the original oil painting was a bit aimless, without any actual dramatic focus to draw my eye, but it might just be me. It could be that I could give it purpose with a bit of stitching to make some flowers pop up more, but I did not feel like doing it right now, so I decided to put that piece aside for now and only exhibit the other three on this occasion.

They are not much rolled, I stopped very soon, so they are not very strong felt, barely prefelt actually, but I like how they are and their feeling of immediacy. I like the fact that they have a tension between flat background bits and more 3D elements, and that the dynamic between flat and textural bits is very different from that of the originals (I mean the pieces that seem to stick out, be 3D or pop out in the paintings): what is meaningful and sticks out for me and got stuck in my memory of the paintings is not necessarily the actual focus of the original painting, and that is fine, because that is what it means when you look at art in real life. Each one of us gets from it different bits, and what is emotion and feeling for one person may be not that important for another.

At our exhibition this time each artist is supposed to choose their art to fit a wall space of 1.30 m of width by 1 m of height (4.2 feet by 3.2 feet) leaving at least 10 cm (4″) between works. My three tondi are actually pretty small and I felt that I could add to them two bigger old works that are also about memory and fit nicely in the space underneath them.

There is the chance to add unframed works in a communal browser, they must be wrapped and clearly labelled. One can also bring up to 20 cards for sale, also wrapped and labelled.

I do not have handmade cards to sell at the moment, but I decided to give a go at preparing a few smaller works to go in the browser, as it is always nice to try out things on a small version, make a study or a sample of it, before going bigger. It is also nice to be able to offer things in different styles and colours and sizes if possible.

So, I felted three small works that are actually studies of composition and colour combinations. They also were felted in a very particular day, when I had had very bad personal news, and I felt a bit reckless and a bit weird to be honest, and I needed to be working on some art with no particular planning other than “let’s make some different landscapes”. I got to use some of the fibers that Helene gifted me, so thank you, Helene, it was fun to use them!

I managed to get them all done together in a similar way to the tondi, by prefelting each one on the same day and then rolling them all together.

After drying them, I added small stitched details to help the landscapes being visualised, as I used such non-conventional colours for them.

So, I really hope to have made you curious about our Spring Exhibition during the last week of May, and I honestly can not wait to have a look at all my fellow artists’ artworks: I always have to be very careful and not bring my credit cards, as some of our local artists’ works are stunning and my flat does not have empty walls or empty flat surfaces any more.

If you happen to be in West London during that week, come and have a look with your own eyes!

Kiki

@kiki.textile.art

http://www.kikistextileart.com

 

 

 

Lyn

This is one of my early felted pictures from over 15 years ago that I decided to remake as my style has changed quite a bit over the years.

I laid out a simple background, about half of the size of the original picture…

… then I made an inlay of a boat by thinly needle felting it.

After the boat was in place on the background, I used my own pre-felt to add the body of a seagull, 3 yachts and 7 fence posts – then I added wool yarn for fence wire.

I felted the picture by rubbing mainly from the back then rolled it a few times.

When it was dry I needle felted the seagull’s eye then stitched his legs and beak.  The finished size is approx 33 x 20cm (13” x 8”) and much more my style today.

Annie

I still haven’t finished my hydrangeas picture.  So much for a quieter few weeks!  I have done a bit of work on it though.

This is where I was at in the last post.

I decided that although I love a colour explosion the picture was getting too crowded and the turquoise wasn’t working.

So I needed to shake it up.  I turned it upside down and suddenly it felt better and lighter.

Then as much as I loved the fern I removed it from the top as the hydrangeas felt squished (it will become it’s own picture instead).

Then I turned it on its side and removed everything except the hydrangeas.

While that was a convoluted way to get there I finally found a composition that I liked, just a vase display of the hydrangeas to let them speak without my usual bombardment of “stuff”.

Next job was to work on the detail of the hydrangeas and introduce some contrast, and this is the stage I’m still at, but it’s getting there.  I find a lot of fibre and fabric isn’t light enough or dark enough to give much contrast but I’ve been trying to find the best bits of my stash and found a dark green and aubergine that work quite well.

Lyn

I have a small mauve vase that’s damaged so it can’t hold water, but as it’s of great sentimental value I display it with fake flowers.  The tissue paper flowers I made have become faded and jaded so they needed replacing. Although they don’t look too bad in the photo, the pink and yellow have lost their zing and the camera didn’t pick up the dust nestled amongst the petals.

Recently I went to my local garden centre and I saw springtime ‘felt ball flowers’ in small vases for sale – looked easy enough to make and I didn’t need to buy any supplies as I already have a stock of wire and wool to make felt beads.

Ta-Dah!

We bought wool fibre colour sample books years ago that are not helpful anymore.  What to do with pages and pages of little bits of wool?

After making the vase flower beads I thought maybe I could make lots more beads with the bits of wool.  I knew they would be smaller than those I made for the vase and I was pleased with my first one.  Then I realised that I would be making beads for the sake of it as I don’t have a plan for them.  So maybe the scraps will end up on the drum carder?

I have a stock of card blanks and from time to time I like to make greetings cards using scraps of fabric or felt on the front and finish with a paper insert.  This 6” square card was decorated with cut felt shapes for a relative’s birthday.

What have you made from felt scraps?  They’re too precious to throw away aren’t they?

 

I’m a member of a local group of artists and makers called Made in Whitstable. We have an annual two-week group exhibition around Easter which has a theme. This year’s theme was Perspectives. Only one piece of work has to meet the theme, with the rest being whatever work we normally make.

I have to admit I struggled a bit with ‘Perspectives’.  It didn’t really speak to me. I thought about both visual / architectural perspectives and perspectives as in opinions / points of view. I spent quite a while thinking about sea, water, my viewpoint in relation to water and all sorts of other things but I wasn’t really happy with what I was coming up with. 

After much rumination, I decided to do a printed tree picture, but instead of a flat piece of silk below the tree, I’d try to create a simple sense of perspective using strips of different recycled silk scarves. 

I picked out a few scarves I’d like to use. They included a couple where I wasn’t sure what the fabric was, so I thought I’d better make a quick sample to test their felt-ability. 

I bought this lovely scarf in a charity shop thinking I might make some kind of seed pods with the orange section. I’m pretty sure the orange fabric is raw silk and assume the pale area is a slightly elasticated fine silk.  I ironed some of the scrunched (probably silk) fabric and cut out a small rectangle. 

The second ‘unknown’ scarf has stripes of dense material and something fine and open-weave. I think the dense sections may be cotton or linen and the open-weave feels like silk. I put a small square alongside the other sample on top of a piece of merino prefelt. I’m rather mean with this type of sample – I do hate to feel I’m wasting materials.

They both felted like a dream so I would definitely incorporate them into my picture. 

I had done several very rough sketches to think through potential ‘perspective’ pictures. Having settled on one, I made a rough to-size paper template so I could try out what to put where.  

I thought I’d put something on top of the scrunched silk strip so lightly prefelted some fine spotty silk then cut out some oval shapes. I mixed strips of the spotted silk with the ‘unknown’ other fabric. I then cut out leaves from a very fine silk scarf to put larger ones in the foreground with the size receding into the background. 

Testing out the layout of different fabrics took a surprisingly long time. How I fiddled about.

When I was choosing from a couple of options I sent photos to my Mum for a second opinion. She’s got an excellent eye and made a couple of really useful suggestions. 

Finally happy with my layout (number 3) I carefully transferred the fabric pieces from the paper template onto wool.

I ran a line of dark brown recycled tapestry yarn across the top of the silk-filled area to give the idea of a horizon and could finally get on with the actual felting. 

Here’s the felted piece. I was pleased I had mostly kept all the fabric bits in the right places. 

All that remained was to dry and iron it, ask my local frame-maker to make a frame (at rather short notice), find & print a suitable tree and put it all together. 

The printing process is the scariest bit. Heat transfer printing onto felt is not 100% reliable: sometimes the print doesn’t fully transfer, leaving gaps, the image can transfer but sit too much on top of the felt or it can singe as it transfers. All are pretty disastrous and usually completely ruin a picture. In the past, I have cut up a spoiled picture and turned it into cards. I SO did not want this to happen in this case: partly because I’d already invested a lot of time in this picture and partly because I didn’t have time to make a new picture for the exhibition. My fall-back would either be needle felting a tree over the failed print, or printing a tree onto a separate piece of felt and hand-stitching it into the picture. 

I did a couple of test prints on scraps of felt then took the plunge. Fortunately the print transferred well. 

I collected my frame and was ready to frame the picture when I realised I hadn’t specified it needed to be a box frame. The felt was thin and would sandwich fine between the glass and the backing mount but I wouldn’t usually mount felt without a gap between the glass and the mount. I chatted with my felting friends (some fellow-bloggers on this site). At their suggestion I considered framing it without the glass but I decided to go with it as it was. Here is a lesson for myself: try not to leave everything to the last-minute, Lindsay.  I have had this thought many, many times in my life, but it doesn’t seem to make a lot of difference.

And here it is as part of my exhibition display. 

In addition to the wall pictures, on the table I have (back row) mounted prints (left), felt and printed cards (middle), mounted felt pictures (right) and felted glasses cases in the front.

I sold quite a bit of work at the exhibition but not this picture. I’m happy to have it in my stock of felt pictures for other sales & exhibitions. I’m still not entirely comfortable with the standard (non-box) frame but I’ve decided to live with it.  Will I learn the lesson of not leaving everything to the last minute? Probably not.