Felting and Fiber Studio

Back in February, I showed you some of the samples I had been making for my most recent workshop, Felted nametags.  This was the first running of it so I had to organize notes, samples and figure out student supplies. It was exciting and very stressful!

I wound up with nine samples, which were highly enjoyable to make. It is an opportunity to work on a small project, or try a new technique you want to explore, but maybe not on a large size project. They were also very portable and easy to start and stop work on. (I have a few more I would like to work on too)

1.1) samples from the workshop

I have been continuing my investigating using iron on interfacing as a tracing medium to transfer the image from my reference to the felt.

So far I have notice a few things, and can see the usefulness of this approach for some projects. I have tried the “thin” interfacing from fabric land, which seems to be the same weight and transparency to the “Medium weight” interfacing from Walmart. I also purchased a meter of double-sided fusible “interfacing”, it’s just glue on both sides and is extremely transparent. The problem with the double sided fusible was it was too see through, so much so that it leaked ink through the surface to the image beneath. (What a mess) it may be useable with different pens or markers. I tried a ink roller pen (fancy pen for handwriting –it was that archaic way of communicating before keyboards were invented). I am not totally giving up on the double sided but it will need the rite marking device to make it work unlike the true interfacing which was very effective.

I could see using interfacing to trace out a tree or fence rails then position them on the finished felted background. This would allow you to have wild tumultuous sky that flowed cohesively across the background. This can be harder to achieve if you are felting around where a tree will be or where a tree already is in your felted picture. I can see the appeal of getting lost in creating the sky then just drop the tree or fence shaped interfacing down when you are done.

2.1) I went with a muskox to try out the interfacing.

2.2) I also looked at the transparent sticky notes, which was more see through, but would work better using the template transfer method.

2.3) using a window as a light box

A sunnier day may have made it even easier to see the image of the muskox, but even with the dark picture, tracing using the window as a light table was still not too challenging.

2.4)close up of image and tracing on interfacing

2.5) lifting interface to check drawing

2.6)side by side comparison of image and tracing.

I did find that the sharpie marker did leak through to the image just a bit. You can see some of the marker dots along the ground line under the muskox.

2.7) a quick check of the position of the muskox on the felt background

Remove the parts of the interfacing not covered by fiber. You can see I have not totally thought this through; I have to remove the space between the legs, as well as the ground he is standing on, which will not be necessary ether when I add the background.

2.81) removed interface muskox and I created a background

I put aside the image and started work on the back ground.

2.82) positioning interface muskox on background with a pin

Once the background was done I pined into place the muskox. Still have a bit of trimming to do. I will notice that shortly.

2.83) OOPS! I cut off a leg, found it and held it in place with a pin

While trimming off the areas which will not be covered by fiber, I accidently cut off a leg and left part of the negative space….. I can fix that. I found the missing appendage and used a pin to position it. Once a bit of wool was added I could remove the pin and continue creating the image. (I love felt, it’s so forgiving, you can add a missing appendage!!!)

2.84) adding a stream to the background

I found that a T-42-222 needle was effective. It passed through the interfacing without distorting it. I found working with the needle in a vertical orientation, until the interfacing was securely attached to the felt ground worked best. Once secure, felting at an angle worked fine.

I want to try ironing on the interfacing to the felt, to see how that would effect shifting or distorting, but that would involve finding the iron…. which has chosen an excellent hiding spot in the basement… somewhere past the stairs, Pretty sneaky of it. I will let you know how that goes, when I brave the stairs and find it. But, not today.

I also have prepped a couple little frogs and a dragon fly, Ann insisted I needed more than just sheep as options for the workshop.

3.1) On the left the lightweight iron on interfacing, on the right double sided fusible (iron on glue not really interfacing)

3.2) tracing onto interfacing then cutting out the image allows the image to be positioned on the felt ground where you would like.

The Nametag workshop was a Thursday evening mini-workshop. It was a bit more mini than I was anticipating. I had the odd idea I would have about 3 hours and discovered it was about half that. Oops. Next time make sure it’s a longer time slot!

How can I speed up the process and still get a nice name tag?

For the base, we are working with the Horticultural felt, which felts down to a nice solid nametag but it takes a while, a couple hours to add wool over top and increase the density. If we add a craft felt over top of the 100% wool, and switched from one needle, to a punch tool, it would take a lot less time to create a solid colour base to start from. I tried and sure enough, using craft felt and a fake clover punch tool it was about 6 minutes of intense yet controlled pummeling, created a reasonable starting place. (Remember to lift the nametag regularly, so it doesn’t stick to your work surface)

4.1) front and back covering Horticultural felt with craft felt to give a solid colour base.

If you cut the craft felt about 1 inch bigger than your base felt, you can use a single needle to tack the extra around to the back of the base. I did an origami corner to make them look neat. Once tacked in at an angle I flipped back to the front and used the punch tool to solidify the edges. If your craft felt is similar in thinness to pre-felt, you can always add 2 layers, rather than the 1 have added here. You can also cover the base with more than one colour, ( blue sky and green grass).

Tracing onto interfacing is faster than templating an image but I could speed up adding the image even more if we tried stencils, which would allow us to draw on the covered base.

Using stencils for the students are also helpful if they are uncomfortable drawing free hand. Stencils can be approached in a number of ways. The most obvious is to use them to trace an image or a group of images directly onto either the felt or interfacing then felt from the created image.  I did this with the bee stencil and I used part of a Mandela pattern, both drawn directly onto the wool felt. I tried one of my non-sharpie pens for the Mandela, it did not go well and started transferring to the side of my hand. I stopped and went over the image with the permanent sharpie which stayed where I had put it.

4.2) blue ink smudged on the side of my hand so I redrew it in permanent sharpie

I had selected part of a circular mandala. I am not sure I chose the best part, it looked fine when I started but my fiber colour choices, the bag of fiber sitting beside the desk was the bag of pink I had purchased to replace the missing bag of pink. As I started to add colour I realized the pattern looked a bit demonic.

4.3) outlining some of the shapes by drafting out combed top.

I was not happy with the smudging from the blue marker (not a sharpie) so I added a light pink between the shapes. I also found the demonic face affect I had accidently created a bit less disturbing if I turned the image the other way around.

4.4) sometimes its good to be flexible as to which way the design wants to go

The other stance example I made was treating the image in a more 3-D  way. I had selected the Bee image and added one to each end of the base felt.

5.1) adding bees to the nametag

5.2) Adding the background around the images (not as fast as adding the image to the background, but felting is flexible, and you can approach felting in lots of different ways)

5.3) adding white wool to make a larger name tag

I decided that I wanted more space for the name on the tag so decided to add a “bit” more white fiber to create more background.  You can see from the back how much that little bit was. (1/3 horticultural felt and 2/3 added wool fiber)

5.4) cutting the extended name tags into two tags

Luckily I am felting and not spinning so I can use scissors on the wool!! I cut it into 2 name tags each with one bee.

5.5) the bee with bull rush and flowers near pond I think is done, I am still considering the bee with sky I may add a bee hive?

One of my students used a textural pattern stencil of trees in silhouette. Instead of tracing the image onto the felt, she used small clumps of wool directly into the stencil. She was able to create a cracked mud effect without having to get wet!!

 5.6) cool effect using a stencil

As you saw at the beginning, I had a selection of examples to help inspire the students. So I should show you a few shots of the workshop. I was very focused on teaching but my very patent and helpful husband took a few shots (than read his book and had a nap) so there are not too many to inflict upon you.

6.1) tables set up for workshop with 3  six foot tables full of bags of fiber, close up of notes

Unlike the hefty book of notes from the needle felted landscape workshop, this wound up to be 10 pages of notes and 2 pages of sheep line drawings. I also had 5 or 6  sheets of sheep, alpaca, lama, frogs, dragonflies, and muskox.  They were options to trace onto the interfacing.

6.2)  I had samples of various work surfaces (from the bottom of the pile: upholstery foam, larger and smaller wool mats, very well used garden kneeling pad, and commercial felt stuck together at edges with a piece of sponge inside and pens (sharpies in colours)

6.3)  I had cookies and cautionary Band-Aids

6.4) the craft felt came in quite a few colours, I had punch tools, carding brush, ribbons, horticultural felt , scissors, painters tape and wire cutters and benders.

6.5) close up of the 3 tables of bags of fiber to work from

At 7pm we had 5 of the 8 students in the room. I started teaching Glenn took over photography as well as reading and napping. (he got distracted so there are only a few of me teaching.)

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6.6-6.8) Glenn’s shots of the workshop

I think the students enjoyed themselves, but it defiantly needs more time, I hate to rush students (that usually requires more Band-Aids!).

I still have a few more samples I want to make. I have a couple of people who will check over the notes so I can amend them. I want them to have reference material to get them restarted if it takes them a little while to get around to their next project.

 

Update: I found out that two of my missing students had a dog emergency, surgery (the dog was doing better now), the other was out of town and came in to the social today to work on her project. I had a small supply of wool and other things she could use. She did a landscape with a rainbow sheep! She still was working on getting it just rite, and will add her name when she is ready. I gave her a goodly length of buffalo roving (it’s very thin unspun roving). I had a few natural tones, but was looking for other colours. I was able to find 2 cakes of it in variegated blue/brown and whitish, and a soft denim blue at the Peterborough fiber festival last Saturday. I bot both. I hope to find some other colours eventually since they are so easy to make letters with.

I was going to tell you about the shopping trip to Peterborough, about a 3 hour drive (266km) there and the same back) and the Photography workshop the next day. But this has been a long post and I will show you shopping when we get a chance to chat again.

Have you investigated working with interfacing as a way of transferring images? Have you tried to iron it on first? Have you any tips or suggestions? Have fun and keep felting.

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.

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.

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

Here is a photo of Gloria’s table items.

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.

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

Here I am with My Secret Garden…

Here is a closer view.

Here are the other pieces I had in the exhibition.

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)

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.

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.