Quarterly review

Quarterly review

It’s hard to believe that 4 months have already gone by this year, I’m not sure that I’ve done a quarter of the things I planned to do. I did try out a lot of the fibres that Karen sent me and even made a nice piece of felt from some silk threads that came off the sari silk ribbon.

I haven’t used any of the gorgeous threads that Ruth sent me, hopefully when I’ve learned a good variety of stitches from the TAST challenge I can do them justice. I’ve enjoyed learning new stitches, one I really enjoyed exploring was running stitch. My first thought was ‘running stitch?! what can you do with that?’ A lot as it happens 🙂

I haven’t had chance to explore dyeing further yet this year, but there’s still plenty of time for that. I’ve enjoyed the Studio Challenges so far, not only producing pieces for the challenges, but also exploring the themes in depth, taking photos, altering photos, always looking for things to fit the themes.

Last week after Ruth’s Challenge post, I chose some of my old abstract acrylic paintings to get some inspiration from. I started with a small acrylic in blues, greens and yellows.

And made a small felt piece inspired by it.

I’ve done quite a lot of work on my project for using ‘other’ fibres and fabrics in felting. I still haven’t worked out what format or formats it will be in, but I think that will become clearer as I go along and have a better idea of how all the info would best be presented. I’m working around a loose outline, but as usual there’s always something new to learn with each piece of felt, or a new idea forming wanting to be explored. I’m trying to stick to the outline and write down the other ideas for exploring later, but I don’t want to forget them while they’re fresh, either 🙂

I’ve already been inspired by the great felting and fibre community we’re part of. It’s great to read all the comments we get on the studio site each day and I love logging onto the forum and seeing everyone’s new projects. I really like the way we get inspired to try out new things from each other’s posts, compare our results and share techniques. I think I’m adding to my list of things to do rather than ticking them off, but that’s alright 🙂  How are your lists of things for the year? Are you getting much ticked off or are they growing, like mine?

10 thoughts on “Quarterly review

  1. So many projects, so little time. I add to my list faster than I can tick off too! The forum offers so many ideas.

    Running stitch is the best! You can do so much with it – as you’ve proved with your diamond piece.

    Your texture design (last photo) would make a good abstract piece for wall hanging – it’s lovely – and I like the turquoise and yellow piece – those colours were made for each other.

    1. Thanks, Lyn 🙂
      I was thinking of doing a slightly larger version of the last picture as a wall hanging, but maybe with irregular edges, like squares overlapped, if that makes sense?

  2. This year is racing by for me too! The unusual sunny morning drove me to do some much needed tidying up in the garden – still lots more to do though!

    I love your running stitch piece and the shaded thread shows it off so well.

    The other pieces are great too. I’m interested in your altering photos – the two faces look good. It’s something I like to do too.

    Let’s hope we can all find the time to bring all those ideas made into something tangible.

    1. Thanks, Judith 🙂
      I thought it was meant to be rainy this week, my garden needs doing too!
      Some of the photos I altered were hilarious, very Picassoesque with distorted features and pointy chins 🙂
      I think we all just need assistants to try all our ideas out for us.

  3. Where are my assistants? I think I need two or three. 🙂 Looks like you’ve gotten a lot done. I love the running stitch piece. It is a very deceptive stitch. Now I look at patterns and think, that would be a good pattern for running stitch. I tried your approach of changing photos to make them abstract – I’ll post that this week. It was fun. It is wonderful to be able to bounce ideas off each other in our own little community. My list is ever growing and I can never seem to catch up!

    1. Thanks, Ruth 🙂
      Yeah, I keep seeing patterns, especially on jumpers and thinking they’d look great stitched. I’ll look forward to seeing your abstract pictures.

  4. Wow you manged to do A LOT. my list is so long I don’t ever think I will finish it. Must remember my word, breath. That altered picture would make such a great wall hanging. The other pieces are great too.

    1. Thanks, Ann 🙂
      It sounds like you’re always busy! I did end up with a lot of altered photos I thought would make great prints, one was from some plant pots drying on the grass.

  5. I love the abstract painting & the felt piece that was inspired by the painting. I really want do some felt pieces inspired by a piece of artwork. Maybe, that could be a quarterly challenge? The artwork could be a photo (for people who do not want to paint something)

    1. Thanks, Sherry 🙂
      I did think about a doing a challenge with one specific painting and seeing all the different interpretations of it, Kandinsky’s Square’s with Concentric circles came to mind, but Ann had done something similar for her challenge http://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2012/04/01/2012-second-quarter-studio-challenge/ that’s what my painting and felt piece were for.
      You should use some of your DPP pieces as inspiration for felt pieces 🙂

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