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Month: October 2012

My First Nuno Felt

My First Nuno Felt

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I knew sooner or later id have to brave it and have a go at some nuno felting,  and I really wanted to make my Granddaughter a little vest so here goes , I didn’t have pink so had to go for mauves and then I threw in some greens.

 

So anyway, I layed out a piece of muslin first , then on top of that is a layer of merino and bfl

The bottom layer is the same in a verigated mauve

Then I flipped it and added lots of silk, sari silk, silk threads and added extra bits of fiber over that, maybe to much though,  this is after wetting , rubbing and rolling

This is after I threw it in the bath about 100 times, not sure it needed that much but I wanted to be careful and not have it fall apart, it shrunk a lot

Now I’m just making a plan vest here, nothing fancy, I don’t have a machine so its all done by hand. I cut a pattern from one of her jackets minus the sleeves

Back of vest

After embellishing,  I could NOT help but put some beads on but each and everyone of them has been sewn on at least 3 -4 times, didn’t want her pulling them off and needed them to be really secure . Its just finished off with  a blanket stitch all round and a ribbon tie closure . I added a little pocket on the front because I loved that piece of off-cut ,  Very Hippy like dont you think lol  I am happy with it but I do think I used to much wool over the silk and muslin, and actually I wasn’t sure if it was muslin or gauze but it was very fine and did work well

I should have made the front panels just that little bit bigger, she’s filling out nicely lol  but its nice and warm and Charlie didn’t mind it at all 🙂  Its not the best I know but it’s a start although the hardest part was taking a decent pic of her because she’s like a worm and never sits still 🙂

 

 

So whats everyone else working on, i cant wait to make another better one, but i need more wool first, i do honest 🙂

 

 

Exhibition and Online Auction at the Gail Harker Center for Creative Arts

Exhibition and Online Auction at the Gail Harker Center for Creative Arts

Comments 7 comments

Gail Harker Center for Creative Arts is where I am currently taking my Level 2 Machine and Hand Embroidery class. They held a Black, White and Red exhibition this weekend and on Tuesday, there will be an online auction.

Black, White and Red, features 82 miniature works by the Center’s students. After the exhibition, the 5×7 inch works will be auctioned to raise money towards the completion of a permanent art gallery at the Center. An online auction will take place Oct. 9.

You can look at the works that will be auctioned off by going here. I donated a piece and if you want to see it, look for number 74 in the slide show. There are some really nice pieces of art being auctioned off so if you’re interested, the auction guidelines are listed below.

About the Auction

The Auction will be ONLINE only and will be for 1 day, Tuesday, October 9th.  The auction will begin at 9:00 a.m. PST and end at 7:00 p.m. PST.

Here is how the online auction will work:

  • At 9:00 a.m. October 9th a new page will go live on the center website www.gailcreativestudies.com. The auction page will be found under the Exhibition tab. This page will have a listing for each item, including the item number, Artist’s name, a very short description and a thumbnail image which can be clicked on to open a page displaying a larger view of the work, a suggested minimum bid, the current bid and an “e-mail your bid” button.
  • You can e-mail the Center a new bid as often as you wish during the day. Bids will be updated live throughout the day.
  • Winners will be notified via e-mail on Oct. 10. Items may be paid for by Check in US funds or by credit card over the phone. Items will be mailed after payment has been received.

Please note: bids received prior to 9:00 a.m. on October 9, 2012 will not be considered valid.

Blue and Zig Zags

Blue and Zig Zags

Comments 12 comments

I made another piece of felt just for fun recently, this time using blue shades of merino wool and blue, green and purpley shades of fabrics and fibres.

I really love this part, it’s synthetic fibres from a novelty yarn, but looks like curly wool.

For the last 25 years or so, I’ve been using an old Singer sewing machine. The electrics were too dangerous, so I removed them and worked it by hand. It was slow going and gave me Popeye forearms (or ‘arm’, just the one on the right!) but it worked well enough for what I needed it for. When I started felting and the world of fibres and fabrics opened up, I started to covet other people’s fancy machines, especially ones that could do zig-zag stitch. I did occasionally think about buying myself a new one, but it seemed a bit frivolous to spend money on something just to add zig-zags to things occasionally 🙂 And then a couple of weeks ago, my Mum gave me her machine. I was worried that now I had a fancy machine I wouldn’t even be able to thread it, but it was quite easy really. I started off by practising straight stitches and trying to control the speed-I still can’t do that, it seems my foot only has two speeds, full pelt or excrutiatingly slow. But I managed to add stitching to a nuno sample I’d made. Feeling a bit more confident, I added some shapes from scrap felt, and finally used the zig-zag stitch

I’ve got a big collection of felt off cuts, so I cut a few into strips and made some bookmarks too

I know I need to practise a bit more, especially using zig-zags to do edges, but I’m not as scared of it as I was a week ago! Have you tried anything new recently?

4th Quarter Challenge _ Weather

4th Quarter Challenge _ Weather

Comments 12 comments

We’ve actually had such a long cold wet winter here in oz that the site of some sunshine is so lovely and with the weather finally starting to warm up I found myself at the beach briefly the other day just taking in the ocean and some warmth, so I thought for this challenge we could felt a piece depicting our own weather no matter where in the world we live, and be it the ocean and sunshine or freezing temperatures with your lovely snow topped mountains, its your seasons.

And just a couple of lovely pictures of our Island in the sun !!

This is a place called the Nobbies were all the little fairy penguins live

Just a gorgeous sunset on the Island, would make a gorgeous felt piece

Looking forward to seeing everyone’s weather challenge to see the difference in our temps right now. Happy Felting and we’d love to see you in our interactive forum where we all love to share some great information or just have a chat, so come along and join in the fun http://www.feltandfiberstudio.com/

A Production Calendar – What’s That?

A Production Calendar – What’s That?

Comments 8 comments

When you’re planning on selling wholesale, you need to plan ahead to make sure that all of the orders placed by galleries and shops can be filled. Consider if you attended a wholesale market and you received 20-25 large orders. You would be very excited and happy that your work sold so well. But did you pay attention to when those orders needed to be shipped? Perhaps you were trying to please the buyers and you told all of them that you could send out there order right away. Once you get home and start to work, you realize that it will be impossible to make enough work to fill the orders on time. What do you do now???

 

The scenario above is not a situation that you want to happen. If you tell a buyer that you can send an order at a certain time, you need to be able to send the order when promised. Galleries often don’t give you a second chance if you prove to be unreliable. One way to avoid this situation is to develop a production calendar. Everyone’s production calendar will be slightly different depending on the products produced and their working methods.

To develop a production calendar, you need to know how long it takes to produce each of your products. Does it take less time to make certain products if you make more than one at a time? Once you know how long it takes for production, then you need to give yourself time on the calendar for each wholesale order that you receive. So if you take an order for $500 worth of products and it will take you 1 week to produce that work, mark the ship date for that order on your calendar and mark a line through the previous week to avoid putting in any other orders for that week. As you continue to fill your production calendar, if a month becomes filled with orders, you can not take any more orders to ship for that month. Tell the buyers that you can send their order in the following month because you have already filled your production calendar for that month. Buyers understand how production calendars work and realize that you need time to fill all the orders you have taken at the show.

Once you get back home, you can use your production calendar as a schedule and fulfill the orders as they come up on the calendar. If for some unforeseen reason, you are not going to be able to send an order on the agreed upon shipping date, contact the gallery/shop as soon as you can to explain the problem. Tell them the circumstances and make sure they still want the order to be shipped even though it will be late. Using a production calendar will help to prevent late shipments and improve your relationships with wholesale buyers. Presenting a professional demeanor is important and keeping your shipments on time will give galleries confidence in your business abilities.