I am planning an online course about mixed media surface techniques with felt and so I’m working up various samples. I will also be working on videos and PDF’s for the course but I haven’t started those yet. I wanted to try a piece with more surface texture and using the paper laminated pieces as focal points. I wrote several other blog posts about the process here, here and here if you don’t know what paper fabric lamination means.

Here’s the initial layout. I had made the paper laminated pieces quite a while ago but I used a thicker paper and it didn’t work out as planned. But I decided to go ahead and use these pieces. They are very light in value so I chose a darker felt background to show them off better. I used a merino batt that I had carded for the base, added the paper laminated pieces, added a dark navy blue and small pieces of cheesecloth. I wanted texture from the cheesecloth so I wadded it up a bit.

Here’s a closer look at one of the paper laminated organza pieces. I used screen prints that I made several years ago of fossils.

You can see that the surface is textured at this point before wetting down.

Here is the piece after I wet it down and rubbed a bit.

And a close up of the trilobite fossil organza piece. The colors of the photos above are not true. The ones of the finished felt below are the more true colors.

Here’s the piece after I finished felting. I love the texture and I did make the edges uneven intentionally as I wanted it to feel like a “fragment”.

Here is a closer view of some of the textures. I plan on stitching around the fossils to give them more emphasis but I took my sewing machine in for a cleaning and tune up. So I’ll have to wait on the stitching of this piece. If you’re interested in learning more about this technique, please let me know and I’ll put you on a mailing list for when the online class is ready.