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Month: May 2014

New Felting Supplies

New Felting Supplies

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After finally finishing my inventory the other week, I made a list of all the colours and breeds of wool I was low on and ordered some new supplies from World of Wool. As usual, I added a few things to my order which weren’t on the list, but the more you order each time, the more you save on postage, right? 🙂  I ordered a few natural white wool tops which I haven’t tried before, left to right: Whiteface Woodland, Dorset Horn and German Eider.

white topsI’ve had a dark Brown Corriedale and a few different types of Jacob before, so I added some (Top to Bottom) Grey Corriedale, Grey Jacob and because I couldn’t resist, brown baby Alpaca Tops.

topsI also bought a few things I thought a lot of people might be interested in. I’ve seen Broken Merino Tops listed before, and thought they were probably what they sounded like, and they are. They look like what I’d imagine is left at the bottom of the bags or boxes when the nice part of the top has been sold: short pieces a few inches long, a bit crumpled and a bit messed up and separated. But not felted or matted at all. I ran some through my drum carder then used it in some blends for felted soap.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThere were a couple of wool noils listed, which I’ve never seen before. There was Bluefaced Leicester Noil, and Black Finnish Noil. They both looked like they are probably what is left over after the wool has been carded into tops. Because they are both quite fine soft wools, even these noils feel soft, although there is a bit of vegetable matter in there too. This is the Bluefaced Leicester one:

BFLAnd this is the Black Finnish noil:

FinnI thought they’d be good for some extra texture and perfect for using in natural wool texture felt, so the better quality/more expensive wool isn’t wasted. I think these were both around £1 for 100g. And since I was going a bit mad with the order, I thought I’d get some Merino Burrs. They looked softer than nepps which I never have much luck with, and they do feel a lot softer, and flatter and not as tight/hard as nepps.

burrsI’ve added these to the Wool and Animal Fibres Gallery, along with a few other new photos.

Happenings at the Farm.

Happenings at the Farm.

Comments 20 comments

This week we’ve had some new arrivals. first was this lovely red Dexter heifer. born just before dark so the picture is of my son in the dark with my husband holding the flashlight.

Colin and Rosalee

Then we had some lambs.

lamb 1 lamb 3 lamb 2

This morning it was Chrissy’s turn. My hubby was going to feed the bottle lambs when he fount them. Lamb was up and dry. No problem bringing them in till Chrissy saw the bottles lying on the ground and was more interested in trying to get a drink then going in the pen with her lamb.  Once a bottle lamb always a bottle lamb. she was to busy nibbling my coat to get in the picture herself.

lamb 4 chrissy

 

I also washed some wool mostly it is still yucky with to much chaff in it. The brown looks ok and some of the white I can cut the curls from the felted base.   The rest will end up as mulch. Free fleece is seldom usable fleece.

Another Sample of Nuno Felting with Paper Fabric Laminated Organza

Another Sample of Nuno Felting with Paper Fabric Laminated Organza

Comments 26 comments

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.

Initial Layout

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.

Close Up of Paper Laminated Organza

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.

Cheese Cloth

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

Wet Down and Rubbed Gently

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

Trilobite

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.

Completed Felt

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”.

Close Up Texture

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.

 

Ready, set… plan!

Ready, set… plan!

Comments 15 comments

Have you thought about what your goal is for your business?  To help you incorporate the marketing concepts we’ve previously discussed into a marketing strategy to understand your goal, I am going to use the Felt and Fiber Studio Forum as an example of a business.

goals

Here is a quick recap of our previous marketing concepts blogs:

  • The six P’s of marketing — Product, Price, Promotion, Placement, Positioning, PR/Publicity and People
  • The customer is key.
  • Identifying customer problems and product benefits (Ideal buyers — our strategic assets)
  • Communicating with customers for market research

With these concepts in mind, we’ll develop a marketing goal which will be the basis of a marketing plan for the Forum.

Marketing and PR Strategy Planning Template for:

Company —  Felt and Fiber Studio Forum

  • Who (members/customers)
    • Fiber enthusiasts from all over the world working/playing in a variety of art forms

    pile of batts

  • What (problems the forum solves for members) also the Forum Product
    • Information, sharing, techniques, resources, engaging experts, experience, problem solving
    • What actions does the Forum want members to take
      • Participation
  • Why (How is the forum remarkable?) (Positioning)
    • It is self supported, membership of experienced to novice fiber enthusiasts around the world, full of resources for a variety of fiber arts, free to the user (Price)

internet

  • How
    • Personality — friendly, giving, nonjudgmental  (Positioning)
    • Creative/Design (Look and feel) — fiber graphic, easy to navigate  (Positioning)
    • Tone of Voice — casual  (Positioning)
    • Keyword Phrases — Fiber, Nuno Felting, Weaving, Knitting, Dyeing, Needle Felting, Wet Felting, Spinning, Crocheting, Surface Design, Business, Fiber Festivals, Studio Challenges, Wool and Other Fibers, Hand Stitching, Machine Stitching, Fiber Marketplace, General Discussion, Shows and Classes, Take a Stitch Tuesday, Beads/Beading  (PR/Publicity and Promotion) — This is how members find us with search words in addition to word of mouth.
    • Marketing Tactics and Content Strategy –Blog, Facebook, free tutorials, quarterly challenges, quarterly newsletter, welcome email, occasional giveaways, holiday exchange, resources for information, supplies, tools, links to other blogs, resources (Network of People and Promotion)
  • notepadWhen — Things to do today, next week (Actions to take)
    • Blog posts every other day by Moderators or guests (Promotion)
    • Monitor posts daily, encourage members to post new projects, questions, resources, events

 

Generally, the goal of the Felt and Fiber Studio Forum is to build a community of fiber enthusiasts who can share their work, ideas, techniques, resources and get information and questions answered in a friendly, caring environment.

The Driving Action for the goals of the Forum are primarily:

  • Participation
    • Registering to be a member
    • Like on Facebook
    • Subscribe to the Studio blog
    • Participate in conversations and/or challenges on the Forum
  • Download free tutorials
  • Ask questions, submit projects, tutorials, resources (share)
  • Refer the Forum to friends (word of mouth)

road mapThis is a road map of the thought process of planning our marketing strategy and understanding our business goals.  You can use this as a general guideline to ask yourselves the same questions about your business.

Ready, set….plan!  What does your road map look like?

Look for more discussion on the Forum http://feltandfiberstudio.proboards.com

 

 

 

 

Using A Drum Carder

Using A Drum Carder

Comments 16 comments

Recently on the Felting and Fiber Forum, Leonor was asking those of us who’d recently bought drum carders what we thought of them. I said I really liked mine from the Classic Carder company and didn’t tend to get fibre building up on the small drum, which seems to happen for some and I said I’d try and do some videos when I got chance. Yesterday I found time to do some videos. The first one took almost an hour to upload to youtube, so I have done some edited versions and I will try to upload the others when I have more time (it took 4 hours this morning). The first batt I made is using ‘texturey’ wools and fibres. They are mostly ones I have hand dyed myself, scoured wools like Bluefaced Leicester, Wensleydale and Falkland, carded Icelandic, some Alpaca, dyed Devon tops and some hand dyed silk tops and silk noil.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is the video, sorry the light isn’t brilliant.

This next video is showing commercial wool tops being carded, these go through a lot easier, and the end ‘batt’ is a lot neater and smoother, more like wide roving than a batt. You can use the drum carder to make your own blends from wool tops which are usually more expensive than single colours. Depending on how you put the wool through will depend how ‘stripey’ it is or how blended.

I like to make blended batts with some texture and some wool tops. This next video shows about half of the texture batt being blended with the wool tops batt, I think I added some soy tops, flax and ramie to this too.

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I don’t often do this, but for demonstration purposes, I put the texture and tops batt from the previous video through again.

I used a shower curtain on the table while making these videos, I hoped the white would help lighten them a little, I don’t think it made much difference, but it does show up some of the dust that collects under the carder!

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