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Month: September 2018

Shibori Shrug Jacket

Shibori Shrug Jacket

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Heres another throw back post. I thought if I do not remember doing this maybe you won’t either. I hope you like it.

After seeing Ruth’s jacket it reminded me I had made a small one for one of my daughter’s dolls years ago. I thought I should give it another try but life size this time. I thought about doing it seamless but decided that it would make something that is a simple design into something complicated. Although I am not a great sewer I was sure sewing 2 straight seems on my machine should not be beyond me.

There are quite a few pictures so I have put them in a gallery for ease of viewing. If I could figure out how to post pictures side by side or in groups I would but that is beyond my skill level.

First I made a large piece of nuno felt. I used silk gauze and merino wool. After it was finished I put it in a red dye bath. It came out quite nice. It’s hard to tell from the picture because my camera did not like the red at all. The one you see was the best of a bad lot.

The next thing to do was the shibori. I finger pleated the middle of the piece starting at one short end. I very carefully held it flat and tight while I tied it. The first tie is the hardest one. After that you just pleat it up tying every couple of inches. You don’t want to be too neat about it. If the pleats are to perfect you get straight lines. You want your pleats to be tight so some of the material will resist the dye in the second bath. This type of shibori is supposed to make a bark like pattern. I put the tied up piece in a purple dye bath hopping for a nice red purple to appear on my cloth. It came out black. After it was dry the gauze side had more of a purple look but still very dark.

I sewed up my jacket. I made the material far too wide so the jacket ends up long. The short sides overlapped a lot when folded up. I had to have long “lapels” to make it work. It is not a mistake it’s a design feature, just ask me :O) It is still to long for me. I think it may look good one someone who is tall and thin. Two things I am not.

All in all not a bad try. I’ve made another piece of nuno felt to try again, I made it narrower this time. Now I have to find the time to sew it up.

Directions Exhibition

Directions Exhibition

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My art group hung our new exhibition which opens tonight at The Purple Pomegranate in Whitefish, MT USA at 6:00 pm mountain time. If you are in the area, you are cordially invited to the opening or come any time in September to see the exhibit.

We cleared out a space in the store to put up six panels. With five of us showing work, we need extra “wall space”.

Then we started on the back wall and hung Louise’s work.

Next up was hanging Deb’s work.

And then on to Paula.

Sally hung her work on one side of the panels.

And I hung my work up on the other side.

Here are some closer shots of Louise’s work.

Here is Deb’s artwork. Somehow, I didn’t get any closer views of Deb’s work. Sorry Deb!

And here are Paula’s pieces.

Here are Sally’s pieces. It’s impossible to take a photo of all the pieces at once on the panels as they are angled.

And here are my pieces.

We had a great time hanging the show and we hope it’s a success! Come on red dots 🙂

 

‘THE WINDFARM’ – A SIMPLE SEASCAPE

‘THE WINDFARM’ – A SIMPLE SEASCAPE

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finished and unframed

Small abstract seascapes are quick and easy to make.  Just lay down some coloured horizontal lines and ‘hey presto’ the eye is tricked!

Make 3 base layers of wool fibres – start with a vertical layer so that the 3rd layer is vertical.  Wet down the wool fibres then mark a horizon with a piece of thread.

The layout shown below was approximately 30 x 20cm (12″x 8″) and only Merino wool fibres were used.

Base layers

You can just lay down horizontal, dry, coloured strips of wool fibres, but I prefer to wet the strips as I think the results are better.

The sample below shows 10 strips of merino wool fibres on a base layer of white (each colour was the same amount of fibres).  The top 5 strips were pre-wetted and the bottom 5 strips were dry, and when placed on the base layer they looked identical.  However, during felting the dry fibres have spread and the colour is not so intense.  The pre-wetted fibres don’t spread so much and the colours stay vibrant.

strips sample

To wet a strip of fibres, simply hold each end and saturate it in a bowl of soapy water.  Then lift it out and run finger and thumb gently down the length.

wetting and smoothing a tuft of wool fibres

To make the sky, start at the top with the darker colours then work downwards to the lighter ones.  Go back over it putting in colours wherever you think they need to be!

Adding strips to form the sky

To make the sea, start with the darker colours on the horizon (remember to remove the guide thread) and mirror some of the sky colours in the water then add a bit of headland.

adding strips to form the sea and land

Add a focal point.  Perhaps a lighthouse or buildings or boats.

The focus for this seascape is a windfarm and the windmills were formed from very thin wisps of white merino wool fibres.

making the windmills

During the early felting the straggly bits on both sides of the piece of felt were trimmed and it became painfully obvious that the windmills looked more like drunken dancers, so they were removed!

oops - that didn't work

When the felt was dry the windmills were added using white cotton perle embroidery thread – each windmill comprised a french knot and 4 long stitches.

I have a stash of frames bought from charity (thrift) shops and I had just the right one for ‘The Windfarm’.

in a plain white frame on wall

This is a very quick and easy way to make a seascape and it will never be the same twice!

Inspiration

Inspiration

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I was running out of ideas for a blog post since I haven’t had a chance to make or do anything this week, and Ruth suggested an Inspiration post. We’ve had a lot of rain recently, but actually had a couple of dry and even briefly sunny days so I went out in the garden to get some inspiration. I was hoping for a variety of colours and textures, but after a 3 1/2 month long heatwave, brown is the dominant colour in the garden! The first thing which caught my eye was a large teasel plant. The leaves at the base were really interesting:

This one has a spider on it too:

I got a photo of a whole seed head:

And a close up of the spiky edge:

One plant which does have some nice new growth is a large sedum I have. I rescued this from a house at the end of the street about 20 years ago when the previous owners moved out!

This has more interesting colours, the whole top will flower then turn deep red:

I don’t even remember this Centaurea (cornflower) flowering, but it has a really interesting seed-head. I don’t know if it’s just me, but it reminds me of owl feathers

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This is a common ‘weed’ in the UK, a Plantain (plantago). The little seeds look like oats:

I don’t know if you remember Ruth’s post about Fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium) recently, but I had quite a few really big ones in my garden, we call them Rosebay Willowherb here. Though I’ve just been looking it up on Wikipedia, and I might have actually had a related plant, the Great Willowherb (Epilobium hirsutum). Either way, both plants have really great seed pods, and seeds, here are some from mine:

The last plant I managed to get some nice photos of is my small Sage shrub. It has really texturey leaves, quite hairy too when they’re young, and they turn interesting colours if they die too:

I hope you enjoyed those photos, feel free to use any for inspiration, and if you do, it’d be great to see what you make!