August 2019 – Page 2 – Felting and Fiber Studio

Where does the time go?

August 10, 2019 Shepherdessann Comments 10 comments

Another week has gone by and I have not a lot to show for it. I have done a few things. On Monday at the guild social I carded some roving that was to felty to spin easily. Now I have a nice stack of mostly green batts. I am not sure why I bought these colours. It looks very blue but it is more green then it seems in the picture. And now I am not sure where I put the bag of batts.

On Thursday I dyed some silk scarf blanks they are about 12 inches by 8 feet. I will use them or sell them. I used low water immersion dying that is described her on Paula Burch’s site. http://www.pburch.net/dyeing/lowwaterimmersion.shtml

I like the way they turned out. One is very pale and I may over dye it.

This week we sent out the ecards for all the vendors at my guilds annual sale and exhibition. Jan did these and did an amazing Job. I need to show them off. These are the ones she did for me.

What have you done this week? Will you be doing any shows this fall?

Third Quarter Challenge – Part 1

August 8, 2019 ruthlane Comments 8 comments

When Lyn and Annie announced the Third Quarter Challenge, I definitely felt challenged. The challenge is to create a Cityscape. I tend toward natural inspirations instead of man made inspiration.

It’s not that I don’t have photos of cities, I do. We have been to New York City three times and I do have photos of the city. But the skyline just doesn’t excite me much, especially attempting it in felt.

I then thought about doing something with graffiti. That might be interesting but again, I wasn’t very inspired.

I even considered using a photo like this with rusty bits and natural stone that was taken in NYC but this really doesn’t say cityscape.

Then I started thinking about how I could relate a cityscape to Montana and my surroundings. Perhaps I could do a cityscape of Whitefish, where my store is located? But that seemed too touristy and overdone to me. Then I thought about old west and what constituted a city in the old west. Perhaps I could use a ghost town as an inspiration. I know I’m stretching it a bit but…

Since I have visited Garnet, Montana, a ghost town, I decided to use it for inspiration. You can read about it’s history here. You can also see some photos of the buildings on that site as well.

I googled Garnet Ghost Town for images and found quite a few of the buildings. But the ones that intrigued me were the night sky photos. And this was my favorite. I ended up printing out several night sky photos as well as some of the daylight photos that showed the main buildings better.

Using the inspiration photos, I drew a sketch of where the buildings would be placed. I also needed the approximate scale of the buildings so I could create prefelt building shapes. The plan was to make the buildings in prefelt. All of the details would be added later with machine stitching. So I had my basic design for my “cityscape”. Not really much of a city but it would have to do! Next week I will show you the felting portion of the “cityscape”.

Have you tried one of our challenges? We’d love to see what you create. Show us over on the forum or if you’d like to write a guest post, just let me know.

Knitting and modeling a shawl

August 6, 2019 Leonor Comments 22 comments

After a big hiatus, my knitting mojo finally woke up, and it was craving complicated stuff, not just the customary stocking stitch pattern.
I’ve a soft spot for lace shawls, particularly those by British pattern creator Boo Knits (find her by searching on Ravelry). Bev also allows knitters to sell finished shawls, as long as they credit her as the pattern author – very useful for a fibre business owner like myself.

I set out to knit a shawl named Out of Darkness. The lace pattern is beautiful, yet simple enough to not drive me mad (as long as I pay very close attention to the instructions and count my stitches frequently).

Lace looks very underwhelming when you’re knitting it. The stitches don’t look defined or “pop,” it’s as if you’ve gone through a lot of trouble for not much.

Once you block it, however, the magic happens.

Isn’t the transformation amazing? The pointy bits look on point (pun intended), the beads suddenly make sense and this is now a thing of beauty, luxurious even.

This was intended as the show stopper in my new online shop, so I went out of my way to create decent photos.

Finally, I also gathered up courage to take some “lifestyle photos,” as they say. I even managed a straight face…

You know how that classical novel ends with, “reader, I married him?” Well, my story ends with, “reader, I ended up selling this beauty before I finished setting up my shop!” Ah, well.

So here it is, my adventures in lace knitting. What have you created with your hands lately?

Inflicting Fibre Arts on Unsuspecting Relatives; Part 2 the Photos.

August 4, 2019 Jan Comments 6 comments

Inflicting Fibre Arts on Unsuspecting Relatives; Part 2 the Photos.

Continued from: https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2019/07/13/inflicting-fibre-arts-on-unsuspecting-relatives/

We had a busy enjoyable visit with Glenn’s Parents, his brother Grant, Grants’ Wife Marg and one of their daughters, Jennifer. I had brought fibre arts with me to continue their indoctrination to Fibre Arts! I lured them in with Wellington fibre on the spinning wheel and colourful top spun on the DIY Turkish drop spindles. Then furthered the temptation by showing Jennifer (who would show her sister Fiona) the addiction that is portable Kumihimo on a Card stalk disk!

The final fibre arts supplies I had brought with me were for picture felting. We were going to check out the back yard and gardens to make a 5×7 sized piece to commemorate our visiting. Unfortunately we had too much fun visiting including with Bob and his wife Judy (Bob is another one of Glenn’s many brothers). I didn’t realize we were going to run out of time but I did the inspirational photography for the felt pictures.

When we realize our time was up Jennifer and I had a chat reviewing;

Blocking out the composition with permanent markers.
How to lay down layers of colours in thin layers like a water colour painting.
How to mix colours exact to the photo reference like acrylic painting.
(And to keep your fingers away from the pointy end)

She had just enough room in her suitcase for 2 pieces of felt and a selection of needles. The rest of her suit cases space was stuffed with Canadian Delicacies such as Ketchup potato chips and exotic chocolate bars not available in the USA. (Poor Americans don’t have Butter tarts, salt and vinegar chips, or real sweet tarts!!! As soon as the rest of the Americans realized their loss they will all immigrate to Canada! Just don’t mention the amount of snow we also have.)

I know my felting friends missed out on all the grate chatting and visiting but maybe you would be interested in some inspirational shots from my Mother in law’s garden. This year it was particularly impressive. We even had a parade of wild life some of which I am sorry that I missed (the extra-large raccoon and the extra cute rabbit). I hope you enjoy them as much as we did while we were there. Some small part of one of the shots I hope will inspire you in your wet, dry or even damp (well what else could we call wet and dry felting used together?) felting of the future.

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The Plants of My Mother-in-Lawes Gardern 2019

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Some of the Wild Life in Mary’s Garden

I think it would be a good addition to your fiber arts tool kit to include a note/sketch book to capture ideas before you get distracted by the next great idea and an easily portable digital camera with the most megapixels you can afford. Going for high megapixels allows you to zoom in after you have taken the shot. Using the camera to frame and capture the world around you can make you see your surroundings in a different way. A back yard that has become “just the backyard” can be transformed by the camera and some interesting lighting into a Garden, an adventure or serious inspiration for your future artistic works.

I want to chat more about photos as reference and inspiration in the near future but I hope these will send you off to grab your camera and explore your surroundings.

Bits and Bobs.

August 2, 2019 Shepherdessann Comments 11 comments

I got my dryer balls and my soap done and it is now up at the museum store. the dryer balls have information on how to use them on the back and the tag explains them as well.

A few weeks ago a friend at the guild was selling off left over yarn he bought to do a project that was now finished. I bought these. They are all singles form Brigs and Little. Some are solid and some are heathered.

I decided to use the yellow to make the design on a dark purple hat. I had to partially felt the hat before wrapping the yarn around it. it would have been to difficult to do it sooner.