A Bouquet for Mothers Day

A Bouquet for Mothers Day

A Bouquet for Mothers Day. (not the same as the one I got a few years ago)

With stay at home, the days seem a bit harder to identify. Is this Wednesday and we have forgotten to put the garbage out or is this Tuesday and I’m panicking early? Can you imagine my surprise and horror to discover Mother’s day is Sunday? Sneaky Calendar!!

I use to get Mother’s day presents even though my kids were shorter and furrier than I had anticipated having when I was younger.  We had two cats and when they were five we got them a dog (they didn’t like their present either.) but that eventually worked out with the cats teaching the large breed dog he was actually just an inferior sort of cat.  If he worked hard enough at it he might upgrade to a full cat. They did do great mother’s day presents, Hackles and Bouquets (stacks) of Cinder blocks were some of the best! The cinder blocks were to rebuild and raise the garden. Kids can be so thoughtful.

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Unfortunately, I am not as good at gifting as my kids were. My Mom is hard to find presents for. She would not have enjoyed cinderblocks or fibre prep equipment. I spent most of my childhood trying to find the perfect frog to gift her with. No matter the size, type or shade of greenness I had no success. (Was that one too green or not green enough?)  I even caught a soft-shelled mud turtle (you do know how hard those are to catch by hand right?) always with the same result. “It’s an outside creature take it outside right now!” Mom is very hard to find the right present for!

So, no Frogs but she does like spring flowers especially tulips.  I only have one tulip up in the garden yesterday but there were tulip leaves and daffodil buds showing. One clump of crocus has just finished and some cilia are starting to flower in and out of the garden. If this year’s tulips are not cooperating, I had best look at previous years in my garden.

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With general tulip-ness in mind, I grabbed a piece of felt that was helpfully sitting on my desk. Unfortunately its 5.75in x 6in. I would like 5 x 7in to fit in the precut mat and frame. This is inexpensive commercial felt but does have a bit of wool content so let’s see if I can persuade it to stretch.

17 17 stretching the felt to make a 5×7 shape.

The stretching worked. I gently tugged on opposite sides then worked on diagonals then back to opposite sides. As you would expect this increase in size was accompanied by a decrease in thickness. So a bit of the batt of alpaca Ann had dropped off was put to use to stabilize the ground felt and start to build up the base colour. I added a non-descript blue-ish sky (it’s been pretty cloudy lately so I was trying to feel optimistic. I checked to make sure I still had the 5x7inch over all shape.

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As you can see, I was using the multi-tool (it’s the fake clover tool) with needles that look like 40t- x3barbs per side.

I pulled out one of my more dangerous looking X-mass presents and loaded some of the needles.

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I found the placement too tight since it was very resistant trying to pierce the felt. To fix that I spread the needles farther apart.

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This dispersement worked much better. The needles are again fine probably a 40t (they came with the handle and were not labelled).

I went digging for greens, blues, yellows oranges and reds. I found that the locks I had been spinning in the garden had some of the leaf colours I wanted but were quite strong in intensity. I had some tiny pompoms from Dollartree (like the Dollarama but cheaper). I considered using them but did not. I did have a variegated cream/orange/red ball of super wash merino that was the exact colour I wanted. There was also some bright yellow Claudia had traded me for a yellow that worked better on the duckling she had been making.

 

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Once I was happy with the tullipy-ness of the flowers, I got out the frame and mat to do a final layout check. Normally I would have checked earlier in the picture but I didn’t want to get the mat dirty.

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The mat is getting thinner than the ones I had purchased before so I will have to keep an eye on that.

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I was curious how heavily felted I had made the piece so peeked on the back. You can see it has some firm attachments but it’s not as heavily felted as the fox painting.

I decided I wanted to break the frame (visually not physically) and add fibre that would extend past the matt’s confinement. As the glass was added quite a bit of the fine detail of shading in the flowers disappears from the photo but was still present in the felt.

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After I had tucked the felt into its comfy new frame and mat home I added a happy mother’s day card with a photo from my own garden (from a previous year).

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We will drop off the picture before I post this so Mom won’t see what she is getting!! (she phoned the package has arrived but she will wait till tomorrow to open it on mother’s day)
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Oh, I wanted to let you know what inspirational music I was using to felt this. They are called the Hu, pronounced “Who”, a light Metal Mongolian band who plays traditional instruments and does throat singing.  If you are now curious you can listen to some of their songs on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hElhDzFnnCM

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I hope you are having fun felting in two or three-D and with wetness or dryness. Have fun and if we have no more snow flurries we might all be out in our gardens enjoying spring shortly!

 

 

17 thoughts on “A Bouquet for Mothers Day

    1. thanks! she really likes it she has called twice this morning to say how much she likes it! she has it positioned near the TV so she can see it from the dineing room when she is eating or when she is int he TV room reading the paper or watching the news. she particularly like the way the leaves are escaping out of the picture and onto the mat! she said “you have to look closely to see its not painted!” it was fun planing, looking for photo reference and then felting it for her. My brother also got her Flowers which she said were gorgeous too.

  1. It’s a lovely picture Jan, I sure she will love it, especially with not being able to go see the tulips this year. Mongolian light metal isn’t nearly as bad as you would expect.

    1. Thanks Ann she said she was thrilled with it and has call twice so far to say thank you!

      i think the Hu will make it into my regular work music list along with Buck tick, Rammstein, and other music not regularly associated with spinning, felting or weaving.

  2. What a lovely gift for your mom. I’m sure it will be appreciated. I hope your furry children get you a wonderful surprise this year too 🙂

    1. Thanks Ruth! i think i chose well on theem this year she has called twice so far to say she was enjoying the flowers!
      we have lost the kids over the past few years (other than Evil’s abdominal cancer, from old age) but strangely i still get xmass pressents and occational Mothers day gifts. im not shure how thay are still doing there shopping but it is apressiated and thay are missed. i may not get antything this year. i dont even have company at home since Glenn is at work (sunday) doing overtime parcel sort and delivery. Maybe we will have something exciting for dinner?

    2. Sorry to hear about your furry family. We have lost all of ours too. But we’re thinking of getting a new one.

  3. That’s a beautiful bouquet. In face in your 25-27 it looks very 3D. It looks like the flowers and stems are standing up. I had to take a really close look to understand that they were not standing up!
    A really wonderful gift!

    1. thanks Carol, there is a tiny bit of 3dish but its prity flat compaired to some of my other pieces. EEK! im missing a picture!! oh no! there should be 3 in-prosess shots and only 2 are there! hopefully you get the idea. it was fun to felt the tulips and Mom liked them which was the most important part!

    1. i put down the basse varigated layer than overlayered with wisps of colour untill i got it feeling tulipy-enuff. it was a fun poject!

      i spoted a vidio by the Hu quite a while ago on YouTube but there are suddenly a lot more online. there are a series of recordings at radio stations as part of promotional aperiences. thay have good audio and some are a bit less heavy than what i originaly saw. i hope you like them. thay are vary unequ in both instramentaion and vocals.

    2. i checked with the original draft i did, the fotos are all there but one got sneeky and got out of sequence further up and it through off the numbers. i will see if i can fix it or if its too late!

  4. What a lovely Mother ‘s Day Gift! Thanks for the Hu link! I’m adding their CD to my collection.

  5. thankyou and your vary welcome! i hope some day i will see the Hu in concert! thay make lovely felting music and i think thay will be great to spin to too!

    Mom seems to be enjoying her flowers from both my brother and i. its too bad not to see her in person! my brother and his family usualy have everyone over for a wonderfull Mothers day lunch or urly dinner. i am looking forword to celibrating in person as soon as we safely can. (he is a vary good cook too!)

    have fun, keep felting and Enjoy the music!

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