My first Christmas card exchange, the 2023 edition, for the Felting and Fiber Studio group has been quite a challenge, not only because I was paired with the exceptionally talented and much experienced Karen Lane (no pressure, eh), but also because I had NO IDEA at all of what to make! I had never ever given a thought at making a Christmas card myself, and I had never set myself a size so small for wetfelting.
I decided to start thinking and experimenting as soon as possible, and am I glad that I did! because my first try at it went in a completely different direction than intended! It is this first card that I am talking about in my blogpost today, and I am sharing its making that I kept secret up until now (apart from a hasty consultation with a friend).
I started by thinking about Christmas and what it meant to me. My line of reasoning was pretty muddled, but I grasped at something that might have been significant: family and family relationships, that is an aspect of Christmas to me. As no more brilliant ideas were forthcoming, I went for it and thought in terms of family ties, blood ties, and so on. Unfortunately, this is not a particularly jolly thought for me, but I decided to see where it could lead me.
I was thinking about embroidery on felt, as I had seen lovely embroidered portraits lately, and I just had an itch to scratch about embroidering portraits on felt myself, it seemed just colliding with the idea of family: family portraits, why not!
I hit on blood ties among women as the thing that I wanted to talk about, relationship among generations on the maternal line, difficult and complex and rewarding and aggravating…
I have this slight face blindness, so I decided to draw my design from manipulated photos of my family. I chose three photos that I liked, with smiles that I liked, representing also good times. Then I manipulated them to black and white and a bit of blurring: I wanted to be able to see the main lines of the shapes.
I reduced their size and put the three images on the same page to print them on paper. Then I put a strong light underneath the print and traced the lines that I deemed more important onto a different paper. I used this last drawing to trace the lines on plasticky water-soluble fabric to use on the felt base.
My next step was to prepare the felt on which to embroider, of course.
I used two layers of dark grey merino, and then went on to add a layer of different reds mixed with some grey merino for the top. Red for blood, as in “blood ties” and “visceral relationships” , but also red as a Christmas colour: I was still thinking about the Christmas card exchange here.
I put some scraps of bubble wrap in between the dark grey base layers and the red layer, so that I could cut holes on the base: these represent the complexity of the family relationships.
After finishing and drying the felt background I cut the holes that I had decided on, and worked a little bit on their edges. I did not want to work too much on them, to let them have a bit of a raw appearance.
After drying the felt again, I was ready for the hand stitching step.
The water soluble fabric is not the easiest background on which to hand stitch, I found out. It was only my second time using it, and my first of using it extensively and for precision work: well, I can’t say as I liked it, as it tends to tear easily close to fiddly bits, and its shiny surface makes it harder to see and follow the design. Anyway, I persevered and I was really happy with the results, as I could see that it was all coming out as I wanted with the hand stitching step.
Then it was the time to dissolve the water soluble fabric and see if it all worked well! The fabric dissolved very easily, and leaving no residues on the felt.
At this point, I had planned to have links coming out and going into the holes, although I had not decided on precisely what kind of ties or what colour.
At the beginning, I was thinking about a mix of different types of felt cords and threads, and about different colours to lighten the mood of the piece, but in the end I really did not like the effect of many colours on it.
I left it to simmer for a few days, then decided on crocheting links and ties with black cotton yarn.
The crochet needed holes punctured into the felt to hook the thread into it, and I made those with difficulty because they kept closing up.
The interesting thing about crocheting the cords was that I was able to crochet free-form shapes and “objects” into them, and I could link the cords among themselves, to reflect complexity.
I wasn’t perfectly happy with the outcome, though: I decided to add some grey shadowing around the figures with needlefelting.
After seeing the finished piece, I could not in all honesty call it particularly jolly or Christmassy. It was also highly personal and not very suitable to make a card to someone outside my own family: once the creative rush of finishing the piece was ended, I realised I could not use it for the Christmas exchange!
I had basically used the excuse of the exchange to go on a creative rampage in the direction that I already secretly wanted to pursue, ahem. Well, what was done was done, and, lucky me, I had started very early so had still plenty of time to make something else!
The family related piece gained a grey backing and was sent as a secret little present to my mum, who was moved by it.
I got back to square one, put on my thinking cap, and decided on a much lighter mood for my real Christmas exchange card: a friendship present of flowers and abstract landscape that I hope Karen liked.
And worry not, I managed to cram as many techniques as I could in it, from fabric collage to mark making on fabric to nuno felting and embroidery. So, in the end, I had days and days of wonderful experiments just from the one challenge :)) I will definitely go for it next Christmas as well!
Sorry for the rushed photos of my real card, as I was eager to send it before getting caught in the Festive Weeks of Madness at my kids’ school.