If you recall I did a small slow stitch piece in January. Look here if you missed it: https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2024/01/26/slow-stitch-on-felt/ I enjoyed it so much that I thought I should do one a month. They are not very big, 4 inches by 5 inches or 10 cm by 13 cm. The base and all the bits and pieces fit in a sandwich bag in my purse.
February has Valentine’s Day so I decided on a heart theme. I rummaged through some offcuts and found this piece with lots of silk embedded in the surface.
I then had fun going through my threads to pick out my colour palette. Mostly pinks and a contrast. Later I will add a dark blue as a contrast.
As you can imagine with this being a slow stitch project and a portable one I didn’t take as many pictures as I should have but I think I have enough to show my progress through the month.
I wasn’t sure where to start so added the month and a felt heart with a simple outline stitch heart to make it pop a little. You can see I was thinking about the second heart when I remembered to take a picture
Some were online I saw someone stitching over an object and wanted to try it. I wove some pink floss over it. I didn’t like the white and did try to carefully cut it out but that did not work at all. The cardboard was much too stiff.
so I did some unstitching and then tried again. this time I took a Ferrero Rocher Chocolate wrapper and after smoothing it out some, covered the heart. and tried again.
Just as an aside I was very disappointed in my Quality Street chocolates this year when I discovered they were in waxed paper. One of my favourite things to do at Christmas as a child and now was to flatten and smooth out the foil and transparent plastic wrapper. I know it’s more environmentally responsible to not use shiny plastic and foil but it is just not the same.
Anyway here is my foil heart.
I added more hearts as the month went on.
You can see in the last picture I added some multi-strand multi-coloured colonial knots, here’s a close-up. I didn’t like them they just didn’t seem to have anything to do with the other part of the piece. I was hoping the multi-colours would tie them in but it didn’t.
So out they came. I decided that scattering little X’s around to represent kisses would work better.
Here is the finished piece for February.
I know there are no X’s on the left edge but I did that on purpose, with a view to making them a book later and that would be the bound edge. So now I am on to March, You will have to wait to see what it ends up.
My local art group has been playing with collage for our last several meetings. We usually find an interesting online video to “follow” and then take off with the basic ideas from the video.
The first attempt was with small squares on a page and using a limited palette in all the squares. Then add some markmaking with different tools, small pieces of paper glued in place; then more mark making on top. This is my attempt at the technique. I wasn’t able to attend our meeting so I didn’t get any photos of my friends work.
The next video suggest starting with an old gelli plate print glued into the sketchbook. Then to “randomly” add collage, printing and painting on top “without thinking too much”. I never seem to do well with this type of activity as it gets way too jumbled and nothing ends up looking good to me.
Here’s where we were working and you can see my hideous collage results in the foreground of the photo. There are many layers and thinking a bit more about my choices might have improved this mess.
Here’s the final outcome of my collage. Still pretty hideous to me.
Sally created two collages using up a lot of her eco printed papers that she had in her stash.
Louise was still working on hers but had a great start.
And here’s Paula’s effort. She was working on two pages in a spread. I don’t think she was finished with these yet.
The nice thing about this project was using up painted and printed paper from our stash and just allowing ourselves to play a bit. Even though I wasn’t happy with my outcome, I had fun messing around 😉
In my last post I was talking (among other things) about a 6-week residency I have in a local Michelin-starred restaurant that starts on 2 April. Here’s a link in case you missed it or want a reminder.
In this blog I’m offering a quick look at the pictures I’ve made (or am part-way through making) since then. I don’t have the space (or time!) to describe the making processes in a lot of detail but do ask questions in the comments section if you want to know more about something.
The restaurant owners suggested I’d need about 40 pictures to fill the 3+ rooms. I don’t have a lot of spare pictures kicking about – my felt picture making is usually fairly hand-to-mouth – so I really have my work cut out to make enough new work to fill the restaurant walls.
At the time of my last blog, I’d made 1 large and 3 smaller pictures. I then did a series of 4 slightly impressionistic ‘estuary water’ smaller pieces. I live on the north Kent coast of SE England and although it looks like ‘sea’, the stretch of water at the bottom of my road is technically the Thames estuary.
Top left to bottom right: Spring, Summer, Autumn & Winter
Spring is lightly pre-felted cobweb felts in blue and white laid on a pewter-coloured layer of wool that has a green layer underneath it.
For Summer I made some prefelts which I cut into shapes to try to give the impression of the shifting colours of calm water.
Dry layout for ‘Summer’; a combination of merino prefelt and tops
Autumn is altogether more turbulent with a lot of pewter-colour in the water. The estuary is often quite murky-looking. I’ve used either or angora or wool locks for the small wave crests.
And winter, like spring, is white and blue cobweb prefelt on a pewter background, but this time with more of the pewter showing and with pewter for both base layers, no green.
While rummaging through my extensive fibre collection, I came across a lovely hank of hand-dyed wool and silk fibres that I’d bought while on holiday in the USA. I decided to use this for a larger water picture.
Large sea pattern 2: final picture waiting to be framed, the layout and the fibre. The colour representation isn’t very good – the colours in the finished picture are warmer than they look in the photo.
I thought it was time to have a go at a larger bird picture. I’ve previously featured lapwings in a felt picture and thought I’d like to have another go at those. Lapwings are beautiful birds with iridescent feathers that appear to change colour depending on the light. I’d seen a large flock of them at a nearby nature reserve at Oare Marshes. Sorry the quality of these photos is poor, and you can’t see the birds’ colours, but I wanted to show you the lapwings I saw and what their environment looks like.
I started off with some nuno prefelt for lapwing 1 to try to capture that iridescence. These are mostly silk but the black is velvet devore, which I thought might work for the neck feathers. I laid out a bird-shape in white then cut the coloured prefelt to make wing feathers. While I was on a roll, I made another 2 lapwings, testing out different ways of trying to capture the birds’ colours.
Left to right: the layouts for lapwing 1, prefelt for lapwing 1, lapwing 3 and lapwing 2.
Here are the wet-felted bodies that I will needle felt into 2 backgrounds as I add the features: eyes, beaks and legs.
Top to bottom: lapwings 1, 3 and 2.
Oare Marshes is a fantastic place to see birds – with a great variety of migratory, overwintering and breeding wetland birds. However, as you can see in my photos, it’s not a conventionally ‘pretty’ place. I want to locate the birds properly so there’s a challenge in making a picture that is appealing while also being representative of the nature reserve.
This is the background for the solo lapwing (lapwing 2!). I’ve used 2 different sections of recycled silk scarves for the land section and merino wool for the water – with a few strips of one of the scarves to look like pebble and mud outcrops. Next comes the lapwing which will be needle felted into place and have its features added.
And here is the final picture
Lapwing, Oare Marshes
For the other two lapwings I decide to focus on the water rather than the land. Here’s the finished picture, with the lapwings needle felted into place.
I really love watching the birds that visit or live along the coast here. Oystercatchers are very distinctive black and white birds with bright orange eyes and beaks. This is the layout of a coastal background for an oystercatcher. The foreground is made from cut-up prefelt pieces that I’ve made, including some recycled silk fabric; the background is a piece of a beautiful charity shop silk scarf, and I used mostly kid mohair for the wave foam, with a few wool locks.
Here’s the oystercatcher’s body, needle felted into place, then given its eye, beak and legs. The beak is some orange felt I’ve made previously and the legs are recycled tapestry wool. I like how the kid mohair has a wiggly texture.
With an eye on getting the picture numbers up, I branched out a bit and decided to make some smaller monochrome pictures using a commercial merino and silk prefelt with a recycled wool scarf for the foreground. I then printed tree silhouettes onto them.
Once I’d pretty much used up the wool fabric, I tried out some pieces of monochrome silk. This is work in progress as I haven’t yet printed trees onto the other pieces. These aren’t my usual style but it’s good to mix things up a bit and they are comparatively quick to make. I may not put all of these into the restaurant but it’s good to have some options.
In the interest of continuing to mix things up, I then made a larger sea pattern, trying to capture the light and reflections that dance across the water.
And then, most recently, another big bird picture, this time of a curlew. Curlews are the largest European wading birds. They have long, curved beaks and very patterned feathers. Like oystercatchers, curlews can often be seen within a very short walk of my home. The best time to spot them, and lots of other birds, is as the tide starts to go out. They feed along the line of the retreating water. They have a very distinctive call and you can often hear them before seeing them. Unlike oystercatchers, curlews’ (and lapwings’) UK conservation status is ‘red’, which means they are either globally threatened, have a long historical UK population decline or there’s been at least a 50% decline in the UK breeding population over the last 25 years.
Here’s the final curlew picture: cut up prefelt for the pebbles; blue cobweb prefelt over a pewter background for the water; the bird wet felted separately then needle felted into place and given an eye, beak and legs. The beak is made from short lengths of variegated wool yarn and the legs from tapestry wool. The yarn, tapestry wool and silk fabric in the pebbles were all bought in charity shops. I really like the idea of recycling whenever I can, and it’s great that the charities benefit as well.
In the last couple of days I’ve been making 3D oyster and mussel shells. I haven’t decided exactly how I will use these yet, some kind of pictures.
Today I made a light background for one of the mussel shells. It’s still damp in this photo. I think the sea foam area will become lighter as it dries.
I’m still a long way from 40 pictures, although I did have a few already made before I started this picture-making marathon. Now I’ve more or less cleared my diary and I’ve got the rest of March to make more pictures, and to frame them all. I wonder what I’ll do with my spare time?!
I’d be really interested to know what you think so please do leave comments if you have them.
If you follow my personal blog you probably already know that I set myself a challenge at the end of December:
To explore a different folded / pleated shape every day
In common with a lot of creatives, I tend to flit from one project to the next, not always finishing the first project before the next exciting, “new shiny thing” catches my attention. By setting myself this challenge I hoped to focus on one topic for a while and really push the boundaries to develop some new ideas, shapes and designs in felt-making.
This post is my edited highlights from the first 30 days of this challenge, if you would like to see the whole journey, all of the different shapes and more of the thought processes involved behind each piece please start here:
I have long been inspired by Andrea Noeske-Porada, a felt artist best known for her origami pieces. For years I had believed her to be the designer of the kaleidocyle:
This is my attempt to make one
But after my first post in this series, Henny van Tussenbroek got in touch, it turns out Andrea was just the first person to make one in felt, the original designer was in fact a Dutch mathematician-artist, (MC Escher) and author of this book:
Thank you Henny for sharing this information and correcting my assumption!
This book is a quite a slim volume but it is a fascinating read. I was lucky enough to find a second hand copy here in New Zealand and it is one of best creative books I own. If you would like some help to figure out the pattern for a kaleidocyle, I highly recommend getting a copy.
I have made a few items based on the designs in this book, some have turned out better than others!
Using various books on origami for inspiration and templates, I have made dozens of different shapes form paper and card, these are just a few:
And recreated a few of my favourites in felt:
Let me know if you have been playing along too, these journeys are so much more fun when taken with others! 🙂
Needle Felting, Safety First, reducing the need for Band-Aids (so far in 4 groups)
While Needle felting is fabulous fun, it can get a bit, hummm, bloody, if not done carefully. Initial eye-hand coordination can be less than accurate, accidently glancing at the T.V. while continuing to stab or just excessive speed and depth enthusiasm may require another box of Band-Aids. I have suggested to my students that audio books or mellow music rather than watching TV or YouTube while working with needles will greatly slow the requirement for first aid. Sometimes initial enthusiasm for stabbing, with felting needles, may require further methods of separation (fingers from pointy bits).
I had originally started this investigation for options to use with the electric needle felting machines that Ann and I had purchased last year (wow time is moving quickly). I expanded my looking to include protection while using handheld needles too.
Finger protection can be helpful when working in both 2-D and 3-D felting. Most of the Fabulous finger protectors I found are definitely not originally designed as felting tools. I would like to show you what I have found. With the increased appointments I am chauffeuring my hubby to each week my time to felt and write blogs has suddenly decreased.
Let’s see what I have found for keeping the pointy end of the needle away from your innocent fingers
Group 1 Brush cleaning tools
Let’s start with tools originally used to clean brushes, (usually used on hair brushes). I have examples of two shapes of these brushes, the rake shape and the well-spread bristle clumps. I have them in both a plastic and wire bristle version.
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1.1-1.2 Brush cleaning tools. (Not originally meant for felting)
I started with the mettle-toothed rake, it’s similar to the clover tool brush cleaner but has a lot more teeth. It held the wisp of wool as I used the needle to attach it to the picture. I had ordered a similar item but with fewer wires as well but unfortunately, they all arrived exactly the same. (The fewer wires may have given a better view of the image I was working on).
1.3 “Hair Brush Comb Cleaner Tool”
The plastic version of this tool did not grab the fibre and gave a bit better visibility of the understructure you are working on. It is also less expensive than the mettle with a wooden handle version. I was quite pleased with this tool, and think it would be helpful for those who are a bit distracted when using needles.
1.4 “Plastic Comb Cleaner”
The second type of brush cleaner is the flat clumped bristle wooden handled brush. It is similar to the ones I have seen used to clean suede shoes.
1.5 Small wire bristle brush used to hold down wisp of fibre as it is impaled by the felting needle (T-38-333, if you were curious)
I found that the twisted nature of the wire had a slight tendency to grab loose bits of fibre that I was working with.
1.6 the wires were catching loose bits of fibre but did hold down what I was working on.
The plastic version did not seem so attached to the fibre I was trying to work with.
1.7 Plastic bristle brush cleaner with flat wooden handle.
Both were easy to hold and I could see the work surface with both of them. They do get your fingers a bit closer to the sharp end of the needle but not unreasonably dangerously close. Of this group, I think the two plastic options were more effective but not so much so I would go buy either of them if I already had the mettle version. If you see either at a dollar or discount store take a look at them and see what you think.
The Clover brush tool is also in this group but has wandered off into one of the boxes or bags that came back from teaching last weekend, it is not to be found at the moment. I have used it effectively to hold fiber while I worked as well as some of my students. The wire teeth are more flexible and have wider spacing than the brush-cleaning wooden handled ones I have recently acquired. Unfortunately, it was quite a bit more expensive. If you see one, second-hand, you may want to grab it!
1.8 Clover brush cleaning tool
I will stop here tonight and show you the next group next post. I am still very busy driving my husband to rehabilitation appointments, and doctor visits, as well as doing errands, shopping and trying to work in time to get my felt square finished and have fun writing blog posts. I have four groups of things, to keep your fingers and needles separated, in hopes of greatly dropping the profits made by the bandaid company (though IKEA used to have cute ones with cats on them!!)
1.3 “Hair Brush Comb Cleaner Tool”
1.5 Small wire bristle brush used to hold down wisp of fibre as it is impaled by the felting needle (T-38-333, if you were curious)
1.6 the wires were catching loose bits of fibre but did hold down what I was working on.
1.7 Plastic bristle brush cleaner with flat wooden handle.
1.8 Clover brush cleaning tool