Annie (rosiepink)

I made this felted snowy winter trees table centre as my idea for the Q4 challenge which was to create a textile item inspired by the work of Eric Ravilious.  It is approx 60cm / 24″  across.

This turned out to be a double challenge for me as I chose his woodcut work for my inspiration, with a monochrome palette, and as you may know, I usually love love love to use lots of colours.

I just really liked the subject and the way he stylised it. The over sized snow flakes really appealed to me!

I had started off thinking I was going to make a bowl but once I’d felted it I decided I liked it as it was for now.  I may well change that later though.  I did make the centre thicker when laying out the base as I thought it might need the reinforcement if stitched into a bowl due to its size.

The base is made from white Merino wool tops (laid out over a wire ring for wreath making to attempt a decent circle shape!)

Then for the majority of the trees I used some very fragile t-shirt material that I’m really pleased didn’t disintegrate since I couldn’t be bothered to make a sample this time.  I also used some other reclaimed fabrics from other garments and some yarns.

I found it hard to keep the design simple and took it apart a few times after over complicating it (and adding then removing colour!) but got there in the end.  I’m surprised how much I like it as I would not normally have made something in one colour (it’s all shades of blue but does look black in places in the photos).

I noticed I made the branches a bit short since it was more pattern based to make the circle, but in reality they would have been longer and overlapped a bit but I like the way it turned out, and might even go on to make a picture in the same way.