It’s the new year so it seems appropriate that I am starting a new “grove of trees” nuno felt landscape. I am trying to be a bit more abstract so I thought I would start with strips of silk instead of one piece of silk and see what happened.

I had a lovely dyed piece of silk in my stash from my friend Paula. So I tore it into strips and laid it out horizontally. I wanted to emphasize the lighter area at the top as sky.

I laid out some short fiber merino batts with more yellow at the top.

Then I put my strips in place, ready to felt.

Here is the felted result. The ends of the strips didn’t felt in well although the middle portions felted fine. I worked on the ends as much as the middle so I’m not sure of the difference. Oh well. Then I started trying to ‘see’ my landscape. I didn’t take photos but laid some fabrics on top to get started. I didn’t like it. I trimmed the visible wool edges and started looking from different directions.

After reorienting the piece, I “found” my landscape. This direction gave a feel of trees in the background and the sun shining from the right. This was much more exciting to me. Here comes that vertical landscape again.

Here’s a piece of sheer nylon scarf (dark blue) over the bottom portion to show the horizon. Yes, this should work.

I cut and frayed four pieces of the nylon scarf to give a feeling of ground in the tree grove. I will work more on the foreground as I get there. But I need to get some trees defined.

I used the strip of nuno felted fabric on the left as a guide and placed blue violet silk organza into a tree shape. I have loads more to do as I want to put a lot of applique texture and hand stitching into this piece. But I have the idea going which sometimes is the hardest part. What are you working on in the new year? We would love to see, submit a photo of your work here.