This will be a kind of hold-all post, a jumble bag of works completed and not, none of them good for a full post but maybe all together they can make a good photo of my Autumn 2024.
I will start with an abstract that I had felted earlier on, but that I have completed only this Autumn: this will be a bit of a leit-motif of my Autumn, as I tended to try and finish a few projects started months ago.
I had it there waiting fro inspiration for a while, because I was not happy with it. I asked for suggestion to the fabulous FFS group of friends, and they suggested that I tried my ideas on a transparent paper superimposing it on the felt, to gauge the effect before committing to stitching or changing things. I just had a clear florist plasticky sheet from a bunch of flowers that I had received and I could use it for that: it worked a treat to help me think about additions that I liked.
I also felted a few new artworks, sometimes just for the fun of it and trying to use colours and lines/shapes that are unusual to me and make me go out of my comfort zone.
I was pretty satisfied with that one, but not as much with this, that also uses unusual colours and silk handkerchiefs:
For some of the works that I felted in this time, I do not have photos, as I felted them for me and sometimes I do not think that they are finished yet.
I also started working very early on ideas for the FFS Christmas card exchange: I wanted to have plenty of time to think about it. I sketched some ideas with felt tip pens for bright colours and bold lines, looking for making traditional themes a bit more abstract.
I started with a Christmas tree, because it is maybe easier!
In the end, I preferred the first option, with a few adjustments, and set up to make prefelt in different greens, with different fabrics, threads, yarns, and fibers in them, for variety.
I tried out the position of the prefelt strips that I had cut against the drawing.
I also prepared the white Merino prefelt for my card, that I wanted made of two sides. I already had the red prefelt for the baubles, a left-over from another project, that very conveniently had a blue silk side that provided a little bit of shading in the finished stage. I decided to make the tree point with a bit of yellow silk fabric from a scarf, so I could shape it a bit like a star: very traditional.
So, I felted the different bits all together on the white background:
At the same time I got to work on ideas for the second side. It was a bit harder to come up with a simple enough Christmassy idea, but I finally decided on a traditional robin, mainly because I was itching to use some bright orange locks that I really love and can’t find a place to use in.
It was a bit discouraging, because some of the people that I was consulting on which one was best were not even able to recognize the robin as such, meh! Anyway, I liked the idea of the robin and decided to go on with the actual felting.
I wanted to give some more bling to it, so I added some stitching with a white shiny DMC thread. On the tree side I stitched some diagonal lines in shiny white over the tree, adding crossed stars as additional decoration at the end of the branches. I also added French knots with the same shiny thread as falling snow on the white background.
I decided that I wanted to make a small pouch of them: one could use it as decoration or something, and I added a small bag of Christmassy pot-pourry in it, so it could be used as aroma diffuser as well, in a sense. So I stitched a pressure button in it and a small red velvet handle to hold it.
Another small project that I tried is to make myself a small decorative collar. I was not totally satisfied by the results.
I used black Merino as background and mulberry silk in bright colours as accents: the silk was actually eaten by the wool much more than what I thought (maybe because I used my sander to speed up the job), so the final effect was less colourful that I wanted.
I also happened to needle felt some small things, such as this small pumpkin while I was waiting somewhere: you can tell that we were close to Halloween!
One thing that I am doing is stitching a few things, and I have some more stitching waiting for me when I will be finished with the ones that I am doing at the moment.
I am stitching a bowl that was born as a failed hat (!) and that I am using now as a slow stitching sample: first I stitched the side with the yellowish eri silk using a simple design in synthetic yellow thread found at a charity shop.
This is the felted bowl that I am stitching inside and outside
I seem not to have any photo of the bowl stitched with the yellow thread, so I will just explain it here: at the center there is a circle that is partially doubled. Then, a bit further out from it there are vertical lines starting and going up to the edge: they alternate with the eri silk vertical lines and they do not start all from the same height, but all go up to the edge, where there is a double line going all around. All done with chain stitch and grass stitch.
On the other side of the bowl, the one that is lighter blue at the center, darker blue and then grey towards the edges, I am couching a red cotton yarn with a blue/indigo Anchor stranded thread: the effect is totally mesmerising and a bit unexpected for me. It takes ages, but I am keeping up because I like the result, although it will probably not pair well with the other side of the bowl: they are surely very different!
I have also felted another very circular artwork, but I will talk about it in my next post.
Well, not too bad considering the fact that I did not have much time during this last part of 2024!