kikistextileart

A nuno felted loop scarf in royal blue and rainbow colors is on a grey surface

Trying out recycled banana fiber: an easy loop scarf project

March 12, 2026 kikistextileart Comments 20 comments

Hello all!

As you probably know, I firmly fall in the camp of the recycling fans: I love a good chance to use bits of recycled fabric, yarn or fiber, found objects and so on, often to surprising effects. Mostly the surprise is a good one, eh. My drawers and charity shops (or thrift shops, if you want) bargain baskets are source of plenty of materials to use in a creative way, and there is a particular satisfaction in using pre-loved materials and giving them a whole new life.

Some time ago I have bought 3 skeins of multicoloured recycled banana chunky yarn from Oxfam charity shop thinking that I was going to felt it into something and give that something a bit of jazz, much in the same way that I use recycled sari silk fiber. My idea is to use it by teasing the fiber away, but future experiments could involve using the yarn as is, as embellishment and to try maybe a bit of creative weaving with it, who knows.

Here they are:

Three skeins of colorful chunky yarn are displayed with their labels saying that it is a recycled banana yarn sourced by Oxfam. The top one is mainly bright pink, the middle one is mainly white and the bottom one is mainly red blue yellow — The Banana fiber yarns: they are colourful and shiny, they instantly grabbed my attention. They were a tad expensive, but I will have plenty of fiber to use, they will last me a long time.

I like the fact that they are not solid colours, as I can see them combine well with different palettes, without much thought about colourways on my part: when you are unsure about which colours to use together, a ready made mix of colours that you can already see is pleasant will hugely help you decide!

I have chosen to go for felting a loop scarf/cowl because it is a simple and fast type of project that I have already had success with. I have measurements that are fine for me, and I only had to find my rectangular resist that must be somewhere in there, maybe in the first drawer..or no, maybe in the second drawer..or no, maybe in the bubblewrap bag..or likely on the projects shelf..or..(do you think that I can blame the future guinea pigs or is it a bit too much?)

You know what, let’s forget the previous resist, I have my measurements in my project notebook (thanks God!) and I can just cut a new one from a piece of bubblewrap, of which I have an ever multiplying pile (they are possibly breeding in there, I started with just a couple pieces a few years ago, I do not know, they talk about rabbits but they are nothing to bubblewrap).

Here, so, my resist is a plain rectangle, 17 inches by 15 inches or 43 cm x 38 cm. The shrinkage was not supposed to be huge. I was aiming for a lightweight type of soft scarf with only 2 light layers of Merino wool.

A light blue bubble wrap rectangle is on a table covered by a white towel and clear bubblewrap. — My resist was in pale blue, so I guess you can see it, just barely.

I started by choosing my banana yarn, the reddish one that they have called Rainbow, then adding to it matching silk fabric from charity shop silk scarves, and I went on choosing the Merino wool colours to match and complement the other fibers. I toyed with the idea of a white background but I really did not have enough white Merino wool (I need to restock it), and I felt that a royal blue would make all the other colours pop out. So it was royal blue background, and coral, white and eggshell for the Merino wool accents.

There is the banana yarn in rainbow and there are small bags of Merino wool in royal blue and coral and white and eggshell. There are also two silk scarves in various colors, particularly red and blue and brown and yellow and pink. — Spotting similarities among different bunches of textiles is a lot of fun.

I was ready to start with a first layer of banana fiber: I teased it out by unraveling the yarn, and laying it in a clouds layout, trying to keep all the colours as mixed and varied as possible. I covered the whole resist, taking care of leaving maybe 1cm of free resist at the top and bottom (as the cowl needs a hole for my head!), and of going a bit out of the resist when covering left and right sides, to ensure that the design will run smoothly all around my cowl.

There is a hand pulling on a chunky multicolored yarn in the foreground, and a wooden floor in the background — Pulling at the yarn to release the fiber.

In the foreground there is a hand with a small piece of multi stranded yarn in it. in the background there is a clear blue bubble wrap. — The yarn was made of many small strands in different colours.

There is a rectangle covered in small strands of yarn in many different colors on a bubble wrap. — The effect is good and my first side is all covered.

When I was done with it on the first side, I decided for a thin layer of the royal blue Merino on top of the banana fiber before turning it to the other side, as I was afraid that the banana fiber would not stay put if I just wet it and turned the resist, as it was loosely laid out. That is not ideal, as I then had to carefully tease away the banana fiber from the Merino thin layer on the other side when I turned the resist, so by any means if you have a different design where you have a first uninterrupted layer, just wet it and turn the resist to the other side before adding a second layer. The right way to do it is to have the wet fabrics layer as first layer, I suppose, so that it is easier to turn: well, I just wanted to try out the banana fiber (shoulder shrugging), I have been waiting months to have the right chance, so that is what I used first! The felting police was nowhere in sight, so I guess I will get away with it, if there are no snitches here to make trouble.

I started from the edges all around, and then covered the whole resist with a first thin horizontal layer of Merino wool.

A rectangle shape is covered in rainbow fiber and in blue wool on three of the four edges. — Starting from the edges with the Merino wool.

A rectangle of rainbow fiber is almost completely covered in royal blue Merino wool fiber, and a hand holding more blue wool fiber is in the foreground. — First layer of Merino almost done

I put on it a net curtain fabric, wet and lightly soaped it, then carefully lifted the net away and turned the whole to the other side.

A green hand sprinkler can be seen emerging from the top of the image. At the center of the image there is a rectangle of blue wool under a netting, and it is becoming wet. — Wetting the side after putting netting over it.

There is a rectangle of colored fiber and some blue wool and colored fiber is sticking out from the sides of a rectangle of bubble wrap that is over the fiber. — The view from the other side, after folding the banana fiber coming from the first side.

As I said, I had to separate the banana fiber from the Merino where I had to fold it on the resist at the sides. Then I covered the resist with a layer of banana fiber, making sure that some would go also on the bits from the first side left and right, so as to make it seem a smooth continuum. You can not really see the layer of fiber on this second side of the resist on my photo, but it is there!

After laying out the rainbow banana fiber on the second side, I folded on it the blue Merino wool fiber that was along the left and right edges — Folding of the Merino wool over the left and side edges, over the first layer of banana fiber

Then, I folded over it the Merino sticking out from the left and right edges and went on covering the rest of the resist with a thin horizontal layer of Merino, exactly as I had done on the other side, but without doubling up on left and right edges, to avoid having two thicker areas at the sides.

After wetting and soaping it, I turned the whole again to the first side of the resist. I tidied up the upper and bottom edges with my fingers, pushing the wool fibers to form a neater edge. I do not care much about very straight edges, personally, but if you prefer them you can always cut your top and bottom edges with scissors and then seal them by rubbing them, towards the end of the felting process.

At this point I added a second thin Merino wool layer, vertical layer, and repeated the wetting and light soaping with a bit of pressure on the net to make the soaped water pass through the wool and fibers, but still no actual rubbing. I flipped it to the other side and laid out the second layer there, repeating all steps.

A rectangle of royal blue Merino wool that is wet, on a white towel covered in bubble wrap. — Two Merino wool layers done.

After flipping it again to the first side, I repeated the tidying of top and bottom edges.

Time for the silk scarves fabric and the embellishments! Firstly I added accents with coral, white and eggshell Merino Wool. Then, I cut out my 2 chosen fabrics in irregular pieces and placed them on the wool alternating the 2 designs. I made sure to overlap the side edges of the resist, so that the design could run in a smooth way all around the scarf. I usually take a photo of my design at this point, so that I can use it as reference for the other side and not go on completely differently once I turn to the second side (It happened, yes).

A rectangle of wet blue wool is covered in a design of pieces of silk fabric and wisps of Merino wool in coral white and eggshell colors. — It looks like total chaos but it will turn out one single felt, I promise.

After turning my cowl again, folding the fabric and wool overlapping the left and right edges, and completing the second side as well by following the same steps as the first, it was time to go back to the first side, net it again and put a little bit more soap on it to start rubbing properly. The aim is to have the silk bits be grabbed into the wool fibers.

A rectangle of wet nuno prefelt with pieces of silk fabrics in different colors on a blue background. — Wet and soaped.

I did that for both sides, and then something not related to felting happened and I had to stop everything. Nothing dramatic, I just had to go out in a bit of a rush, and one thing that I love about felting is that you CAN stop, put some bubblewrap on it and leave it there, and then come back to it after a few hours and all is fine. Not only fine, the soaped water has probably better seeped into the wool fibers, so it can go quicker after the pause.

When I got back home, I got out my sander, checked that all the prefelt was fully wet and soaped, covered it with bubble wrap and used the sander to make sure that all the fabric was securely rubbed in. One of the silks in particular was slower than the other in getting felted in, so I had to work on it a bit more.

After being sure that all the fabric was securely attached, I rolled the cowl, still with the resist inside it, for a few times in all directions. I did not insist too much on the rolling, though, as I like to manipulate my prefelt to take it to the felt stage and be able to keep a close eye on how much it is shrinking. Well, to be honest, I do not enjoy rolling as much as rubbing and kneading and throwing and so on, so I find a lot of excuses to cut the rolling short!

A piece of prefelt is being rolled on a table covered in a white towel and bubble wrap. — I did my rolling, and I have proof of it!

Thus, after a bit of perfunctory rolling so the rolling gods be appeased, I took the cowl from the resist and took care of the left and right edge by opening up my cowl, folding it in a different way so that the edges were now resting in the middle, putting a hand inside the cowl and rubbing the edges on the bubblewrap underneath. I will agree that this is a bit yuk! in colder months, as you have your arm inside a cold wet thing, but it is very quickly done if you have taken care not to overlap too much wool and fabric at the side edges. You may have to open up a little bit the wool (very gently) if you have pinched together a small amount of wool at those edges, but a bit of energetic rubbing will help smooth it all to nothing.

An arm is inside a large wet prefelt tube and rubbing it on clear bubble wrap. — yuk! but needs doing.

A hand is rubbing a blue wet felt onto a bubble wrap. — This is fun!

After that, it was all swishing the cowl on the bubblewrap in different directions, gently kneading it and a bit of gentler throwing, keeping an eye on the forming of more and more wrinkles on the silk and on the shrinkage. I may have overdone it a bit, as the cowl ended up slightly tighter than what I wanted, but still a good comfy size when I tried it on after the drying.

The wet finished loop scarf is on its pale blue resist, showing the difference in size among the two. — I do not know if you can spot the light blue resist behind the wet scarf, it shows the shrinkage that I obtained.

I rinsed it with clean water, and put it to dry on a rack close to a radiator.

Here it is: I hope that you like the effect of the banana fiber as I do! it felted so easily that it was comparable to silk or other plant based fibers that I have tried (mint and rose), and I definitely liked to work with it as fiber, as it was easier than silk fiber to lay out, due to it being less fine and less prone to flying away at a wrong breath.

A finished and dry wet felted loop scarf with rainbow fiber over a royal blue background is resting on a grey surface. — Side A

A side of a nuno felted loop cowl in blue, red , yellow, pink and white, on a grey surface — Side B

A person that is cropped out of the photo is wearing a nuno felted loop scarf in blue and rainbow colors by Kiki Peruzzi — How it looks like when you put it on.

Kiki Peruzzi is wearing her nuno felted loop scarf on her hair. — You can also wear it on your hair, very comfy, warm and soft, keeps your ears all warm if you like.

I also made a normal cobweb scarf with the smallest amount of yellow Merino wool and the pinkish banana yarn, just to try a very bright combination of colours:

In the foreground there is a tall oblong white paper lamp with a bright yellow and pink scarf wrapped around it with a knot. — Two bright colours for this cobweb scarf, daring a little bit more than my usual. It was fun to use this recycled banana fiber!

Now the only banana yarn that I have not used yet is the white one, so that will be the next one to try.

Do you also have an irresistible new upcycling material to try out?

Kiki

http://www.kikistextileart.com

Instagram: @kiki.textile.art

A felted object in orchid, teal, yellow and white wool is on a wooden table. The object seems to hold no particular shape.

Buying boxes? Nossir! (or maybe I should have..): how to salvage a misshapen project.

January 20, 2026 kikistextileart Comments 25 comments

Hello, my creative friends.

Here we are at the start of a new and exciting adventure: making a felt box out of, yes, wool!

You think that I am stating the obvious, felt is oftentimes made of wool and of course you can make felt boxes: just look at the internet and you will see tons of them for sale (mostly made with industrial felt)! But you would not believe how many times I have had to explain those two bits of information to people during the time that I was making my box: yes, I am felting it. Yes, it is made of wool. No, I am not going to sew it (if I possibly can), I am felting it. Yes, I make it by felting wool. W-O-O-L. How, you ask? You can make all sorts of shapes by felting with the right resist..no, I am not going to sew it, I assure you it will come out with the box shape. Well, hopefully.

To be sure, a box is just another type of wet felt vessel made with a resist, and yes, of course you can make it by sewing the single felted flat sides and a flat bottom together, but…sewing, where is the fun in that? (total respect to people who like sewing, eh, it is just not me)

Long story medium-short, we decided that we needed to organise our living room in a better way, changing bits of furniture and generally trying to sort out the chaos, also because we are in the process of adopting guinea pigs (oh, my! let’s see) and we need the space for an indoor cage. So, we are plus bookshelves and minus an office desk with drawers, and we need some kind of storage box that fits the shelves and, crucial, does not seem something that you find in your shed. Unfortunately, the size of our shelves is not standard, and a standard storage box will not fit, either because too small or too big. So I thought, let’s have a box that is good to look at and the maximum size that will fit in there, let’s make it ourselves!

(well, I would not want you to think that I normally talk to myself with that royal We. It is clear to any who know me that all that was just me and me thinking “What, 30 pounds for that soulless box that does not even fit properly? no way, I can make one better than that and spend less!” or something of the sort)

A white sheet of paper with measurements for two boxes, a bigger one and a smaller one. — The size of the bookshelves that we have comes in two flavours, big and small, both somewhat non standard, so I originally thought about making a smaller box as well, and took measurements for both. All measurements are in centimeters.

Calculations for a 40 per cent increase on a piece of paper. — I arbitrarily added a 40 % increase on all sides, and did the same also for the height of the lid (all other measurements being the same for lid and box, of course)

To start, I prepared my resist for the bottom of the box: this involved a bit of sewing, namely attaching together the various bits of bubble wrap in the shape of a very floppy box without a top, as I will make a lid to fit it (some time in the far future). It does not show well in photo, but here it is:

A bubble wrap resist is on a floor — Here is the resist seen with the bottom part prominent (naughty).

A resist made of bubble wrap is on a brownish floor with a rug. — And here is the resist bottom down: very floppy, you can not really tell that this is a box shape.

I hate hand sewing on bubble wrap, the plastic just clings firmly to your needle and it is worse than sewing sewing, in my opinion, so let’s not dwell on it.

I did not have as much wool as I needed, so I ordered some from World of Wool. I wanted to try out something different from my usual Merino, as I needed something coarser that could be hard wearing and stand a bit stiffer, because the box is not small and will be full of quite a few things that are on the heavier side, such as tape and packing tape, some cables, and so on. Unfortunately, I am not used to coarser wool, the room was in a chaos and I did not have time for much research on our brilliant Blog or Forum (yes, it is lame. Let’s say, it is not the best excuse for not doing my homework that I have ever found, I’ll admit, but if you give me a bit more time I can say that the guinea pigs have eaten my research), anyway, ahem, later on our wise felt experts from the FFS Forum have determined that apparently I picked the wrong wool.

Well, you know, it can happen to anyone if they skip research and sampling. Well, yes, I also skipped making samples, because, let me think, the guinea pigs ate my sample? OK, maybe not. I’ll get better, pinky promise.

Anyway, I got my generic “English wool” from World of Wool, and yes, it was a bit coarser than Merino but still quite soft..in hindsight I may have been suspicious when it felt so soft, I do not know. Actually, that is a mix of different breeds’ wool, some that may actually be quite good for stiffer felt and some that are not, although they are coarser than Merino. Perfectly fine felting with it for all sorts of uses, but , a word to the wise, do not use it to make big boxes, eh.

A label reading: White 56's English Top, Size 100g, Quantity 6, Total 600g. — Here it is, the challenging wool.

So, I got on my white horse and started felting on my resist straight away with a lot of good will. I assumed that the coarser wool would need less layers to obtain the same felt (do not ask, pre-christmas chaos guinea pigs mind fugue hobblegobble chicachicacha) and I decided on 4 good layers.

Here are a few photos of my felting the first box:

A rectangle of laid out white wool just sprinkled with water, on a bubble wrap. — Starting from the bottom, that was the biggest area.

A work in progress of wet felt in white wool is on a table covered in a white towel and bubble wrap. There is a smaller rectangle covered in a small layer of wool resting over a bigger rectangle covered in white plastic sheets. — First layer on a short side. I took care to cover each already worked on part with a layer of plastic (I used plastic bin bags) as I learned from Lena Archibold’s advice on how to work with a book resist.

Folds wrapped in bubble wrap open over a rectangular shape wrapped in white plastic sheets. — Figuring out how to fold the different sides to get an even result was a bit puzzling at first, I spent some time opening and closing folds, it must have looked weird from outside!

A rectangle of wool pre felt has a layer of Merino wool on top. The Merino wool is half rectangle in orchid color, and bright yellow and teal on the other half rectangle, overlapping a bit the orchid color. — Yes, we are at the fun part of the 5th layer, when I could use dyed Merino wool for the wow effect!

Another rectangular side of the box. There is a rectangle of laid out Merino wool, half the rectangle is teal and half is orchid color, and the two colors overlap a bit. — Here is another side. I actually decorated both four sides, but forgot to take photos of the two smaller. Anyway, it is the same colours for all the sides, only different layout.

A smaller rectangle of wet and soaped Merino wool, with the upper part in teal, a small central line in yellow and a bigger area in orchid color, all slightly overlapping each other. — This is one of the small sides, all wet and soaped, being worked on.

A roll of pre felt is on a wooden table, covered with a white towel and a plastic bubble wrap. — And here we are at the rolling stage. I also used throwing and variously manipulating the shape.

Wait, let’s see if you were attentive: have you noticed that I said “first box”?

Exactly: here is how it stood after drying, that is to say not at all:

It took more or less a day to felt, and a few days to dry. I liked the colours (a last layer of Merino wool, the 5th, to do that), and the shape ended up exactly the right size, but it would not stand, and I thought that it was because the layers were just not enough. I had enough wool to start a new one doubling the layers, so I went back to it using the same resist and the same type of wool (not my cleverest day, fine).

A big bag of white wool is being weighted on a scale on a wooden table. — I weighted the remaining wool and I found out that I only had used about 150 grams of it, so I had still about 450 grams to try again.

The steps were the same, only more layers, so I will not show more pics of it, only the final result when the box had dried:

A felted box with the sides slightly collapsing is on a grey sofa. — One side..

A felted box with a side in yellow and teal is on a grey sofa. The sides of the box are collapsing in. — ..the other side. I did not decorate the small sides this time, but left them natural white, as they are not going to be seen when the box is in the bookshelf.

It was better, but still the sides were not holding up.

At that point, it was definitely time for my felting fairy godmothers to intervene: I asked the classic “Help, what did I do wrong?” on the Felting and Fiber Studio Forum and, thank goodness, got kind replies that explained the generic English wool issue as probable cause (so, no, adding more layers was likely not going to cure that, in case I still had not clicked on to that) and gave me very good advice on what I could try next to avoid throwing the 2 boxes into the scrap pile and to salvage them.

The suggestions were:

– to try and stiffen the sides or corners with machine or hand stitching

– to try and put a wire armature inside the felt or stitch it on the inside of the box

– to use PVA glue to stiffen the felt

– to stitch the two boxes together one inside the other, and maybe also

– to add some stiff padding, sandwiching it in between the two boxes.

Or possibly to try a combination of the above suggestions until the aim was reached. Which is exactly what I did, apart from the PVA glue and the stitching, both left as last resort, the glue because I was not fancying working with glue with such a big object, and the stitching because I do not have a sewing machine and it takes ages to stitch by hand.

What worked? well, clearly not one thing only, I had to go on trying to the last, but in the end I have a workable box and we are already using it, even though there is no lid yet.

First, I added thick wire to the inside of the box corners, with a few stitches. The felt was not thick enough to insert the wire into it, that would have been better. Sadly, it did not solve the issue totally.

Then, I stitched in place the first box (the thinner one) into the second box, leaving the upper edges open for putting in some padding if required. It was better still, but not there yet.

Lastly, I started looking for padding. Floor underlayer was suggested as good for that job, but when I went to look at my local DIY builders warehouse I did not find the exact type and thickness that I needed, and I came home empty handed. The same research online left me with too many choices, some of them a bit on the expensive side because with a required minimum purchase limit that was also way too high for my storage capability (What, 20 meters rolls minimum?? I do not live in Versailles palace!)

Luckily, as I told you, we were changing some pieces of furniture and it so happens that some had polystyrene sheets in their packaging: initially, I did not want to use that for a few reasons (it breaks easily, it is not going to be washable, it can disperse plastic bits in the environment in time..), but in the end it was there and I could use it instead of chucking it in the garbage bin, so it is kept out of the dump for a little while more. And it was free for me, and readily available.

So, I cut it to size with a knife (bits of polystyrene everywhere, not my idea of fun but the kids where jumping up and down like it was going to be disco party in a minute) and inserted it in the pockets in between the two boxes, and then a quick blanket stitching all around the upper edges did the job. In time I may unstitch it and change the padding, if I will feel so inclined and will have the time.

And here it is, my box done!

(the bottom part, at least)

A felt basket or box without lid, full of miscellaneous objects, on a grey sofa. — That is one side..

A felted basket or box without lid, and full of objects, on a grey sofa. — ..and that is the other. Already full of stuff.

Now, for the lid, we will see. Who knows, it might be ready in time for my next blog post..only, don’t hold your breath for it, guinea pigs may be coming and all of that (how did I manage with my lazy excuses before them is a wonder, my friends!)

I hope that you liked my adventures, feel free to leave me a comment, as long as you do not ask me about hand stitching the whole box or preparing resists by hand stitching bubble wrap together, any other thing is totally fine.

Best wishes!

Kiki

@kiki.textile.art

http://www.kikistextileart.com

An oval table is covered in small amounts of bright Merino wool in different colors

A few smaller projects

November 20, 2025 kikistextileart Comments 12 comments

Hello all!

I have been trying out a few smaller projects instead of bigger ones lately, also because I have a few work-in-progress things that I would like ideally and probably in another shiny life to bring to conclusion, so you could say that I am saving myself for them and very predictably not getting much done with them anyway, always hoping for the magic time and place, you know, for THE BIG PROJECT..so much so that I may have forgotten what they were all about in the first place, very likely!

Anyway, some of my little projects may be of inspiration for the approaching seasonal marathon..you know, I am referring to Christmas and the various little crafty things that we are always involved in when it comes to this dreaded and waited for period!

I have been experimenting with wetfelting locks onto Merino and with differential shrinkage in a few small pieces, four small decorative vessels and one pouch that I have not finished with a zip yet (because sewing, you know, I hate sewing):

Three small felted vessels in dark blue and bright locks are on a round wooden table with a card in front of each of them. A black laptop is in the background — Three of my small experiments with the same theme of dark blue Merino and bright locks going on. BFL tangerine locks for the left one, Teeswater locks for the other two.

A small bright pink felted vase with ridges close to the bottom and white rose fiber close to the lip, on a blue patterned cushion, with a wooden background — In this one I tried to have ridges close to the bottom by adding layers of wool: you can see them but they were a bit of a disappointment as wow factor, and I liked the vertical or slanted ridges that I managed on the other three vessels a lot better.

A small felted pouch with a blue background and bright pink decorative locks all over it on a wooden surface — This is the small pouch that I need to finish with a zip: I think I will maybe give it to my daughter who was briefly obsessed with my small vessel with the pink locks, so this pouch should be a success with her if I ever get around to finish it.

I was in kind of a low mood and I decided that I wanted to do something quick and bright, just to decorate my house and not worrying about it being ‘perfect’: I made myself a colourful wreath, not to celebrate any particular occasion but just because. Anyway, it can be used to welcome any sort of event, I am totally in favour of using it again and again giving it different meanings each time!

I mentioned that I did not want to bother overmuch about making it, so I basically put some Merino wool in different colours on bubblewrap all over the table, roughly flower shaped and roughly leaf shaped clumps in no particular order, in four greens and four bright flower colours.

Wetting and rubbing and rolling all together was done very quickly, and then I spent some time kneading and throwing and rubbing individual ‘flowers’ or ‘leaves’ or small groups of them. I then cut and shaped the flower petals a little if needed, but mostly kept them as they were.

An oval table with a white towel and bubble wrap on it, and clumps of colorful wool covered by wet netting — Sprinkling with water all together.

Clumps of flat soaped and rubbed wool in different colors on an oval table covered in a white towel and bubble wrap — The soaping and rubbing step done: all clumps of wool are fairly squashed into formless shapes, but luckily I was not looking for accurate.

In the foreground a wooden rolling pin tool by World of Wool is on a few clumps of soaped wool on a table covered in a white towel and bubble wrap. — I got to use this carved rolling pin tool from World of Wool that I rarely use: this time it was the perfect one for the job of getting a bit more rolling in.

A mass of soaped pieces of prefelt in different bright colors is on a white bubble wrap covered surface, and a rolling pin tool mby World of Wool is in the left corner — I also got to kneading and doing some more energetic manipulation, clumping all the wool together to do it quicker. Actually that is a part that I really enjoy, I find it very therapeutic.

A red plastic tube with a bubble wrap full of darker shapes rolled onto it and fixed with elastic bands is on an oval table covered in a white towel — Some proper rolling of all the pieces together, also to cut on rolling time.

A lot of irregular pieces of bright colored felt are on a table covered in bubble wrap and a white towel, and there is also a wooden rolling pin tool by World of Wool — All nice and rinsed: as you can see, the final shapes were very irregular and not particularly flowerlike.

A clump of felted wool in different bright colors and irregular shapes on a bubble wrap over a white towel — They still look very colourful all clumped together when dry, though.

After washing and drying the lot, I prepared the supporting circular wreath using spare wire from cut flowers that I shaped into a circle. I wrapped a type of plaster tape that I had from the years when my daughter was doing Irish dancing (you know, dancers wrap it around their toes to avoid blisters, you buy it in pharmacy), so that the wool would take hold and also to keep the wire together (it was not a single piece, but pieces in the plural).

Then, I wrapped some core wool around it and needle felted it in place all around the wire, careful not to break needles on the wire. When I was happy with the shape and consistency, I covered the core wool with dark green Merino wool and neddle felted it in place.

An irregular circle of wire taped with a white plaster tape. The small blue box of plaster tape is at the center of the wire and both are on jeans clad legs. — That is how I prepared the wire for my wreath

An irregular circular shape in white core wool is resting on a needle felting blue pad and there is a needle stuck on the pad. — It is very clear where the core wool has been needle felted and where it is still only loosely wrapped around the wire and needs working on.

A circular shape of white core wool is held by a hand onto a green felting pad — The shape is more or less ready for being covered by the next layer

A hand is holding a forest green top of Merino wool to add to the white circular shape that is on the green felting pad. — Adding the forest green Merino and covering the core wool

A forest green ring in needle felted Merino wool is held on a green felting pad — Here is the finished ring.

At last, I was ready for the fun bit of needle felting all the flowers and leaves onto the wreath, alternating colours and making it look as full as possible. That last was tricky, because I maybe needed a bit more flowers and leaves, but I also strategically cut a few of the flowers to obtain smaller ones to fill in the wreath a bit better.

On a green felting pad there are some irregular triangles of violet felt put together to form flower shapes and small spare triangles, small scissors and a felting needle — I cut some of the felt to make it seem more like flower shaped and with the resulting bits I made some new smaller flowers by needle felting the irregular triangles together by their pointy ends.

A hand is holding a felting needle to a pink piece of felt and is poking it to attach it to a forest green circular shape, on a light green felting pad. — I needle felted all the flowers and leaves to the wreath, starting by the big flowers , then the leaves, and adding the smaller flowers and leaves to fill the gaps in the composition.

A loop with a spare ribbon and here it is:

A hand on the left is holding up a felted wreath in many bright colors, in front of a white wall. — Here I had not put the ribbon on it, yet, but there you go, it is done and you can see how it looks like.

I am thinking about making a Christmassy one and an Autumn-colours one with the same devil-may-care approach to accuracy, as it worked quite well for me and it is very relaxing not to actually care about details. Just to have some variety through seasons I may go pon with them, but I am keeping this one permanently on at the moment, regardless of seasons, just because.

Since I have finished the slow stitching blue spiral bowl, I had to find something else for my hands to make while stewarding at our last exhibition with my art group, so I started on this little friend, that will be eventually donated to a kid, either one of mines or someone else’s I haven’t decided:

A hand is holding an unfinished little felted monster with a blue body and red mouth and orange eye stalks and crest. The background is dark grey. — I am not very advanced, but I felted the two eye stalks and its crest on its head. It is complaining that it can not eat anyone yet as he has no teeth, apart from the fact that with no nose and no actual eyes on its eye stalks it would be hard to find preys..

Needle felted in Merino wool, because of the bright colours.

Being aware that creativity needs creativity to spark and flourish (and it was also Leonor’s suggestion to keep your creative juices running, if I am not mistaken), I have also tried my hand a bit at other small projects in different mediums: that is what I have painted yesterday, with an eye to having a few interesting and original Christmas cards ready for when my daughter will come asking me for cards for each of her teacher on the day before the beginning of Christmas holidays (totally not something that we experienced last year, eh, on the evening before, after dinner and everything, when I was thinking only of my bed…):

On a red plastic sheet there are a bigger and a smaller paper sheets covered in small painted squares. The tiny squares are abstracts in different colors — Maybe I can cut them out and make cards with them? I used acrylics, pigment ink pens and oil pastels for the left one, and the same but watercolour instead of oil pastels for the right one. You probably can not tell by this photo, but there are tiny details in ink pen in each square.

I am not sure that all are that good, but there is something satisfying in having a bunch of tiny paintings done in the time that one (at least, me) will take to just think about a bigger painting, and now I can pick and choose if I want.

In the meantime, my felt slippers that I had bought about 1 year ago were just getting full of holes, my toes poking out through them, to the point that I was considering throwing them away: it just seemed such a shame, as the sole is still almost new and they are very comfy and they were a bit on the expensive side when I bought them.

Here is a ‘before’ pic:

A pair of red and grey felt slippers with big holes at their points on a wooden floor — Well worn out, with big gaping holes at the toes

So what I did in half an hour on a slow afternoon was just getting me some wool and needle felting it in place over the holes, attaching it to the ragged edges of the gaps, trying to include into it all the bits of old felted cover that I could still use.

I used a piece of packaging foam as felting pad to use right inside the slipper:

A hand in the foreground is pushing a chunky bit of foam into a red slipper. There is a light brown carpet and wooden flooring in the background — A chunky piece of packing foam can be handy if you stall the husband enough that he does not throw it away immediately

A loosely needle felted roughly round piece of red and grey wool is held in one hand close to the hole in a red and grey slipper — I prepared some loosely prefelted bits to felt into the existing felt of the slippers, by mixing red Merino wool top with some grey carded wool of unknown origin that I got gifted.

A red and grey felted slipper with a mostly grey addition of prefelt to the upper, nicely rounded — It is clear that I just did not plan the colours in advance, just trying different things on one slipper and on the other, if mixing colours on the prefelt to add or felting in first one colour and then adding the next.

One hand is holding a red and grey slipper while another hand is poking it with a felting needle. In the background a grey sofa with felting supplies on it. — It was mostly quite easy to needle felt them, apart when poking close to the sole, when I was afraid I would break a needle, but luckily it did not happen.

The effect was quite good for such a quick fix, even though I had not bothered about actually getting to the same exact colour of the original felted bits: my husband was pretty amazed at the result, that I could repair my slippers so perfectly.

Here are the finished repairs:

A person with white socks and pink trousers who is mostly out of frame is wearing red slippers. in the background a wooden floor and a light brown carpet. — Well, they are uneven and all, but I l felt that I could go on with my life. (I used my daughter to model this ‘after’ pic, as she was eager to try the as-new slippers)

Unfortunately, as you can guess, my quick fix did not stand the test of everyday wear and tear for more than a month or so, so at the moment I am almost at square one. BUT not exactly, as I now know that I can easily fix them, and I have understood that I should have wetfelted them after needle felting the bits in place: it just was not actually felted firmly enough, because I did not have the patience to work on it properly, so my needle felting was only a basic prefelt, almost, and obviously not enough to make it sturdy. So, when I will have to do it again (quite soon), I will be slightly more patient and actually wet felt them, and hopefully my felt will still bond to the original felted bits. One of the reasons that I had decided not to go on wet felting them the first time was that I was unsure if the new bits were going to fall apart and just not bond with the unknown wool of the original bits: I will just to have to try and see.

I suppose one option could be completely redoing the upper bit with a new one, so the issue of bonding unknown wool with mine would not come up, but the sole is tough rubber and I am not sure if I am able to sew it on, plus you know how I hate sewing.

How would you suggest tackling the issue of repairing those slippers?

And on this repair dilemma, I wish you all a good felting time and see you in the next post!

Kiki

@kiki.textile.art

http://www.kikistextileart.com

Open Studios event insights

September 19, 2025 kikistextileart Comments 9 comments

Hello everybody!

I have recently participated in a big Open Studios event and Art Trail in my area, and, since it was my first one ever as a stall holder/participant artist, I learned a lot from it and I would like to share my experience with you.

Just a short introduction about the event itself: it is the BEAT (Borough of Ealing Art Trail), an event in its 9th edition and growing more each year. It started as a smaller affair involving only a few artists opening their own studios and homes in one day during a September weekend, but today it is both of the first two weekends of September (4 days in total) and involving 66 different venues and about 200+ artists and crafters that live and/or work in the Borough: it is such an amazing celebration of the creativity of all the diverse people living in our area! In past years I loved to go around and explore some of the venues that were closest to me, and this year I was very excited to be part of it.

Some of the studios and houses are quite frankly something to drown yourself in pure envy and you may get offered high class refreshments (champagne and what not!), but there are quite a few ordinary homes and more common types of enticements (maybe a cookie for the kids if you are lucky?). A lot of the creative people also form groups or are already part of one, and band together to rent a space in public venues like church halls, our local theatre, local libraries or community centres, in an Art and Craft Fair kind of spirit that is embraced by us locals with gusto. Demonstrations may happen, and most people just go around it for the fun and vibe of it, and to say hello to friends and acquaintances taking part.

The whole thing runs with the moral support of the local Council, but through the actual work of a small group of volunteers who are also artists themselves, so all the stall holders need to arrange their own venue and get limited practical support, basically getting a packet of advertising prints and booklets, and a few reusable posters and balloons to use as signs (Plus of course the advertising benefits all of the artists involved, because it is done in the whole Borough).

This year the organisers also managed to set up a lovely charity exhibition running on the side, to raise funds for a homelessness charity, Crisis: we were asked to donate a small artwork 20×20 cm on the theme ‘Home’ that they could sell for a fixed price of 50£, completely given to charity. Check it here: I think it will run for a few more days online to see if they can sell a few more of the 70+ artworks that were donated by us artists, in different mediums.

Here is my piece, donated for this charity exhibition and sale:

The small artwork is on a square white canvas. the artwork a wet felted irregular square in light blue, grey, violet and some hints of green. On the background a lace yarn in the same colors winds itself into a maze like shape, and at the center of the piece there is a small basic house shape outlined in stitching in blue-grey yarn that helds in place a white fraying piece of silk fabric. — My piece about ‘Home’.

Sadly, it has not been sold yet. (veiled hint, isn’t it?)

First of all, I need to say that I was not on my own, but I choose to participate with my local art group, the Ealing Art Group, for a few reasons: one was to have support from fellow stall holders, because it was my first time, and to get a venue to use together, as I do not have a studio or space in my small flat, that is also not easily accessible for people with mobility issues. Secondarily, to cut costs, as you can share the participation fee and also the cost of renting the venue: this means that you do not have an individual entry in the advertising booklet, just one with your group, but still you will have your individual name in the list of participating artists, good enough for me for starters.

I was quite happy with how this decision of participating with my group instead of alone has come out: yes, sure, I had to find different ways to put my business name out there, but the support and connection that I got from participating with others were what really made a difference to me, and I will be very glad to do it again with the group next year, instead of looking at ways to do it by myself.

Here is how my little corner was looking after set up on the first day:

A corner in an ancient brick outhouse. In it there is a small table and behind it a white kitchen counter. On them there are various small framed artworks and craft things by Kiki Peruzzi — My lot was supposed to be only a small table, but, because I went there early on set up day and helped with the set up, I could get me the place in front of the kitchen counter, and use the counter as additional display space!

Our venue was a listed outhouse building attached to an ancient mansion , Boston Manor House, in one of the parks in our area, very good for footfall if the weather stays nice and people can go around to walk dogs and kiddies! As the building is listed, we were not allowed to put up nails or alter the building walls in any way: I had been told that already by the person in our group who was taking care of organising the venue for us, so I went there prepared with frame holders and small frames that already had their table stand. Plus, talking with some other artist from our group at a previous exhibition, I understood that smaller (and cheaper) items were going to be a better fit for this event than the bigger artworks that I had had in mind to bring, and a selection of craft items in different ranges of prices would be also quite good for this: thus, I decided to bring a variety of smaller things along with one bigger work, and I think that it worked fine for this.

We were 10 from our group, in 2 rooms that were close but not conjoined: 6 in our room and 4 in the other, sharing a small courtyard. My fellow stall holders were all working with different mediums and each one of us has a completely different style: I am the only felter and I was also the only one working in textiles among the 10 exhibiting together (there is another artist who is a weaver in our art group, but she was exhibiting in another venue by herself). That meant that we had very different target audience, so we worked very well all together to cater to different tastes.

Here is a video showing our room and our different styles:

We also decided that we needed to make our venue and ourselves more visible by setting up some tables outside and doing demos on a rolling rota, so that the person outside could invite people to come on in and have a look. Having different mediums was very useful for that, so as to engage different people and send them our collective way. Plus, sketching and felting can withstand different weather conditions: and I can tell you that in London this is a good point, as the weather was very voluble for 3 out of the 4 days, so we had to rush in and out depending on wind and rain presence!

Here is me trying to produce an Instagram friendly video of my second day demo on wet felting, with my daughter’s help:

It was super challenging to wet felt outside, as all the days were particularly windy, so the fiber was flying and I periodically had to run after 100gr bags of wool rolling off the table! I was keeping the bags on the table to attract people by showing bold bright colours, and on the second day I also brought some felted things that I was not selling but just to show what you could do by wet felting, as plenty of people were asking about it the first day. (also, we were not allowed to sell anything outside our venue, so I could only sell the stuff that was inside the building) I partially solved the flying away issue by weighing down all the wool bags and felted objects with stones picked up from the park, and by frequently sprinkling water on the fibers that I was working with in the demo, and getting to the soaping phase as soon as possible!

I must have made an impression for my determined effort, though, because I sold the first little bowl that I wet felted for the demo before it was totally dry, so I can not show it to you (no photos, I am afraid!), but this is my second day produce, in Merino wool with silk rods and eri silk fiber embellishments:

There is a small green bowl on a light brown wooden table. the bowl has embellishments all around in vertical irregular bands, in rust eri silk, natural white eri silk and silk pod rods. — I liked how it came, though some of the visitors were suggesting different combinations of colours!

On the second weekend, I decided to demonstrate needle felting, instead, as it was still very windy and there was a rain forecast for the afternoon, so I needed something where I could control my flying fiber better and pack it up quickly if needed. I decided on a simple Christmas bauble with a core wool inner part, in red merino wool with a sprinkle of Angelina fiber and spiral of violet merino. I think that it came out fine, considering that I was constantly distracted (stabbed myself quite badly at one point, because I was calling out at a potential visitor to encourage him to go in and not paying attention at my hands):

On a blurred background with a wooden table and many small things, there is a hand holding up a red and violet felt Christmas bauble by its violet gauze lace. — Starting early for Christmas!

I noticed and encouraged interest from small kids: I would talk to them, waive bright red wool, entice them to touch it and give a wisp of wool or silk fiber for them to take home, asking them how it felt and if it was soft as a pet’s fur or shiny and smooth. I noticed that more adults were interested when I had my wet felting set up out than with the needle felting: I wonder if it was just random or if it is something about the needle felting that is less appealing or more intimidating. Maybe you also can share your experiences on that.

I think that taking a few small amounts of wool and fiber to this kind of event is very useful (note to self), as people are asking you a lot of curious questions about what you are using to make felt: I heard mentions to yarn, fabric and there were all sorts of puzzled blank stares when I was saying wool fiber and silk fiber, until I would take out a WoW bag and give them a small amount of wool to hold and touch..then more confused questions about how you go from there to that bowl. I mean, that was a proper effort in spreading the word about felting as I could. I am pretty convinced felters would do well to bring wool to show at their events, as most people are far from clear on what wool looks like before becoming yarn and what you can do with it.

Having a group to back me up also meant that I could try to focus on my demos and the persons in front of me, in the sure knowledge that if anyone wanted to buy from my little stall inside someone would come and fetch me, as I would do for them. While plying my wares inside, I knew that someone outside was doing their best to send people our way, so that we all could sell more. We would also pass on favourable comments from visitors and encourage each other during the lulls.

And, of course, chat about our medium, art, families, life and so on. I got to know my fellow group mates a bit more, in a way that just is not possible when you are stewarding for one or two hours maximum at a more sedate exhibition: I had also the chance to see some of them in action working with their chosen medium, and it was very stimulating both learning some of their techniques and explaining them some of mines!

Another good thing coming from sharing a venue with members of your same group was that I had my kids with me (long story) and I was worried about them getting bored, but my fellow stall holders managed to entice my kids into helping with the setting up, putting up balloons and they generally kept them entertained while not playing at the park playground. My daughter also got to try out watercolour painting techniques with one of the watercolour painters, so it is like as if she had a short art course activity for free! My kids were practically begging me to take them to the exhibition again, until we had a spot of heavy rain and their running around was restricted for a while and the place was, to be honest, a bit damp and coldish, so they had to cool down for a bit inside. That was on the afternoon of the last day, and we packed up early because of that (not many people going out and about in a park under heavy rain, not even in London, although we spotted some brave or silly souls still trying to play tennis in the courts…they probably had paid a bucket for the booking? who knows), so all in all it was a success also for my kids.

I managed to sell enough to get back my fee costs, and a bit more, and I felt that it was pretty encouraging as a first time stall holder. I also distributed more than one hundred of my new bookmarks: I had them printed to advertise my business with something different from a business card, and many said that it was a very clever idea and all were very keen to accept them. I guess that I am not the only one having several different books on hold with bookmarks on their bedside table!

Here it is what they look like, front and back:

There are two bookmarks placed horizontally one close to the other. On the first there is a detail image of a wet felted artwork by K Peruzzi in yellow, white and blue. On the other bookmark there are another image of a different artwork by K Peruzzi, written details on how to find other works by her, and a QR code to visit her website — People liked them: one always need a FREE bookmark!

I have had some new accesses to my website straight afterwards, so I guess that they are working in advertising it.

Here are my fellow art trail mates from my room on the last day (missing Bijan who was home with a cold the second weekend):

A group of 5 people is posing together in a room with tables showing their artworks. There is a wooden slanting roof in the background and brick walls — Tired and happy just before packing up. From left to right: me, Peter Filbey, Nava Letchimanan @nava_ml_art , Zara Salazar @zsartillustrations , and Susie Mawani. Missing here Bijan.

Hoping to do it again, maybe with different group members or the same, next year!

If you happen to be close to us in West London, also come and see us of the Ealing Art Group in October at Open Ealing in Dicken’s Yard.

I hope you enjoyed my post, and please leave your comment on your own experiences with this kind of events and being a stall holder.

http://www.kikistextileart.com

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kiki.textile.art

A mannequin head is sporting a bright pink and salmon flowery headress and cowl in sequins

A flowery start to Spring with ‘Flowers’, an exhibition in London, UK – Part 2

July 19, 2025 kikistextileart Comments 17 comments

Here we are with the second part of the exhibition ‘Flowers’ that I have been to in London.

If you have not caught the first part, it is here.

We go back straight to the fashion and textiles section of the exhibition with these garments with glass beads, sequine and tulle decorations:

There are two mannequins with tight fitting outfits with flower motifs on a white raised platform — Sorcha O’Raghallaigh’s take on the theme of Flora.

This can be another take on the traditional very feminine flowery lace clothing:

A photo of a person with their head and upper body covered in black flowery lace, on a white wall — This lace seems a tad oppressive..we can undoubtedly think about the meaning of this Girl in Lace, photo by Kent Baker of a high fashion dress by Alexander McQueen, 1996. I like how the edges of the lace around the shoulders are very organic.

And what about these flowery high end sandals?

A pair of black sandals with long straps full of flower shapes are on a raised platform — Manolo Blahnik’s take on the theme, also 1996.

There was also some artistic experimentation on recycled textiles, such as this on Denim:

On a wooden board supported by a wooden shelf there is a flower artwork made of embroidered denim — Embroidered Denim on tea-stained fabric by Stephanie Comilang. I feel that the mounting on a solid wood board requiring a supporting shelf seems more like a statement of some kind than actual necessity, as it must make it quite a bit heavier and the whole arrangement bulkier, don’t you think?

And for the milliners:

And we can not really finish this fashion show without the wedding dress and jewellery:

A white wedding dress with large hood and colorful flowers coming out of the bustier, on a mannequin on a raised platform. The background is a flowery wallpaper in blue. — Daniel Roseberry designed it for Schiaparelli in 2024, with handpainted leather flowers: I can’t imagine it being very comfy, but surely this is not the only consideration on that special day..

A display case with matching earrings and brooch in the shape of a flower — Flower shapes are Italian jewellery brand Bucellati’s own distinctive mark on the jewellery brands landscape.

Going forward, the exhibition also had a wall of stylized flower prints, all pretty similar in concept and disposition, all apparently making references to the famous ‘Flowers’ series by Andy Warhol:

Two prints of stylized flowers in groups of 4 each on a green wall — The original ‘Flowers’ prints by Andy Warhol that have been hugely reproduced and copied/referenced to since their conception in the 60’s. He used an interesting method to come to this design that he later reproduced in hundreds of prints: he took photos by Patricia Caulfield on a magazine, simplified the images by flattening, cropping and amending the contrast, then screen-printed them or painted them on canvas in different colorways.

Something quirkier in mixed media seems like a parody of our flower veneration when it comes to indoor plants: take the exotic but so very common now Phalaenopsis orchid..

There is an upside down vase of pink orchids on a stand. two persons' backs are behind the stand admiring other artworks on the wall behind the upturned vase. — You could surely do something similar in needlefelt, but this is painted bronze, aluminium steel, and epoxy. By Tony Matelli

Another mixed media artwork that used fabric was this one, that I particularly noticed for its use of colour:

A blue log supports various flowers and mushrooms in artificial colors, on a white stand on a platform. — This mixed media artwork has an interesting choice of colours. Wood, grout, fabric, acrylic paint, resin, polymer clay, metal, wire. By Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg

A huge success with kiddies and also adults was this moving structure by William Darrell. The plastic petals were constantly rotating.

A moving installation is in the middle of a room inside a small circular enclosure filled with bark. There are stem-like structures emerging from the bark and supporting moving blade-like petals in different colors. the petals are rotating. In the background there are people looking at other artworks on the walls. — It does not seem much in a photo, its main feature was the moving petals of the flowers.

I post here also this painting because it reminded me of some of Moy Mackay’s artworks in felt, but it is by Vik Muniz in archival paint.

A very colorful painting of a vase of flowers in a black frame. — This is really saturated colours!

And I guess here we come to the very star of the show in my perspective (though by no means to the end of the exhibition, that was huge!): a big immersive installation that I loved, by Rebecca Louise Law, an installation artist based in Wales. It took years of picking up dead flowers and herbs and seed pods, with substantial donations by public parks and private gardens. I can not even imagine the time she must have spent on installing the whole in the gallery, as each dangling strand was carefully tuned in terms of shape and colour: only being inside the room could give an idea of the patient planning of each part.

Some people are exploring an immersive installation of dried flowers and herbs and seed pods dangling from the ceiling. — I could not photograph it in full, as it completely covered the whole room ceiling to floor. There were big arms extending towards different corners of the room, each made of many many single filaments.

Detail of one arm in the installation of dried flowers by Rebecca Louise Law — I can not add too many photos but this may give you a better idea of what I am talking about in terms of individual strands: ridiculous amounts of flowers and herbs just in one of this, all linked with very thin copper wire in long freely moving filaments.

This big installation was about the connection of us humans with the earth, and about meditating on life, death and the space that is between life and death. I found it awe inspiring for the sheer technical challenge of planning and creating it, and I can not explain the moving feeling that one got by slowly walking in the room and looking up and down at the cascading strands of flowers and herbs with their subtle changes of colours and shapes perfectly paced to create a rhythm in the composition. This aspect could not really come through in my photos, as the variations were too subtle to show well in photos and only being there would do to experience it, unfortunately.

Another artist using real flowers and muted colours, but singularly and to completely different, streamlined effect is Stephen Doherty with this Giclee print:

Giclee print of a single flower in muted pink and black on a white background — By Stephen Doherty.

Interesting was also a small section of the exhibition on the use of flowers in protest, with some photos of historical examples such as this very American one:

Photo of a group of young people offering flowers to uniformed soldiers as part of the anti-Vietnam war protests at the Pentagon in 1967 — This was shot in 1967 at the Pentagon by S. Sgt. Albert R. Simpson.

Next was a room about flowers in music, film and literature: the walls were packed with famous album covers and film posters, and display cases were showing books. There are of course hundreds of examples of flowers in any of these fields!

Here I found a nice textile take on the first and most famous fairies books, the ones by Cicely Mary Barker, and I took photos for Leonor (you may remember her post about sewing dolls clothes, if not, read it here):

In the foreground there is a mannequin with a green top and pink skirt and fly-like wings. In the backgrounds there are persons looking at other displays on the walls. — This is Sweet Pea Miniature Costume, created in 2019 (though it feels older to me, due to the muted colours) by Vin Burnham and property of The Frederik Warne and Ladybird Archive.

A wall covered in framed music single covers sporting flowers either in the title or band name or in the picture or both — This is just to give you a rough idea of this room. This is part of the music section.

Following this, there was a room with an interactive installation were weird digital flowers kept being generated by AI in response to people’s movements, becoming by turns luscious alien jungles or more sedated growing stems. It was not very suitable to photos, so we just sat there a while observing and, to be honest but do not tell anybody, gratefully having a rest.

Followed more flowers in various medias, from cut steel to cut paper:

A cut paper composition of dark pink poppies with a white background and a black frame. — By Susan Beech.

I liked this composition of linocut on handmade paper by Grace Gillespie, as it very much linked to the William Morris section that we had already passed in the first half of the exhibition:

A 4 by 3 grid of paper pieces, each printed with flower motifs in bright oranges, reds and pink, with only one blue bird in the upper center piece. — I may find inspiration for printmaking ideas in this..

There was a room on flowers and plants in Science and in Medicine, with botanical drawings and paintings, and also mathematical works inspired by plants and flowers proportions. The room included a Damien Hirst’s work about Valium with spots in the exact shape of daisy seeds, that might be of interested to the more science oriented of us:

A print of dots in different colors forming a circle shape on a white background and with a white frame — Apparently, those are not random dots, but precisely determined. Lambda chromogenic print.

There was also a section on flower gardening and the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, that is a venerable institution started in 1913 and whose first poster has been designed in 1935 by Margaret Calkin James. This section explored (a bit superficially) our relationship with flower growing.

A bit incongrously in my opinion, here there were two glass cases with a kind of morbid take on mixed media flowers, and it maybe says something of me that I want to post a photo of it here for you to collectively say Yuck!

In an upturned glass bowl there are flowers made of small animal bones and teeth. — Yep, it’s animal bones and teeth. How nice. By Emma Witter.

At this point fatigue had totally set in, I am afraid, and I could see that this particular artwork got to us out of proportions.

To react to this and perk up, I tried to get a few more photos only of very bright and uplifting artworks after that!

Four very brightly colored paintings of plants and flowers. — Brightly and riotous like those oils by Mimei Thompson in the New Shoots section of the exhibition.

Cute-pugs-effect warning here:

Painting of two pugs puppies in front of a flower vase. — The title is also pretty funny if your first language is Italian, as it is ‘Gnocchi’ (in Italian that is a type of potato dumplings with no filling). By Ally McIntyre

Six very colorful circular artworks in a 2 by 3 grid. — I really liked this idea for using screenprint on ply in a different shape that does not need any frame at all. I can totally see how those can work well as points of interest in a room even singly. By Jess Wilson.

And with this I think that I will finish on the brightest note, so here is The End, and I hope that you enjoyed a taste of this big exhibition in London, and that it might inspire you in your creative months ahead!

Kiki

http://www.kikistextileart.com

@kiki.textile.art

A flowery start to Spring with ‘Flowers’, an exhibition in London, UK – Part 1

May 20, 2025 kikistextileart Comments 15 comments

Hello all!

I would like to talk to you about an exhibition I have been to recently: another one, I hear you say, this girl is always going around!

I wish it were even more so, but yes, I am quite glad to have had the chance to go to a few exhibitions in the past months, as I am a strong believer of being inspired by other artists’ works and I am living in a city that has quite a lot to offer in terms of the arts scene, so why not offering a taste of this experience to you!

This exhibition was ‘Flowers’ at the Saatchi Gallery in London, United Kingdom, and it was about, what else, flowers in Contemporary art (also art inspired by flowers in ancient and past artists’ works!) and who does not love a bit of flowers in their art? I liked this one very much, as I love flowers and there was a bit more attention to textiles than in other exhibitions, though the very bulk of artworks were either oils or photos. Actually, it was fairly big and there was really plenty to see, so I am not complaining.

A navy blue poster with colorful flowers and the title Flowers in capital letters is in front of the corner of a brick building. — Here we are, ready to go into the Saatchi Gallery

On a white background there is a writing all in capital letters: Flowers, with the o letter substituted by a pink flower, and the subtitle Flora in contemporary art and culture. — The writing on the wall.

The works were split up into sections around common themes related to flowers, for instance still-life of flowers or flowers in connection to Medicine or flowers in connection to Science (Maths linked to flowers/plants, Technology inspired by flowers..) or Fashion inspired by flowers or Film posters with a flower theme, and so on.

Sophie Mess’s mural and canvas greeted us as the first paintings in the exhibition: hypertrophic overexpressive and non-apologetic blooms in spray paint that set a general mood of riotous flowery abundance.

A big rectangular canvas depicting flowers in bright orange yellow and pink on a navy blue background, by Sophie Mess — Sophie Mess’s canvas took one wall, whereas her mural run along the first staircase to access the exhibition.

One of the first sections in the exhibition was about still life takes on the flower theme, as a Roots topic for the whole theme…see what they have done here, oh oh, root-plant. Obviously with a twist: here we have Amy Sheldon’s work with pressed flowers arranged in a pattern by the artist on led lighted board. It is a still life, in a sense, but exploding the concept with the arrangement. and the use of real flowers.

A white led lighted rectangle on a black background. The white lighted rectangle is completely filled with small and tiny pressed flowers in muted tones — Amy Sheldon had a couple of works in this exhibition, made with seasonal pressed flowers for a better connection with nature.

Detail of Amy Sheldon's artwork using pressed flowers on a led lighted white board — A detail of the pressed flowers in Amy Sheldon’s work: it has been very hard to choose which one to photograph and show you, as they were all different and individually beautiful. They were all wild flowers picked in early Spring time and remaking a Springtime wild meadow in a way.

A few paintings by old Masters were present in this room:

Painting by Jean Baptiste Bosschaert of a flower vase in a traditional golden frame — An old master take on the Flower theme: a still life by Jean Baptiste Bosschaert (1667-1746)

A still of a flower vase with flowers from a loop film framed in an old style dark brown frame, by Rob and Nick Carter — Another old master’s still life oil painting? Nope, this is a still from a 70-minutes loop film! By rob and Nick Carter

An Art Nouveau apinting of a woman surrounded by white lilies, ink on tan silk, by Alphonse Mucha — This is a typical Art Nouveau panel where the woman is almost like a flower herself, a decoration, a pretty thing among pretty things, or you can read it as a flower/Spring goddess, celebration of feminine power and beauty: up to you. By Alphonse Mucha, ink on silk, it was firstly painted as watercolor on paper.

Among other serious paintings, I loved the quirkiest ones, such as this, showing that you can make art with anything at hand:

A framed white envelope with a crayon painting of red and purple flowers on dark background, by Margaret Mellis — Margaret Mellis, crayon on envelope: I can imagine the situation where you will have crayons and a scrap of paper and just start doodling an idea, then getting quite taken by it and ending up with a full blown artwork..oh, pity for the media, how am I going to present it to my agent, oh, well, it was fun. As you can maybe see, the glass was a reflective one: almost none of the works exhibited with a glass in the frame had non-reflective glasses and the glare was awful. It was very hard to get nice photos with limited glare.

Actually, that is not a one-off artwork on the back of an envelope: Margaret Mellis was an English artist who explored mixed media and collage quite extensively in her long life (died aged 95), and she produced many more artworks on the back of envelopes! Well, why not, waste not want not, as they say. (She apparently loved beach combing to pick materials for sculptures as well.)

This modified photo by Mari Mahr is just one of the many that were on display: I would say photography lovers would have find this exhibition quite satisfying. I picked it because it was modified in a way that reminded me of some embroidered photos that I have seen recently, where the artist would use an old portrait photo and especially embroider on the face of the subject.

Black and white photo of a girl in a floral dress with a big flower instead of the head. By Mari Mahr — Mari Mahr wanted to talk about a sense of loss and longing modifying photos of her friend’s daughter, after she had moved far away.

There was a part about Sanderson floral fabrics: I think most of you have seen some of those floral patterned fabrics and never given it a thought, as I had done before this exhibition. They seem something that has always been there, a popular cultural given, fabric with one of those patterns will surely lurk in thousands of lofts, leftover from Auntie, or Granny’s favourite that she left me and I could not bear to throw, or you maybe have a quilt done with scraps of that..do not even try to deny it (“oh, no, not at all, it’s too chintzy for me, too much English rose for my Aunt, you’ve never known her, a tough modern lady my Granny!), I will not ask for confessions, it will remain our cosy secret, let’s just say that as soon as you will see the patterns in my photo and you will recognise it as an old (if a bit worn out) friend. And you can say it aloud, old, because those designs have been created about 160 years ago, firstly for wallpaper and then in time also for textiles by the Sanderson factory: talk about flowers that have become classics.

Floral fabrics of Sanderson's design in different bright or pastel color patterns are folded and displayed one close to the other. — Do you recognise them? When I was a child and teen my bed cover was cotton fabric in one of those designs. Actually, one thing that I did not know and that I find amazing is that I live in an area of Greater London that is very close to the first Sanderson factories that produced those designs: life is weird that way.

Three small advertising examples of the Sanderson business through time are on a white wall — A long tradition of Sanderson products.

There were also other pieces linked to flowers in the house, included a lovely small handpainted side table.

A small painted side table on a raised stage, and other pieces from the Morris group in the background — A small handpainted beauty by two of the group following William Morris’ s ideas, George and Annie Jack. This was used as embroidery table: please, excuse my drooling on the laptop.

And of course some pieces by William Morris:

A William Morris fabric of red tulips on tan background — No fabric section with a floral theme could be complete without William Morris. Block print on cotton.

A picture of the original drawing by William Morris for the tulip fabric shows an abstracted tulip with leaves, in white grey and pale blue — The original drawing by William Morris for the tulip fabric above.

In a glass case on display, two small books on Flower fairies, a floral themed red plate and some floral themes green yellow and brown tiles, by the Morris movement followers. — Some other pieces by the Morris movement.

The printing block for the tulip fabric and three floral tiles by William Morris in a display case — The printing block for the tulip fabric, and a few tiles that look very modern.

Quite interesting to have a look at all those printing blocks and drawings and pieces with abstracted flowers: it just makes me itch for a go at thinking other printing blocks or stamps to use for surface design, with streamlined abstract flowers. I just have a passion for abstract floral designs and feel you can never go wrong with one and will surely find the right time to use them! Actually, very recently I used the floral design stamp and stencil made when I took Ruth’s brilliant class on surface design to make hand painted wrapping paper to sell at a small market: so, it is all true, surface design is not just for embellishing your textiles, surface design is for life!

And, since I am keen on abstract art, I really enjoyed pieces like these of Gillian Ayers’ that made me wonder how one can make something similar in felt (it must be a lot of fun with those colours):

Two colorful abstract unframed oil paintings of flowers or plants by Gillian Ayres are side by side — Very colourful oil paintings, clearly a strong influence of American Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field painting, according to the label

Or other abstract ones like this very interesting one with its definite choice of colours:

A painting with the background pink and army green and two big red flowers close to each other. By Gary Hume — A bit of an unusual use of the space, with that third lower part almost blocking the sight of the huge flowers, and the oversized flowers all in the upper part of the painting. Gloss paint on aluminium. By Gary Hume

On a pale pink wall, a painting of white abstracted roses on a pale blue background. — Oil on linen for this abstract painting by Alex Katz that feels somehow very classic. And with such simple lines and blocks of colours it would work well as a felt piece with minimal embroidery, would it not?

But I have also a find for the charity shop hoarders: a cornucopia style sculpture by Ann Carrington, entirely made using kitchen implements and cutlery. I checked, it is.

A cornucopia in metal on a plinth in an exhibition hall. — Made entirely in spoons, forks, butter knives and whisks, sculpture for the charity shop lovers “I am not hoarding, I am collecting for my art project, honest”.

Six colorful screenprint pieces representing abstract flowers — These oversized abstract flowers by Michael Craig-Martin seem also very enticing to me as inspiration for felt pieces. Screenprint on paper. Sorry for the very bad glare on the upper ones.

A big painting of dark blue orchids on black — This one is to show that flowers can be dark on dark and still impressive! Have you ever thought about this combination of colours for flowers? Oil paint and oil stick on linen, metal substrate, exposed linen on the side. By Michelle Jung.

Another screenprint that I found very interesting as inspiration for other medias or functions (wearables or objects or..) is this one by Yayoi Kusama:

A screenprint picture of colorful pink and orange patterned flowers on blue patterned background in a thin black frame with white board, hang on a pale pink wall. — I could see a handbag with this design, or a fabric for a dress, or maybe a scarf or a brooch. An artwork in felt would be quite nice too! How would one make the polka dot patterns in felt, though, or the tiny cracked effect in the background?

And here we finally come to some textile pieces, with these embroidered flowers:

Two textile artworks representing vases of flowers in bright colors on white background — Embroidery silks on cotton calico by Martin Maloney.

An embroidery of a white vase of abstract flowers on a pink clothed table. — Sorry for the weird angles of the photos: I was really having to take them so quickly, as the exhibition was packed. This is ‘Pink Cloth’, 2024. I really like how the embroidery is totally non-realistic while using stitches that have traditionally been used for very realistic rendition of flowers!

An embroidery of a yellow vase of abstract flowers on a grey clothed table — ‘Yellow Vase’, 2024 by Martin Maloney.

A textile piece with a wow effect, this one was all made of individual elements in different sizes all connected by streaming yarn dangling from the various bits:

An artwork made of colorful irregular shaped pieces of fabric with tassels dangling down to the floor. — This textile piece by Anne von Freyburg has been inspired by an 18th century still life, so we go full circle back to the beginning of the exhibition! Acrylic ink, synthetic fabric and PVC fabric for the textile painting; fabrics, sequin fabric, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas for the tapestry.

I managed to take photos of a couple of the elements in the big cloud of colours:

More attention to textiles in other artworks before going to the section dedicated to flowers in fashion:

An oil portrait of a black woman dressed in patterned floral textiles, by Wole Lagunju — I found this oil portrait interesting for the attention to textile details, a modern response to the old Master’s portraits of brocaded ladies colliding with a Judith iconography that feels a bit unsettling. By Wole Lagunju.

And here we are at the fashion show:

A pair of pink Converse trainers covered in pink embroidered flowers. — An example of hand-embroidery changing face to a casual pair of Converse trainers. By Cristina Alcantara of Camomille Creations

There was an area with a big turnable display on creations by the famous Finnish company Marimekko, very popular since the Fifties:

A display showing a floral dress by Finnish company Merimekko, with bold red and white areas and orange and white big abstract flowers — Marimekko style is hardly difficult to spot, with typical bright bold colours and big abstract shapes.

A vertical display showing different Merimekko garments in a room with wooden flooring and green walls. A person is on the right perusing the things on the display. — The display for Marimekko designs held different garments in different patterns and colours.

And here we come to British fashion icons Mary Quant and Vivienne Westwood: one with a very abstract idea of flowers, the other with an exuberant use of flowers for contrast. Two very different periods in London, two different ideas of fashion.

Three mannequins with clothes by Mary Quant on a raised platform in the shape of flower petals. in the background there are black flower shapes on the wall. — Mary Quant’s miniskirts in the Fifties, and a long hooded Kaftan in the Seventies, but the abstract flowers remained a motif in her collections throughout her career.

A mannequin with a flowery blazer and two A4 posters advertising Mary Quant creations in London. — Another of Mary Quant’s garments, along with original posters advertising Mary Quant’s fashion.

A display case with a black and white handbag with an oversized flower shape, a pink flower necklace, and magazines advertising Mary Quant's garments — I doubt there is someone out there who has not seen at least once in life the iconic Mary Quant’s flower shape or some item reusing that shape in some way, as it is so effective.

A display case with advertising material for Mary Quant's garments and jewelry, a red-brown tie with yellow and grey flowers, and a set of jewelry with flower shapes — I bet you can find similar jewelry today, that flower shape is simply inescapable.

Vivienne Westwood is a different proposition:

A crocheted wedding dress with a simple transparent veil, and platform lace boots by Vivienne Westwood — Crochet is really good for flower effects on wedding dresses.

Two mannequins with Vivienne Westwood clothes, and a flowered wallpaper in the background. — I am not exactly sure when one is supposed to wear the first one (with platform sandals), but I really loved the pure Vivienne Westwood look of the second one with the ballgown size of the skirt and the deadly cute kitten on the t-shirt.

A mannequin wearing a gauze dress with a flower design and a sort of crown of fabric flowers. — This one and the next are not actually her creations, but made for her collection quite recently by Andreas Kronthaler. This one is a bit like how I would think a costume for Flora (goddess of Spring) may look like if you’d need one for a party. (I guess that you can take off the flower crown/headband/whatever while on public transport to get to the party, and then put it back on)

A mannequin with a floral printed cotton velvet suit with pink roses on a black background, and a blue baseball cap — This is also pretty recent, and I would have thought not: does it not feel very 80-90s to you?

I have many more things to show you about this section and the rest of the exhibition, and I feel that this post is already a bit packed with images: I will stop here for now and get back to you with the second part of the exhibition in my next post.

(Plus, it is too late in the night to go on writing, the foxes are screaming outside, and it just feels time to go to bed!)

I hope that you liked the exhibition so far!

kiki.textile.art

http://www.kikistextileart.com

Caterina Peruzzi is standing in front of a textile piece in green yellow brown and white by Asuncion Molinos Gordo

‘Soil’, an exhibition at Somerset House, London, UK: all about…you guessed, soil!

March 21, 2025 kikistextileart Comments 14 comments

Hello all!

I have been in a low mood recently, and I wanted to find new inspiration and focus by exploring more art exhibitions, especially since I have become a member of an amateur art group that is local to me, the Ealing Art Group (a link here to the long history of this local art group), in an attempt at making new friends and connections in the arts. The idea was to go to exhibitions together, and it worked for other times, but this time I ended up being on my own: well, since I had already decided to go, I went anyway, and it was actually quite nice to have this afternoon to enjoy an inspiring exhibition!

It was called ‘Soil. The World at Our Feet’ and you can see its poster here.

And inspiring it was: I learned quite a few things about soil, its conservation, its importance, things that are done all over the world to improve soil, things that are done all over the world to destroy it, how people can use it and love it and preserve it, and see it with fresh eyes. The topic was tackled both by artists and by scientific researchers and social activists, and often the three would merge.

A written text white on black background, from the exhibition 'Soil' — An explanation of the wide-ranging approach to the topic ‘Soil’ in this exhibition.

As you can maybe read from this explanation that meets the viewer at the very entry of the exhibition, there was a lot for lovers of the scientific in art and of the beauty of natural phenomena, from the very small of bacteria to the size of the whole Earth, passing through a lot of the rest: I managed to enjoy myself for about three full hours at this exhibition, and could have stayed a bit longer but I was exhausted and had to go back home.

I am not normally very keen about art with a very scientific inspiration, but I must say some of the works were stunning, such as these below by photographer Dr Tim Cockerill in collaboration with microbiologist Dr Elze Hesse: photographic images of bacterial growth on agar plates.

Dr Tim Cockerill in collaboration with microbiologist Dr Elze Hesse: photographic images of bacterial growth on agar plates, on black background — Twenty flowers? Abstract shapes? Twenty alien planets?

Photographic image of a bacterial growth on black background by Dr Tim Cockerill in collaboration with microbiologist Dr Elze Hesse. — One of the bacterial shapes that I liked for its resemblance with a flower.

One reddish bacterial growth on black background by Dr Tim Cockerill in collaboration with microbiologist Dr Elze Hesse — This seems very much like an alien planet to me, in deep space!

Sorry for the bad quality of some of the photos, as unfortunately the whole exhibition had very low lights, especially this part where those photos were. Of course, no flash was allowed.

There was an interesting approach to techniques and media, though it was a bit skewed towards video contributions or works that included video elements, that I personally sometime find a bit too long for an exhibition with so many artworks: some of the videos lasted up to almost 40 minutes, and I certainly could not have stayed at the exhibition long enough to watch them all beginning to end! I only managed the shortest ones.

Some of the videos were combined with installations:

A video installation on a curved curtain, by Wim van Egmond — This one on time lapses images of what happens in soil on curved curtains was by Wim van Egmond.

A Fly Agaric mushroom on grass and leaves, on a black background. Still of a video by Marshmallow Laser Feast with Merlin Sheldrake — This one was of a full cycle of Fly Agaric: fungi are important to soil! By collective Marshmallow Laser Feast with Merlin Sheldrake.

I loved the wide range of techniques, there was nothing old-tradition about them:

An Iron Age sword in a glass display case. — This was the only old-style item on display! Iron Age sword found in Cambridgeshire because preserved for about 2000 years by the soil composition there.

Some artists where interested both in what is made of soil and what is in it, such as ceramist Jo Pearl. I imagine that using clay, that is a type of soil, can focus one on the importance of it, and she also seems quite interested in all the environmental issues: I met her close to her artwork and we had a brief friendly chat about the topic.

Installation of ceramic pieces on black background by Jo Pearl — It is hard to convey the variety of the small dangling ceramic pieces in this big artwork installation by Jo Pearl: I loved to observe each one of them.

I was wondering how one would make similar shapes in felt or mixed textiles: I am sure that much fun may be had by pursuing this inspiration, but my time is limited, so maybe one day.. Some of her shapes were also in the Exhibition shop: a temptation!

Ceramic artwork by Jo Pearl, white plants and mushrooms on black background — This ceramic piece by Jo Pearl also was very interesting to me: the use of white for the plants and fungi really is a neat trick that focuses the perception on the shapes. I guess that it would work in felt too..

I liked the use of soil as pigment as well, in this artwork by herman de vries explaining about earth pigments:

Earth pigments displayed by herman de vries — Earth Pigments by herman de vries

Earth Pigments by herman de vries — This was a still from the video where she explains about earth pigments and their use in the whole of human tradition.

A display case showing some earth pigments and paper with marks. By herman de vries — Part of the Earth Pigments installation by herman de vries.

Front cover of a book about paints made using foraged ingredients. — And I found this in the exhibition shop: it seemed quite detailed, so I took a photo to be able to maybe find it again when I will have time to try and make my own paints..

Inorganic matter had its own moment at the exhibition:

Installation made of various pictures of rock strata by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige — An installation part photography, part drawing, part writing about rocks and what they can let us imagine or understand about the past. By Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige.

But also organic matter was represented, with the idea that soil is or should be a living thing:

A picture of flowers in bright unconventional colors. By Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg — Flowers as a pollinator would see them. By Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg

Bronze potatoes in a display case. By Anya Gallaccio — The humble spuds. This artwork is by Anya Gallaccio in bronze cast.

There was a video by pioneer performance and landscape artist Ana Mendieta that I can not show, because photos of it were not allowed, but I liked it: it was called ‘Birth’ and it was in black-and-white. There were two earth mounds in the vague shape of a woman’s vagina, and there were gunpowder explosions or similar coming from the centre enclosed by the mounds. Well, Earth is represented as an earthen goddess by many ancient cultures, so it made a lot of sense to me.

I found the next two works by Lauren Gault less easy to understand, though they were made with materials found in the Isle of Skye that she wanted to represent or linked to it, including a wool blanket that has been restitched by the artist. Some of you may recognise the plastic buckets included in the second piece, apparently very common supplement for sheep rearing..?

In the background there is a wall made of grey concrete blocks, and in the foreground an artwork by Lauren Gault with brown blocks of mineral and a wool blanket. — Carved mineral blocks and a wool moving blanket are part of this piece by Lauren Gault

There are two cut plastic tubs of Lifeline supplement for sheep on a white marble shape over pieces of wool moving blanket. By Lauren Gault — Can you recognise those? Artwork by Lauren Gault.

I really loved these next two pieces: the first was a very organic sculpture made of beeswax on a 150-year-old found walnut tree wood, the second does not seem much to see but its magic was its scent that I loved!

An organic white beeswax shape on an irregular slice of wood in a darker room. Artwork by Marguerite Humeau — By Marguerite Humeau. I loved its simple yet moving linearity, and the use of natural materials.

A brown hanging textile with a yellow g-shaped connection tree. A scented artwork by Fatima Alaiwat — Inoculated printed fabric (with bokashi bran) scented soy wax (with perfumery ingredients and essential oils) by Fatima Alaiwat.

I wished I could stay in front of those two for a long long time. I have always wanted to add scents to my works: is it something that any of you have tried? I wonder what is bokashi bran and how you can use it to inoculate scented soy wax into fabric? Would it work for felt? It just seems a lot of fun to be able to add this new dimension to one’s work! Maybe one day..

This other work was about fiber and how finding new ways to use natural fibers is helping people reshape and restore the environment in their area.

A white hairy low shape is on a platform and a screen on the top left is showing a person on a donkey alone along a countryside path. By Fernando Laposse — An agave fiber (sisal) shape, very fluffy and inviting, is in representation of all the uses in design and art that a people collective is trying to promote, giving new life to traditional handmade local agave processing in Southern Mexico, as explained by an interesting video. The selling of processed agave fiber and furniture or sculptures made with it is funding a regeneration project for soil devastated by damaging agrochemicals. By Fernando Laposse.

Have you tried agave fiber in your work? can it be used in our textile artworks, felted or manipulated? I have never tried it, but maybe now I am curious to know more about it.

There was also a Khayameya patchwork artwork by Asuncion Molinos Gordo, showing the two different types of usage of soil for food production in Egypt, seen as if by satellite: on one hand the many small rectangular shapes of smallholders who grow crops for internal food consumption using the water from the Nile as renewable source. On the other hand, the circular shapes of extensive farming in areas into the desert for international food consumption using non-renewable fossil water through sprinklers.

Part of a three pieces patchwork artwork by Asuncion Molinos Gordo. Two patchwork shapes in white, green, yellow, and black. — These patchworks seem to show how huge those circular farming areas are in comparison to the rectangular fields of smallholders.

Part of artwork by Asuncion Molinos Gordo, a square patchwork with a background of rectangular shapes in green, yellow, brown, and black, and white circular shapes. — Here the white circular shapes seem to want to engulf, to eat up all the tiny rectangles, like not-so-funny Pac-Man shapes.

Another textile work was in fact made of roots! The artist grew the plants to weave naturally into a net and produced an organic fabric of a sort:

A brown and green artwork made of roots growing into a green net is hanging on a wall. By Diana Scherer — I liked how the green-blue of the net shows in between the roots and gives the brown a different personality. The idea was to have a collaboration between man-made and natural. By Diana Scherer.

Two other artworks were exploring the link between cotton crops and exploitation:

A hanging textile in white with colorful embroidery spelling 'Unlearn The Plantation Plot' and white lace. By Annalee Davis — This is on cotton, for obvious reasons linked to the protest message of the artwork. By Annalee Davis

Yellowed paper is painted with red Latex, representing Saccharum officinarum and Queen Ann's lace pattern. By Annalee Davis — This is also by Annalee Davis and is Latex on plantation ledger pages. It represents the roots and shoots of sugar cane, along with a Queen Ann’s lace pattern symbolising cultural exploitation along with the physical one.

There were of course many more artworks, but I want to finish with one that was at the end of the exhibition: ‘Soil Kitchen’ by Something & Son.

A reproduction of kitchen 'Soil Kitchen' by Something & Son, in the background is a big interactive image of the Earth. — The kitchen that you can see from above is very peculiar..

Details of the artwork by Something & Son: a kitchen tap with a rock underneath, a bottle of Slime mould, and other kitchen objects. — All the things that you see are part of making a healthy soil, and not what you would normally find in a kitchen.

There is cracked mud in two pans on a hob, and a rock on a serving plate. — Cooked mud is not good for soil health, though.

A white kitchen towel with a description of ecological groupings of soil organisms. — This innocent-looking kitchen towel was mushroom infused!

A detail of a clear plastic bag full of white kitchen roll paper with the words 'Fungi Super Absorbent' on it — Fungi were very much present in the whole exhibition! Here it is the kitchen roll that is full of them.

A kitchen counter drawer shows different leaves and vegetable matter, and over the counter there is a goat leg with the label 'Carcass'. — Animal and vegetable matter are part of healthy soil.

A kitchen robot holds mud and has a label with 'River' written on it. — And the river acts as mixer!

There were more bits, but you get the general idea. Then, on the other table there were recipes to make your own environmental friendly changes to soil or behaviour.

A recipe to grow Buckwheat, Mustard and Clover is written on a tin plate, with a square of clovers enclosed in plastic at the top left — How to help the right plants thrive in your soil.

On a tin plate there is a recipe to add microorganisms to soil and an image of microorganisms. — How to add microorganisms to your soil to make it healthier.

I hope that you will have some food for thought about our soil (he he, all of this talking about recipes and kitchens..).

On the same day, there was another small exhibition at the Somerset House, that I found fascinating: it was about salt and the Salt Line in the Indian subcontinent. Part of this smaller exhibition was a big outside installation of textiles from salt sacks printed in traditional patterns, representing the Salt Line, a barrier grown of spiky plants by the British to impede the access to a Salt lake to the populace, in order to keep for themselves the sale of salt during Colonial times.

In front of the white buildings of Somerset House, a textile installation made of hanging brown fabric with traditional prints. — Salt Line by Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser.

Brown fabric hangings with printed patterns in black and white. — Some of the patterned fabrics.

Hanging fabrics with dark brown, black and white patterns. — More patterned fabrics. The patterns were traditional, taken from stamps found around the area where the actual Salt Line was grown.

Please, let us know what you thought about it! Cheers.

Detail of 'Growing' felt artwork by Kiki Peruzzi

Thoughts going in circles.

January 30, 2025 kikistextileart Comments 16 comments

It has been a while since I had regular time to felt, because of different reasons. In my mind, that is almost as if my whole artistic life was on hold, because I believe that it is that regular time that nourishes you, it allows you to both go on with what you usually do and also try out new stuff: both of those two things are important, because I want to be better at what I already do, but also to learn new things and explore without pressures. It often happens that a new idea leads to another when you are exploring, and sometimes this leads to great pieces and you advance towards new landscapes.

Unfortunately, as I was saying, I do not seem to be able to carve out a regular time each week for art at the moment, but I still think about it. Sometimes, my thoughts seem to go in circles without the outlet of the actual making: I do not know if this happens to you as well? It is the making that frees me to go on to a different idea, and may open up the circles, so to speak.

This time, I wanted to make something that would visually express the complexity of our thoughts, sometimes revolving around an idea again and again. Sometimes an idea may have to go through that complex mulling about it until some part of it grows and develops enough to bring a solution that kind of springs out of all that thinking.

So, I started with an idea of circle: to be honest a practical consideration also came into it, because I bought a couple of square frames at a bargain price a few years ago, and I wanted to make something that could fit in that square frame. In the end, the finished work is too big for that frame, because I did not measure beforehand, so never mind, but the idea was there.

Anyway, I set up my background a bit unusually for me as a circular shape with three layers of natural white mysterious wool that I got as part of a World of Wool offer on lap waste. It is definitely wool and not synthetic, a bit coarser than Merino, but very easily wet felted (so no core wool or any of the coarser wools for needle felting). (I sure wish that they put a name on the different stuff that is in their lap waste bags, because I am having to puzzle it out if I want to make a good use of it all! oh, well). I liked the fact that I could finally use that and loved the idea of a natural white background to start with.

Natural white wool laid in a circle on bubble wrap on a table covered with a white towel — Deciding on the shape for the background, I laid out my lap waste mysterious wool in natural white.

A circle of soft and fluffy natural white wool on a bubble wrap on a table covered by a white towel — Three layers done: as it is not a garment but it is meant to be a flat hanging piece, I laid out the three layers horizontally and vertically, adding wasps of wool in other directions were needed, as I did not want it to stretch in any way. You can see that I kept my mysterious wool in a common plastic bag, after taking it out of the all-in bag of lap waste that I had bought it in.

A circle of wet natural white wool with a small green hand sprinkler on a table covered with bubble wrap and a white towel — Wetting with my faithful sprinkler.

A circle of soaped and squashed natural white wool is on a table covered with bubble wrap and a white towel. There are a green hand sprinkler and a small white soap. — After soaping and a light rubbing the circle is pretty squashed and has lost its shape a bit under the netting.

A neatened out circular shape in white natural wool on bubblewrap and a white towel. — After removing the netting, I neatened the shape folding in the edges so that it came out resembling a circle again. I personally am not bothered by not getting a truly perfect shape, and I would not normally straighten my edges too much in one of my works, but I like to have a minimum of regularity in this one, lest I lose the idea of ‘circle’. So, it is a clear circle, but not geometrically so. Of course, one could cut the edges close to perfection after felting it.

Fine, up to this moment it was easy, but that was only the background: I had to chose what to do next, ha ha, that was the hard part!

I kept thinking about circular ideas, circular thoughts, thinking in circles, convolutions: I decided to go for a raised effect that could make apparent this movement in circles. I thought about folds, but then I discarded the idea, as I did not have enough time that day and it takes ages to work on felting folds jutting out of a flat surface! I mean, you must have seen quite a few artworks with that kind of well felted folds: the effect is amazing, but how many work hours are we talking about there? A lot of the big and better artworks of that kind are not even made by one person, they are felted by a team! Obviously, I am not in that league at the moment.

Even though I had made not a big background shape, I needed to keep it easier and quicker than folds..or maybe I needed an easier and quicker way to make folds! That is when I thought about using ready-made folds, so to speak: maybe I could skip the part about making the folds if I had strips of prefelt or felt from previous projects to add! Great, and I could lower my ‘in-case’ stash a bit: all those bits and bobs that I keep from other projects because maybe they will come handy in something else, you know.

The only problem was that I wanted to make something that would match well with the natural colour of my circular background, and I could not see in my prefelted anything that would go well with it, apart from a recent left-over prefelt in various greens (from my Christams card exchange!): too many colours, almost nothing in natural white or close. I debated with myself if I wanted to start making some prefelt for this work, but I decided against a two-day effort: I just could not know if I could find enough time to finish it, once I had to leave it incomplete.

Then, I remembered about the decoration on the wetfelted Merino shawl that I made years ago for my daughter’s First Holy Communion: it is one of the first works that I have made, and I had recently took it out and thought about how I had not used much that idea in other works. Basically, you make lightly felted ropes that you then attach to your background base: in that shawl I attached them by needle felting on the wetfelted shawl and used them to make a decorative abstract lotus flower shape. As I planned to make the ropes only lightly felted, I felt quite confident that I could wet felt them to the background instead of needle felting them.

I decided that I would put strips taken from my green left-over pre-felts as accent of colour in the composition, and catching visual point of interest where the eye would be drawn to. The rest should be muted in colour, so as not to distract too much from the green.

I took a big breath before starting to make the cords, as I had made ropes to use as straps and stuff for other projects, so I have a good idea of how much time it takes to make one: I mean, for lightly felted cords not as long as you would put into well felted folds, but still quite a bit!

I also needed more than one muted colour, to have some kind of play, otherwise that would be too flat, even using the 3-D effect, and I am quite out of natural white wools at the moment: I was supposed to replenish my stash but I never got around to do it! But I had the perfect solution right there: I could use the same lap waste mysterious natural white wool of the background, mixing it with some other colour as needed, and it would also felt in that much better being the same as the one on the background.

Kiki Peruzzi's hand is holding a tuft of carded natural white wool mixed with natural hemp. In the background a circular shape of natural white wet wool, a pair of carding brushes and a hand sprinkler on bubble wrap and a white towel. — Mixing the mysterious wool with natural hemp, also found in the lap waste bargain bag from World of Wool, with my pet brushes, ahem, expensive hand carders..

A circular wool felt shape with green pre felt strips and whitish wool and hemp cords on it. — That is how I started: I put the green bits in first, and then I filled in all the rest of the space with the central green strips guiding me. The green strips have a pewter side and are in a good pre-felt in different greens with locks or fabric or sari silk inclusions.

I used three main neutral coloured additions, plus the basic natural white:

In the center, a blue plastic bag with natural colored hemp in it, and above it two pet brushes, one empty and the other holding hemp fiber. — I added natural undyed hemp to the natural wool, mixing it with hand carders.

In the center, a hand carder with oatmeal wool fiber on it, and above it a clear plastic bag from World of Wool with Blue Faced Leicester wool and an empty hand carder on a white towel. — I also used undyed Oatmeal Blue Faced Leicester fiber, a lovely natural colour.

At the bottom, a hand carder with natural grey wool fiber on it. On the right a second empty hand carder, and on its left a plastic bag from World of Wool with natural grey Merino wool in it. All resting on a white towel. — And natural light grey Merino wool from World of Wool, oh, so soft!

I wanted the ropes to look a bit like brain convolutions, because we are talking about thoughts here, but to also hint to movement and paths. I wanted them to have a rhythm and I tried to give them rhythm both by their colour and by their position and the shape I made with them on the background.

On a bubble wrap and white towel there is a work in progress with a natural white wool background and some cords in neutral colors and green strips on it in fluid shapes. — I kept putting my just prepared wet and soaped cords on the wet and soaped background trying out different positions for them. I wanted darker colours in the bottom part and mostly white in the upper part.

A detail of the work in progress of wet felted wool cords in light brown, natural white, oatmeal brown and light grey on a natural white wool background. — I am reminded of some of the doodles that I used to draw while at school on spare paper, intertwining shapes within shapes..

I am afraid that I did not take many more photos while making the ropes, as I realised that I was very late in my schedule and I had to get on with it if I wanted to finish not too late. Anyway, I can tell you that it took me ages, and I was soon scratching my head about why I had thought that could be a quick job! I also found it soooo boring, apart from the short time that I was actually putting the cords in place (that was fun). Making cords is a pretty repetitive task, especially if you have only 4 colour options.

I wanted the circular movement to be resolved and maybe broken by the green strips, in the same way a plant can grow out of a seed or of soil, forced out by all the life of the soil and part of it at the same time. The green parts feel very positive, and they are reaching out from the closed circles to make a movement that is fluid but not circular, or not only circular, extending from the inside towards the outside of the circle, and from in to up.

That thought made me think about plants growing, and our own growing: it felt very fitting at this time in my life and in my family life to be thinking about growing, in relation to myself, to my family and to any individual, and as an abstract concept relating to all life on earth both in a physical and spiritual sense. Here, I found the right title for this finished piece: ‘Growing’.

That gave me the idea for adding a small lime tree seed pod that I had picked and kept for a while in my drawer of bits and bobs: I particularly like that tree, and I felt that it fits very well in this work. It also helped filling the upper white bit with a meaning and a small point of colour.

In the middle of white wool cords, a small dark brown lime tree seed pod. — Here it is, my lime tree seed pod.

'Growing' by Kiki Peruzzi circular artwork in progress on a bubble wrap and a white towel. — This is a photo of the composition before rubbing: I just wanted to make sure to have it, so I could check if anything had moved after the rubbing.

I used my Makita sander to rub everything horizontally, vertically and diagonally: I thought that it was going to take a lot of time to felt the cords and the strips in, but it was actually quite easy, possibly because I used the same type of wool for the cords as for the background?

Then I rolled the work a few times in all directions, being careful not to be too rough with it: I was very worried about the seed pod, but all went well and it withstood the rinsing as well.

Growing, a felted artwork by Kiki Peruzzi, a circular shape in white, grey, oatmeal and light brown, and green wool. — This is the work finished. i like the fact that the folds seem very organic, I took care not to bother too much about getting cords of the same size and regular, so as to have a lot of differences among parts of the composition.

Detail of artwork in wetfelted wool, made of wet felted ropes in white grey, oatmeal and light brown, and green strips. With a small light brown seed pod on the left of the image. — The seed pod came out lighter because of the washing: I think that I will remove it and add a new darker one instead, sewing it in. The cords on the right need a bit of fixing with a needle, I think.

A detail of the left bottom part of the felt artwork 'Growing' by Kiki Peruzzi, with many wet felted cords in white, light grey, oatmela, light brown and strips of pre felt in different greens. — Another detail of the convolutions in ‘Growing’.

You will maybe notice that there are a few cords not well attached in the right upper part: I will need to needle felt them a bit, to make sure that they stay put, but I have not gone around to do that yet!

As to the green bits that I used, I liked how they felted in. They were left-overs from the Christmas card exchange 2024: I am glad that I prepared more pre felt than I actually needed, you never know. I have a lot more ready to use in other projects.

I hope that you like ‘Growing’ as is, because, though I had thought about making a second work to pair with it, I do not think that I will want to make many more cords, at least not right now!

A work in progress. Felted collar in Merino wool and mulberry silk.

My last part of 2024: what I have been up to

January 20, 2025 kikistextileart Comments 11 comments

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.

A rectangular wet felted abstract work by Kiki Peruzzi. Its background is brilliant white and the organic shapes and lines on it are bright yellow, orange, royal blue, grey and black. — Finished! A good sized (70×37 cm or 27,5 x 14,5 inches) wet felted work in bright colours. I used a silk handkerchief for the yellow organic shape in the upper left part, orange locks, white undyed eri silk and bits of blue left-over prefelt with mulberry silk. All the rest is Merino wool.

A hand is holding a wet felted work where there are some straight black stitches and a threaded needle. — Hand-stitching the work without a frame: I do not like using embroidery frames!

Detail of the abstract felt work by Kiki Peruzzi, upper left part, with a yellow organic shape on the left, a bright blue circle on the bottom right, a bright orange shape in the upper center and a bright orange irregular line on the center right. Bright blue diagonal line and black diagonal line in the lower center, and silk white irregular lines marked by black stitching in the lower left and upper right parts. Some lines and a semicircle in black thread on the yellow organic shape. — Details of the stitching in the upper left part of the work. I also used black thread to underline and make the shiny white eri silk pop-out.

Upper left corner of a wet felted work by Kiki Peruzzi. There are organic shapes in yellow and grey on a white background, a light blue and a grey smudgy shapes in the yellow one, black orange and white lines intersect the shapes and space. There are black thread stitches underlining white silk slim rectangles. — Detail of the upper left part of the work.

Details of the right side of the rectangular artwork in felt by Kiki Peruzzi. There is a royal blue circle in the upper central part, close to a small black smudged circle and a small yellow organic shape. There are grey smudges on the left side, an orange lock on the left bottom part, and three white eri silk and black stitches vertical lines in the lower central and right side. There are a small black and white circle between the second and third white vertical lines and a small orange organic shape. — Detail of the right side of the work.

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.

Work in progress of a wet felted artwork by Kiki Peruzzi. There is wool laid out in a rectangular shape on bubble wrap and white towel on a table, and a wooden chair and a vase of red flowers are in the background. — This is the only photo that I have taken of the process for this artwork, as I did not want to bother about social media right then, but I wanted to just make some felt for myself. You can spot the natural red eri silk bag from World of Wool: I love that colour!

Wet felted artwork 'Power' by Kiki Peruzzi on a white wall. It is a rectangle in grey as background, with circular lines in purple, violet, plum and reddish brown and yellow creating a vortex and straight lines in reddish orange eri silk seemingly originating from the center and expanding out of it. — This is the finished result. I called it ‘Power’ because I was thinking about the power that is within us and our creative power, but also about how lack of control/power can make us feel, and I had pretty ambivalent feelings about it all.

I was pretty satisfied with that one, but not as much with this, that also uses unusual colours and silk handkerchiefs:

A wet felted abstract artwork by Kiki Peruzzi on a white wall. Its background is grey. There are lines in different pinks, blue, white rose fiber, purple and a few wisps of black. Light plum silk hankies make semitransparent organic shapes on the lines, in the bottom,and in the central right side of the work. — Merino wool, silk hankies, rose fiber and tussah silk. Well, I do not know, what can I say, it was just for exploring different things, but I did not feel confident enough to go out of my comfort zone that much.

Detail of Kiki Peruzzi's felted artwork. A white rose fiber wisp in the center, among pinks and blues, with a few black accents. — A detail with rose fiber prominent: I find rose fiber very similar to eri silk for shininess and very easy to felt in. It is still too expensive, though.

Detail of Kiki Peruzzi's artwork, with light pink and blue lines on a grey background. — A different detail, with lighter pinks and blues.

Detail of Kiki Peruzzi's felted artwork, with purple pink and purple lines and a pink hankie layered over them. — Another detail with more purple and the silk hankie visible.

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!

A drawing in felt tip pens of an abstract Christmas tree made with rectangular green shapes piled up, circular red shapes as baubles, and a yellow triangle as point. — First design of an abstract Christmas tree. I really liked it.

A drawing of an abstract Christmas tree made with red circles on a background made of lines in different greens. — Second design: mh, maybe all those circles are a bit too chaotic?

A drawing of an abstract Christmas tree made of green horizontal lines, with different colored circles all over it to represent the baubles. The background is grey and light blue horizontal lines. — The third idea: mh, it is more colourful, but definitely more confused. My friend liked the colours, but I was not convinced by it.

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.

On white paper with a drawing in felt tip pens there are strips of pre felt in different greens. — Trying out the position of the prefelt rectangles on 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:

An abstract Christmas tree shape in felt on a white background. — My tree looks good but is lacking for some bling! It is a bit on the right side, because I originally was thinking about writing or hand stitching something on the left side, but then decided against it.

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.

A felt tip pens drawing on white paper. There is an abstract robin in white, grey, orange and brown on a green branch with leaves. — First design for the robin. Trying to keep it to very basic shapes and lines.

An abstract drawing of a robin on a green branch with felt tip pens. — Second drawing: mh, simplifying the shapes a bit too much now? But I like the red berries and a bit more leaves.

A third drawing of an abstract robin on a green branch with red berries. — Third try: mh, no, I do not like it. Sure, the head is less abstract so you can see the bird more, but no, I do not think so.

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.

On bubble wrap and white towel, there is a white felt background with strips and shapes in felt and wool and fabric to make an abstract robin on a branch. — Composing all the bits on the white prefelt background: I loved the fact that I could use small bits of fabric and prefelt left overs from other projects to make the snow of the background more interesting and for the branch and leaves and berries. I also included a repurposed vegetable net that was compostable on the bottom part. For the robin’s body, I used a scrap of fabric from a scarf, and of course the orange BFL locks that I was dying to use.

A wet felted small work with a white background. There is an abstract robin on a green branch with red berries. — The robin after felting and after adding some stitches for its beak, its eye, the round body shape, and the leaves and branch.

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.

A small felt pouch is being held by a hand. The image on it is a stylized robin on a branch. — This is the finished robin side.

A small felt pouch is held by a hand. There is an abstract Christmas tree depicted on it. — The finished tree side with the hand stitching.

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.

A work in progress. Black Merino wool and bright wisps of silk in green red and purple on bubble wrap and a white towel. — Before the wetting: all the colours are very bright.

A finished felt collar in black Merino wool and green red and purple silk on a wooden table. — The much muted end result.

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!

A work in progress of a small needle felted orange pumpkin on a small foam mat on a table. — Adding a stalk and finishing touches to my pumpkin.

A needle felted orange pumpkin is resting on a windowsill close to two plant vases. — And here it is finished.

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

Side of a felt bowl in blue and with yellowish natural eri silk vertical wisps. — This is the side, with natural off-white eri silk vertical irregular vertical lines.

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!

A blue felted bowl with a red yarn couched on it in a spiral shape — Hypnotising spiral!

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!

A felt bag in grey Merino wool with horizontal decorative stripes in bright colors on this side, on a wooden table.

A wetfelted carry-all bag

November 19, 2024 kikistextileart Comments 14 comments

I keep having life interfering with my felting time, so I have not had much time to felt bigger things lately, but it is that time of the year when we need to start planning for Christmas gifts!

I would like to look with you at a wet felting project that I made almost exactly one year ago, when I had a bit more time to create bigger things that could serve as nice gifts: a big carry-all bag that I gave to my friend. She has kids and kids have activities to go to, where they need to have plenty of stuff, from towels and swimming suits to snacks and water bottles. Felt seems to me very good for that kind of carry-alls, because it is germ and water resistant,and generally life resistant as well.

First of all, I was thinking about size: I was going to use some big bamboo handles that I had bought at a good price, so its size and shape should be the right one for the handles.

I cut a resist from bubblewrap and put my big handles against it to gauge the right size and shape, always taking shrinkage of the final felt into account.

A transparent plastic bubble wrap gets cut by scissors on a white towel. — Cutting a piece of bubblewrap for resist.

A piece of plastic bubblewrap is on a white towel, and there are two bamboo handles on the upper side of the bubble wrap resist. — Checking for size and shape with the bamboo handles.

I wanted to have an internal lining to the bag, thinking about future rough use, as I was planning to make the felt with my usual Merino wool, which is not the toughest of the wool types (but I just love it, and I will use it as much as possible).

I took out my stash of scarves for felting and found one that I liked for lining the bag and that I thought will felt in very well from past experience, as I hate hand sewing and I wanted to be able to nuno felt the fabric into the wool to give it more structure: I think that it must be a wool based fabric, although I do not know for sure, as it did not have a label when I bought it at a charity shop. It is a cream scarf with teal edges with tassels.

A plastic bubble wrap resist is on an up-cycled white and aquamarine scarf and there are scissors in the foreground. — Measuring up the fabric from the scarf against the resist for cutting.

An off-white piece of fabric in the shape of a bag on bubble wrap and a white towel. — My cream woolen fabric cut and laid out on the resist.

I planned to have two internal pockets, one on each side of the bag, so I laid out my pockets before laying out the lining.

Pre-felted shapes in white green orange and red as decoration for a pocket are laid out on a bubble wrap on a white towel. — Decoration for the first pocket laid out upside down.

Starting to lay out merino wool fibers in dark grey for the first pocket on the decorative pre-felted shapes. — I laid out dark grey wool fibers on my decorative prefelt shapes (coming from previous works) to make the first pocket.

Then I put the first lining fabric shape and started on the serious job of laying my first layer of Merino wool.

A rectangle of laid out dark grey Merino wool fiber on bubblewrap and an old white towel. — Shaping the pocket with a very basic layout in grey Merino wool.

A rectangular lay out of dark grey Merino wool with three layers of fiber, on a bubble wrap and a white towel. — A few layers afterwards, I am almost ready to wet the pocket.

On the foreground in the right side there is a white spray bottle, in the center there is a rectangular lay out of dark grey Merino wool being wet by the spray bottle. The background is a white towel covered by bubble wrap. — Wetting the future pocket, because I will have to cover it in bubble wrap next.

I covered the laid out wool with a piece of bubble wrap, so that a pocket would remain…well, that was the plan, but I did not think it properly and the bubble wrap was a tad too big, and the pocket did not come out as I wanted properly attached to the side of the bag, so I had to work on it a lot more than I was expecting!

A rectangular piece of bubble wrap is on the grey wool of the future pocket. On white towel and bubble wrap. — My future pocket with the bubble wrap on it. You can see that the wool does not edge it properly.

Anyway, then I put my lining on the pocket and started laying out the whole side of my bag.

A cream fabric shape is on the smaller grey pocket shape on a white towel with bubble wrap. — The cream lining is barely distinguishable on the white towel, but it is there!

Now, to the actual laying out of my bag!

I wanted a neutral background, as I was planning to use plenty of colours as decoration, so I opted for a lighter grey Merino wool, of which I had plenty just at that moment, due to a lucky mistake in ordering (I had ordered it twice! Never mind, I used it a lot afterwards.).

A clear plastic bag full of light grey merino wool on a black chair. — I had ordered something like 600 grams of light grey Merino wool…

Fine, back to work: I laid out my layers starting from the edges of the fabric shape and then going towards the center. I chose a plain horizontal-vertical pattern for my layers, nothing fancy, and I laid out my wool a bit thicker than I would in finer objects such as scarves.

In the foreground on the left a hand with grey Merino wool in it. On the background in the center, an horizontal and a vertical line of grey Merino wool on a cream fabric, on a white towel with bubble wrap. — Starting to lay out the edges of the first side.

Grey Merino wool cover the edges of a cream fabric shape on a white towel with bubble wrap. — The edges are almost finished for the first layer on this side.

A first layer of grey Merino wool is partially covering a cream shape on a white towel. — Laying out the rest of the wool in a plain horizontal pattern for the first layer.

A shape all covered in grey Merino wool in horizontal pattern. — That is my first layer on this side.

A shape covered in grey Merino wool, some wisps of wool are laid vertically over the ones laid horizontally. — Starting on the second layer, a vertical layout this time.

A shape covered in grey Merino wool laid vertically, with a few wisps of wool laid horizontally. — Third layer on this side, laid horizontally.

A shape all covered in grey Merino wool on a white towel and bubble wrap. — Last layer done on the first side.

Having laid my wool pretty thickly, I decided to stop there, and to go on and wet, soap and lightly rub the first side, to avoid having hidden dry areas once the second side was on.

A transparent netting is placed over a shape covered in wet Merino wool, on a white towel and bubble wrap. — And on to a light wetting, soaping and rubbing with a bit of netting.

Then, I turned over the first side and started working on the second side.

A shape in grey wet Merino wool covered by bubble wrap on a white towel and bubble wrap. — Oh Oh, how does it look my pocket from here? It seemed fine.

Right, where were we? the second pocket of course! Now, I paused for a while, trying to figure out that one as well: I always have some head scratching when trying to work backwards, I always feel pretty dense, because it takes me ages to work it out, and I often make mistakes.

Prefelted colorful shapes on a bubblewrap over a shape covered in grey Merino wool on a white towel with bubble wrap. — Prefelt shapes again from my stash, for the decoration of my second pocket.

A small dark grey rectangular shape in Merino wool over a bubble wrap covering a bigger grey Merino wool shape. — And here is my second pocket.

Then, of course, I had to put the second small rectangular piece of bubble wrap for the second pocket to open…well, guess what (picture embarassed face palm here) I forgot! So, basically, afterwards I was looking for a non-existing bubble wrap inside the felt, then glanced at the chair and had a laughing moment of recognition (oh, oh, what are you doing there?? you should be in my bag! I have been looking for you for ten minutes, torturing and puncturing the side!). I mean, there must be something with me and pockets, I do not know, I always have to pay extra attention to their crafting, and still most of the time something goes wrong and I have to rework them at the end.

Well, I blithely went on with the cream lining fabric, folding on it all the edges from the other side, so as not to lay my edges too thick with layers from the second side.

Cream lining fabric laid on a grey Merino wool shape, on a white towel with bubble wrap. — The lining is laid and the edges from the other side are all folded towards the center.

I added my layers of Merino wool mirroring the other side and careful not to put too much wool on the edges.

And then, the best part of all, decoration time!

I had already decided that I wanted colours colours colours. OK, but which ones? I took out the brightest from my stash, and tried a few combinations until I found the ones that I liked best for this project. I decided to lay out wisps of the various colours in a modern horizontal pattern on this second side. I reasoned that my big carry-all bag would have needed a bigger bottom, so I decided to leave the bottom third of the bag without decoration. I left my bright lines go over the left and right edges only a bit, because I was planning to change decoration pattern on the other side (because, why not?)

Bright and colorful wisps of Merino wool on horizontally laid out on a grey Merino wool shape, on a white towel with bubble wrap. — A colourful decorative layer for my bag.

I wet and soaped and lightly rubbed this second side and turned over the bag to decorate the other side as well.

A Merino wool shape in grey and horizontal bright stripes is wet, on a white towel with bubble wrap. — Wet but not soaped or rubbed yet. Bizzarre, isn’t it?

A grey Merino wool shape with a decorative layer of vertical wisps of bright colored wool, on a white towel with bubble wrap. — And here is the first side with vertical decorative layer in the same colours of the other side, on two thirds of the height.

Wetting, soaping and rubbing accomplished on this side as well, I started quite a while of rolling on all directions.

A rolled up white towel with elastic bands on a white towel. — I usually read on my ebook reader or listen to podcasts or songs while rolling for an extensive time.

When I stopped after a bit to open up the pockets after I felt the wool had started to shrink, I found out that one of the pockets was not properly attached and the other..was totally attached! Argh, pockets!

Never mind, I got into recovery mode, and managed to salvage the badly attached one, by first needle-felting its edges, then also stitching them with hidden stitches.

I finished the rolling and felting, trying to go on fulling a little bit longer than my usual, because I wanted a good proper felt.

A felt bag with a grey background and colorful vertical stripes on one side, on a wooden table. — And here is the dried felt bag, side A.

Lastly, I stitched the bamboo handles on it, using the two flaps that I had designed into the resist for that purpose.

A felt carry-all bag with loop bamboo handles is held at the center. In the background a white wall and part of a felt painting. — The carry-all with the handles, side B.

A felt carry-all bag is held by its loop bamboo handles. In the background a white wall and part of a felt painting. — And this is side A finished.

I put a small bag of Christmas needle felted baubles in it and gifted it to my friend, who was very surprised by finding it on her door one evening right before Christmas holidays.

I enjoyed the making of this bag, and especially the gifting of it, and I hope that my friend made good use of it.

I hope that it will inspire your coming Christmas season gifts as well.

Felting and Fiber Studio

An International Collective of Felt and Fiber Artists

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Author: kikistextileart

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