Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork

Repurposing and Card Making

January 8, 2025 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 20 comments

Around mid-November I was rummaging in a chest of drawers trying to create space for visitors to store their clothes, while also thinking about making some felt Christmas cards to sell at various events. I came across a scarf I’d felted more than 10 years ago and never done anything with.

‘Hmmm…..’ I thought. ‘This is taking up space and I’ll never wear it.’

Why not? Firstly, I can’t wear wool next to my skin. I find it way too prickly/itchy. And secondly, I didn’t like how it had felted. You could almost see the little thought bubble appear above my head: “I wonder if I could make some Christmas cards out of this?”

The scarf didn’t fit the bill for a traditional Christmassy look, but that’s one of the things that appealed to me about it.

Let’s first go back to the scarf-making, in April / March 2014. No, I’m not an exceptional record-keeper, I just have a lot of photos on my phone and happily they’re all automatically dated.

I started off with a bright orange silk scarf I’d found in a charity shop. It was what I think of as raw silk: soft and loosely woven. I wasn’t even sure it would felt well but, foolish as I was in those days, it didn’t occur to me to make a sample, I just ploughed on optimistically.

I decided to add shapes in bright rainbow colours so made a big sheet of multi-coloured merino wool light prefelt, broadly following the colours of the rainbow.

I cut circular shapes out of it and laid them along the scarf, still following the rainbow sequence. I laid orange merino round the edges and set about felting it.

When it was finished, I wasn’t very pleased with it. The silk was unstructured and flimsy and it seemed to hang wrongly. I don’t think that type of raw silk works well as a base for felting, certainly not on its own. I didn’t take a photo of it.

I left it for a while and came back to it about a year later. I thought maybe felting a solid wool layer on the reverse might improve the hang and structure. I felted 2 layers of white merino onto the back. Now it was firmer but a bit too stiff and still didn’t hang well, but in a different way. I just wasn’t happy with it.

That’s the point at which I gave up on it and popped it into a drawer. Since then it’s been shunted around but I’ve never decided what to do with it…..until now.

On to the card making. I decided simple triangular tree shapes might be nice for festive cards so I made myself a little tree template and set about the scarf with my rotary cutter.

Cutting up the scarf to make triangle tree shapes

For the first few cards I refelted all the cut edges of each triangle. This was nice, but took quite a long time both to do and to dry, so I decided to go with raw edges: it didn’t make a lot of difference to the appearance and it certainly speeded up the making. I cut out some different card and paper backgrounds, glued them onto cards, stuck the trees to the backgrounds and drew a stem and decorative dot on top of each tree. Mostly I used acrylic pens but where I didn’t have a suitable colour I used other permanent markers. Here’s the first batch.

Some of the triangles were a little plain and, as I had my acrylic pens out, I decided to do a bit of doodling. I admit, I was rather enjoying myself by this stage. Perhaps I got a bit carried away (some of the trees started to look like pizza slices)!

I grouped the trees into threes, choosing ones that had three different colours on them wherever possible. I found some bright pre-cut papers and chose the nearest colours to the trees in each group. Then I swapped them around so that each tree was on a background that matched one of the others in its group. I finished off by swapping the colours again for the dots and stems.

Here’s a close up. The trees have green, purple and turquoise on them. I picked out the matching papers, put the lime green tree on the purple paper, the turquoise tree on the green paper and purple tree on the turquoise paper. Then I finished off with the dot and stem in the third colour that wasn’t on the tree or background paper.

It’s hard to describe just how much I was enjoying myself, though some of that may be because I was almost certainly supposed to be doing something boring like cleaning or tidying up.

I did sell some of the cards and sent a few too. They’re not the best cards I’ve ever made but I did enjoy making them and was happy to have repurposed a scarf that didn’t really work. I still have plenty of felt scarf left so I may do something else with it in the future.

A little later, I made some other cards that I liked better and that sold really well.

In my charity shop moochings I recently found a really beautiful, large hand-marbled silk scarf. It was way more expensive than anything I normally buy. I’m normally in the £2 – £4 range for a silk scarf and this was £8.50. However, it really was big and interesting and I was intrigued as to how well it would felt. So, I splashed the cash. The marbled dyes sit on the surface of the fabric so I wondered how well the wool fibres would penetrate the silk. Age and experience do have their advantages: this time I made a small sample to make sure it felted well, which it did.

I cut out a long rectangle of merino and silk prefelt and laid a section of the scarf full length along it, flush with the edge of one long side and covering half of the width. Sorry, I forgot to take a photo so I here’s a quick sketch, literally on the back of an envelope.

Once it was felted and dry, I cut it into thin strips ready for printing. I’d found a royalty-free image of a plain green fir tree and, using photoshop elements, dotted it with robins to look like baubles. I printed the images on heat transfer paper, then, using my heat press, printed a tree on some of the strips. I stuck the strips to long cards and this was the result. Not as much fun to make as the other cards but I do like the result better.

8 ‘Robins’ cards above and a close up of one of them, below

On the remaining strips, I printed an image of a friend’s cat, to which I’d added (in photoshop) a Santa hat. I had six felt strips for the cat but one didn’t print properly which left me with five. I thought I’d better save one to send to the cat owner and was going to offer the other four for sale but my cat-owning friend decided he’d like to send the cards, so bought all four. There are lots of cat and dog lovers around so maybe I’ll make some of those next year. What do you think?

Four ‘Layla’ cards above and a close up below

While I was on a roll, I repeated the process using an animal print scarf and a blue patterned scarf to make some cards that are not season-specific. People do seem to like this type of design and quite a few say they or the recipients will cut them out to make a bookmark or just put the card in a frame. The horse chestnut is from a painting my Mum did, the honesty was composed from some photos I’d taken, the ferns were from a royalty-free image I found online and the birds are all from photos of my previous large felt pictures.

I know I’ve said it more than once before but I do love a bit of fabric re-purposing, whether second-hand or from a failed project.

Fun with Sauna Hats

November 9, 2024 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 23 comments

About 18 months ago (my, doesn’t time fly?) my friend Duncan, who had recently built a sauna in his garden, asked if I could advise him on making felt sauna hats for him and his wife. This was the first time I’d heard of such a thing (I’m not a big sauna fan) so I asked him to tell me about them and I did a bit of research to understand what was required.

Duncan had already bought some Jacob wool prefelt for the hats. He was going to try following some online wet felting videos but he couldn’t find precisely what he needed and was starting to realise it might be a bit tricky so he asked me to help.

The prefelt was the first challenge. I don’t make garments, partly because I can’t wear wool at all, and partly because I suppose I’m just more interested in other things like pictures, sculptures and homewares. So, I’d never made a hat, but if I did, I would use wool tops/rovings or batts, not prefelt. One of the challenges of creating a 3-dimensional item using a resist is getting a good smooth and even finish. If you don’t wrap the wool tightly around the resist edges, and spend a long time working those edges, coaxing the wool to fit snugly around the resist and firming the edges thoroughly in the early stages, you end up with a visible ridge of thicker felt where the resist edges were. Basically, some wool gets pushed off the edges of the resist and the two sides of your piece felt together along that line, creating a ridge. With prefelt you are adding joining together pieces of ‘fabric’ into the mix, which makes getting a smooth and even finish even more of a challenge.

In my studio I made a small sample – to see how I’d go about joining the prefelt. I didn’t have any of Duncan’s prefelt so I used some white commercially produced prefelt that was to hand. I think it was 80% merino wool and 20% silk.

I drew a rather random bell-shape for the resist. Then I cut one half of the prefelt larger than the resist and the second half smaller. I thought this would give me the best join without it being too thick.

I cut slits into the larger half to help it fit over the resist’s curved lines

I then worked it in the normal way, paying special attention to those tricky edges. Here’s the finished item, and a shot each of the ‘hat’ with my hand and with the resist for scale.

I was pretty pleased: even felt, nice smooth finish with no ridges. A sauna hat any smallish mammal might be proud to wear.

And then, well, life sort of got in the way and we never quite got round to making the hats. Recently, Duncan and I got talking sauna hat making again and I was appalled that 18 months had gone by. Happily we found a mutually convenient day last week and set about our delayed hat project.

The 18 months delay turned out to have added a couple of additional issues. Firstly, moths had got to Duncan’s Jacob prefelt and there were quite a few holes in it. Secondly, I’d forgotten a couple of the things I’d decided/done when making the practice piece.

As I hadn’t used the Jacob prefelt before, I suggested we make a 20cm square sample to give Duncan a very quick first lesson in wet felting and to check the shrinkage.

We measured Duncan’s head, made some decisions about how he broadly wanted the hat to fit and I made some calculations. We’d got 35% shrinkage in the sample but I could see it would have been possible to get more and I wanted a good firm felt. It was also clear that this hat is supposed to fit quite loosely so I rounded the measurements up a bit.

I drew the resist and rechecked my calculations. It really did look huge.

Undeterred we set about cutting out the prefelt with one half larger and the other half smaller than the resist. We also partially felted a scrap of the prefelt to make a hanging hoop – leaving the ends unworked so they would attach to the hat

We wetted the ends of the larger half and folded them over the resist but then I decided it was probably better to wrap the tabbed ends over the other half of the prefelt rather than the resist.

I’m not sure it made a lot of difference which side was laid out first but I did miss out one important step that I taken with the sample. With the sample I had torn and fluffed out the edges of the prefelt where they joined to give a smoother join. I forgot about that and although the final hat was fine, it did have a thicker section at the join that I could have minimized with tearing rather than cutting the edges of the prefelt. If I made another, I’d rethink that bit.

Duncan chose minimal surface decoration so added a spray of assorted autumn-coloured locks to one side. And here are both sides as the work gets underway. You can see the loop has been added to the top (a bit off-centre!) and yes, that white spot on the plain side is a moth hole that we missed when first patching bits in.

When we got to the rolling stage, it still looked huge.

We laughed. A LOT. I was a little worried I’d got the measurements / calculations wrong. But only a little. This was mainly experimentation. If I’d been teaching I’d have made at least one full scale hat and with the right prefelt beforehand. Honest!

Here’s Duncan happily rolling away. I usually use a pool noodle to roll the work around but I’d forgotten to take one and just bubble wrap seemed to work OK.

Duncan kept trying it on and we kept laughing. Happily though, it was getting smaller.

You can see the progress we were making against the resist.

When it was time for me to go home this was as far as we’d got. The sauna hat needed a little more work to finish it off: some final fulling and shaping but I think it was looking pretty good. And Duncan was delighted with it, which is the main thing. We’d worked about 6 hours in total minus a brief (but delicious) lunch break but that included making the shrinkage sample and some faffing around making decisions and dealing with moth holes. I made sure Duncan knew how to finish it off and left him to it.

I was amazed the next morning to see that the previous evening he’d actually set about the second hat and had made excellent progress.

Duncan worked a couple more hours on the hats and here’s the happy couple modelling their sauna hats. They’ve already been used and apparently work really well keeping your head cool so you can stay a little longer in the sauna.

I asked Duncan how he’d found it. Firstly, he said it was a really fun day. Knowing nothing about it previously, he’d found it an interesting and mindful activity. He was also surprised at how very long it takes. I think that’s true of everyone who first tries wet-felting.

I really enjoyed it too. I realised that I’d never previously jointly felted anything with another person. If I’m teaching it’s more demonstration, coaching and checking on my part, with the students doing the work. As this was quite a big undertaking, I demonstrated on the hat, Duncan did most of the grafting but I did join in sometimes either to give him a break, to see how things were going or just to share the load. It was certainly big enough in the rubbing phase for us both to work on it at the same time.

It was also a reminder, though, not to let 18 months to lapse between making a sample and making the final piece and not to make something for the first time with too little preparation, unless it’s with a friend and for fun.

I don’t think my future lies in hat-making but I did enjoy trying it out. Have you tried something new recently? We’d love to hear about it.

The Mother of Invention

September 5, 2024 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 18 comments

There’s a proverb I like: “necessity is the mother of invention”. Apparently it started with Plato. I’m going to test it today in two ways. Firstly, I’ve had a lot of sales and exhibitions recently and I haven’t made much new work. I’m writing this while stewarding an exhibition. So, as my blog is due and I’ve nothing new to show you (necessity), I’m drawing on some work I did earlier in the year and reflecting on that (invention). Secondly, it was actually the need to create a lot of pictures quickly (necessity) that led me down the different style of pictures (invention) that I’m going to talk about.

As I’ve covered in previous blogs, I had a large exhibition to fill in April/May this year so had a big push from January to March to make lots of new pictures. As all wet felters will know, wet felting is not a quick process and there’s no mileage in trying to hurry it. So, as well as making my usual style of pictures, I had a think about the quickest felt pictures I could make while not skimping on the quality of the felting. Quicker pictures would also allow me to offer them at a slightly lower price than my other work.

Nuno felting (which is including fabric in felt) with patterned fabric is a quick way of creating colour and pattern as it bypasses complicated and time-consuming wool layout. And now that I can print onto felt (again covered in a previous blog) that’s a comparatively quick way of introducing images.

This was my first picture.

Square wet felted picture with patterned grey fabric on the lower half, two blown trees towards the top left on a white background with wisps of grey cloud in the white sky — “Monochrome Tree #1”

The fabric was a lovely fine wool scarf that I had bought (as always) in a charity shop. I have the solid beech frames made for me in batches in advance so I knew what size I was aiming for. I used a commercial prefelt of merino wool and silk – again trying to minimise the layout time and it’s also lovely to work with. There are plenty of legitimate, free-to-use images on the internet. Sourcing, scaling, printing and transferring them to felt is quite time consuming, especially as I only planned on using each tree once for this first set of pictures, but I’m sure I will come back to them.

Two square wet felted pictures similar to the previous one but without the clouds and with a dark line at the top of the fabric — Monochrome Tree #2

For the next (and subsequent) ones I decided to make them slightly smaller than the frames, leaving a small border around the felt. I added a line of recycled tapestry wool at the top of the fabric, just because I liked the look of it, and decided against patterning the sky.

I then fished out some black and white silk scarves from my charity shop finds and used those instead of the wool scarf.

Square wet felted picture similar to the previous ones but with a crow shape in the top left hand side of the tree. Swirly grey and white fabric — Monochrome Tree #4 with crow

square wet felted picture similar to the previous ones but with patchy lined fabric — Monochrome Tree #4 with crow

I added a crow silhouette in the tree on the left picture. A bit fiddly but I liked it.

Square wet felted picture similar to the previous ones, using the same fabric as #4 but with two trees instead of one — Monochrome Tree #6 Two Trees

Square wet felted picture similar to the previous ones but with a flowery patterned black and white fabric — Monochrome Tree #6 Two Trees

My next experiment was to switch from black and white to coloured silk, tapestry wool and trees.

Square wet felted picture similar to the previous ones but with yellow and green patterned fabric and a green tree. — Green Tree #1

square wet felted picture similar to the previous picture but with a different shape of tree — Green Tree #1

When I was printing on Green Tree #1 I accidentally pressed a fold in the corner. It came out with a hot iron but I didn’t remember to photograph it again afterwards.

After I’d made these two, it occurred to me that I could double the width of the wool and fabric to make two pictures at the same time, cutting them apart before printing on the trees. Why hadn’t I thought of that sooner? Super-speedy.

Continuing with the limited colour palate, I chose a silk scarf that was red / orange with some colour fade across the scarf.

rectangular wet felted fabric with orange / red silk felted in, covering just over the bottom half of the fabric. There's a variegated line of red/orange wool yarn felted across the join between the silk and the white wool background. — After felting and before printing

When the felting was finished I wasn’t sure I liked how much the white fibres showed through the red / orange silk. The previous fabrics had either been partly white or were light coloured so the movement of the white wool and silk fibres through the fabric had been less visible.

As I contemplated this, I decided that I liked the long rectangular shape for a change. I happened to have some frames that were more or less the same shape and proportions….and so “Red Trees” became a double-width landscape with two trees.

Rectangular wet felted picture as in the previous image but with two orange/red trees printed in the top left of the felt with the bottom of each trunk touching the yarn line as if growing from there — “Red Trees”

That wasn’t where I thought I was heading but it’s fun to take an unexpected turn,

I have now sold more than half of these pictures, and I’d say they’ve sold slightly better than other work. I’m a little ambivalent about this. I like the new pictures but I don’t feel as much for them as my usual bird, beach and/or water pictures. I suppose that shouldn’t matter. They have definitely attracted a slightly different audience. When I get back into the studio I will be making some more. Not because of their speed as I’m not now under the same pressure, but because people seem to like them and I’ve enjoyed trying something new. I think I will stick to the monochrome fabrics but try out some different colours. Having a group of different strong colours like the red and green might make a good display.

And so, it seems, on this occasion, that necessity was indeed the mother of invention. I made a new line of work and I have a blog to post!

Travel Inspiration (& a little bit of felting)

July 8, 2024 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 14 comments

For various reasons, I’ve not done much felt-making recently and I’m now in the very fortunate position of finding myself on holiday / vacation in California when this post is due. So, I’m going to talk about some of the creatively-inspiring things I’ve seen while I’ve been here, and then show you a little felting I’ve done as a result.

As I’ve been on holiday I’ve been looking at and mulling over some of the things around me that I find inspiring when I’m deciding what to felt. Visiting California, these have fallen broadly into three categories: coastal, botanical & textile.

COASTAL

For the first week, I was staying in Redono Beach, just south of Los Angeles, so there was an obvious coastal connection. As I walked along the beach each morning I looked at the ocean and things that were washed up at the water’s edge.

I found two “sand dollars” (actually skeletons of flat, burrowing sea urchins) which were beautifully patterned so popped them in my pocket for further consideration.

Left & bottom the 2 sand dollars I found

There was lots of interesting sea weed – I quite fancy wet felting some sea weed – though you’ll be glad to hear I didn’t pocket that.

Branched seaweed on a sandy beach — Seaweed that looks like a small tree with roots

A big pile of ribbon-like seaweed — A pile of seaweed

And I found the usual bits of shell, pebble & sea creatures. Plus a nice view of a little egret

An empty piece of shellfish shell on a sandy beach — A piece of a shellfish or crab

A little egret at Redondo beach

BOTANICALS

Around LA there were some lovely plants & trees. I found the bark of some trees and stems of cacti or succulents in Huntington Botanical Gardens especially intriguing.

These could inspire some really interesting 3D felt pieces.

I also loved these bougainvillea at the Getty Center. Metal rods support or encourage the plant to grow up inside their structure, then the stems, with their bright pink bracts & tiny white flowers, cascade out of the top looking like giant bunches of flowers. I think there’s a felted vase idea in there somewhere.

I gathered these in the garden of the next house we rented in the country near Solvang. I’ve wet felted seed pods, including eucalyptus, before. It was interesting to see the remains of the flowers on the tree on little green pods, then (I assume) the dried version, followed by the matured pods.

Flowers & seed pods, eucalyptus

Maybe I’ll do some more eucalyptus pods some time.

TEXTILES

Also at the Getty Centre was this bust of a Sudanese man by Charles Cordier. This is a bit of a cheat in that it’s a representation of textiles but I marvelled at the way the artist had managed to make the hard marble-onyx look so much like softly draping fabric.

At The Broad modern art museum I found this enormous draped piece, “Red Block”, both extremely beautiful and very poignant. Created by Ghanaian-born, Nigeria-based artist El Anatsui, you can read the gallery’s text (below). Made primarily from reused gin bottle caps it is lovely in itself. As the text describes it, it also references traditional kente cloth, cultural appropriation and the damage caused by alcohol, colonialism & global markets, among other things. I also liked that the decision on exactly how to hang it is up to the exhibition’s curators. Presumably it would be different in every place it’s shown, reflecting the curators’ interpretation.

The Broad also had two textile pieces I found interesting. A large fibre-based work by Channing Hansen…..

Photos

….and a huge felt piece by Robert Morris

On to the Museum of Contemporary Art, I found this work, “African-American Flag” thought-provoking.

African American Flag, 1990 by David Hammons

As was this huge wool tapestry by Goshka Macuga.

Goshka Macuga
Death of Marxism, Women of All Lands Unite, 2013

Visitors to The Broad were encouraged to stand quite close to these giant canvases by Rothko, which positively vibrated with colour.

I thought these could provide a good stepping-off point for wet felting, given how layered the colours are. Though it would take a lot of wool, space and elbow grease to achieve anything like the experience of standing in front of the Rothkos.

I had hoped to find some unspun wool while I was out and about and maybe get in a little recreational felt-making but it wasn’t easy to find. Lots of yarn but no unspun wool. Then, visiting La Purisima Mission in Lompoc, I found some small samples of Navajo Churro wool available in their gift shop, taken from their own flock. There wasn’t much of it & the colours were limited (3 shades of grey) but I bought a little, thinking back to those grey sand dollars.

I gathered together some very basic equipment and cut out a sand dollar shape from scrap bubble wrap to act as a resist.

I’m always happy to remember that you really don’t need any fancy equipment to make wet felt. Just these bits & pieces, some dish soap, warm water & my beach towel.

A reused drinks bottle with holes in the lid, a pit holder, a plastic garbage bag and a piece of bubble wrap — Felting tools

Here’s the wool laid out and wetted down ready for felting.

And here is the result.

The wool is fairly course and felted well though the floor looked like I owned a very shaggy dog afterwards. There was quite a lot of shedding. The patterns aren’t as distinct as I’d have liked because I couldn’t get quite enough colour differentiation but that’s OK. I might do a little needle felting on it when I get home, or I might just leave it as it is.

I hope you enjoy my trip around California. I certainly am!

Exhibitions

May 9, 2024 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 11 comments

In my previous blogs this year, I’ve charted my progress in preparing for a big exhibition of my work in a Michelin starred pub/restaurant (The Sportsman, Seasalter) along the coast from where I live. Making the work was a big undertaking. Since I last wrote, I’ve set up the six-week exhibition and as I press the button on this blog, it still has a few days left to run.

I confess I’ve done no felt-making since I set up this exhibition so I’m going to show you what I have of this event, plus a few photos of another exhibition I had at the same time.

I’m apologising in advance as these aren’t great photos. I took them more as a record for myself rather than trying to capture the feel. The light is very yellow and they don’t do the venue justice. Once I’d set up the pictures, I had a lovely private view with about 35 friends and family. Alas, I took no photos of that as I was thinking about being the host. I did, however, get a nice picture of my daughter and husband in that uncomfortable space when you’re waiting for things to start and worrying in case no one comes to your party

The Sportsman has 3 linked dining areas & a corridor

These are some images from room 1

Room 2 is the largest room

Room 3, which backs onto the kitchen garden

And finally the corridor

Looking at these, I haven’t included everything but I hope you get the idea.

I’m delighted to say that 6 pictures have sold.

While the Sportsman exhibition was in progress, I also had a week in the hut in Whitstable harbour. I was a bit short of felt pictures so I included some 3D work and some of my photographs.

I’ve been thinking about what to do next and pondering some more 3D work. For now, I’m really happy to have got these exhibitions done.

Making lots of felt pictures

March 6, 2024 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 20 comments

In my last post I was talking (among other things) about a 6-week residency I have in a local Michelin-starred restaurant that starts on 2 April. Here’s a link in case you missed it or want a reminder.

https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2024/01/12/pictures-and-plant-pots/

In this blog I’m offering a quick look at the pictures I’ve made (or am part-way through making) since then. I don’t have the space (or time!) to describe the making processes in a lot of detail but do ask questions in the comments section if you want to know more about something.

The restaurant owners suggested I’d need about 40 pictures to fill the 3+ rooms. I don’t have a lot of spare pictures kicking about – my felt picture making is usually fairly hand-to-mouth – so I really have my work cut out to make enough new work to fill the restaurant walls.

At the time of my last blog, I’d made 1 large and 3 smaller pictures. I then did a series of 4 slightly impressionistic ‘estuary water’ smaller pieces. I live on the north Kent coast of SE England and although it looks like ‘sea’, the stretch of water at the bottom of my road is technically the Thames estuary.

Top left to bottom right: Spring, Summer, Autumn & Winter

Spring is lightly pre-felted cobweb felts in blue and white laid on a pewter-coloured layer of wool that has a green layer underneath it.

For Summer I made some prefelts which I cut into shapes to try to give the impression of the shifting colours of calm water.

Dry layout for ‘Summer’; a combination of merino prefelt and tops

Autumn is altogether more turbulent with a lot of pewter-colour in the water. The estuary is often quite murky-looking. I’ve used either or angora or wool locks for the small wave crests.

And winter, like spring, is white and blue cobweb prefelt on a pewter background, but this time with more of the pewter showing and with pewter for both base layers, no green.

While rummaging through my extensive fibre collection, I came across a lovely hank of hand-dyed wool and silk fibres that I’d bought while on holiday in the USA. I decided to use this for a larger water picture.

Large sea pattern 2: final picture waiting to be framed, the layout and the fibre. The colour representation isn’t very good – the colours in the finished picture are warmer than they look in the photo.

I thought it was time to have a go at a larger bird picture. I’ve previously featured lapwings in a felt picture and thought I’d like to have another go at those. Lapwings are beautiful birds with iridescent feathers that appear to change colour depending on the light. I’d seen a large flock of them at a nearby nature reserve at Oare Marshes. Sorry the quality of these photos is poor, and you can’t see the birds’ colours, but I wanted to show you the lapwings I saw and what their environment looks like.

I started off with some nuno prefelt for lapwing 1 to try to capture that iridescence. These are mostly silk but the black is velvet devore, which I thought might work for the neck feathers. I laid out a bird-shape in white then cut the coloured prefelt to make wing feathers. While I was on a roll, I made another 2 lapwings, testing out different ways of trying to capture the birds’ colours.

Left to right: the layouts for lapwing 1, prefelt for lapwing 1, lapwing 3 and lapwing 2.

Here are the wet-felted bodies that I will needle felt into 2 backgrounds as I add the features: eyes, beaks and legs.

Oare Marshes is a fantastic place to see birds – with a great variety of migratory, overwintering and breeding wetland birds. However, as you can see in my photos, it’s not a conventionally ‘pretty’ place. I want to locate the birds properly so there’s a challenge in making a picture that is appealing while also being representative of the nature reserve.

This is the background for the solo lapwing (lapwing 2!). I’ve used 2 different sections of recycled silk scarves for the land section and merino wool for the water – with a few strips of one of the scarves to look like pebble and mud outcrops. Next comes the lapwing which will be needle felted into place and have its features added.

And here is the final picture

For the other two lapwings I decide to focus on the water rather than the land. Here’s the finished picture, with the lapwings needle felted into place.

I really love watching the birds that visit or live along the coast here. Oystercatchers are very distinctive black and white birds with bright orange eyes and beaks. This is the layout of a coastal background for an oystercatcher. The foreground is made from cut-up prefelt pieces that I’ve made, including some recycled silk fabric; the background is a piece of a beautiful charity shop silk scarf, and I used mostly kid mohair for the wave foam, with a few wool locks.

Here’s the oystercatcher’s body, needle felted into place, then given its eye, beak and legs. The beak is some orange felt I’ve made previously and the legs are recycled tapestry wool. I like how the kid mohair has a wiggly texture.

With an eye on getting the picture numbers up, I branched out a bit and decided to make some smaller monochrome pictures using a commercial merino and silk prefelt with a recycled wool scarf for the foreground. I then printed tree silhouettes onto them.

Once I’d pretty much used up the wool fabric, I tried out some pieces of monochrome silk. This is work in progress as I haven’t yet printed trees onto the other pieces. These aren’t my usual style but it’s good to mix things up a bit and they are comparatively quick to make. I may not put all of these into the restaurant but it’s good to have some options.

In the interest of continuing to mix things up, I then made a larger sea pattern, trying to capture the light and reflections that dance across the water.

And then, most recently, another big bird picture, this time of a curlew. Curlews are the largest European wading birds. They have long, curved beaks and very patterned feathers. Like oystercatchers, curlews can often be seen within a very short walk of my home. The best time to spot them, and lots of other birds, is as the tide starts to go out. They feed along the line of the retreating water. They have a very distinctive call and you can often hear them before seeing them. Unlike oystercatchers, curlews’ (and lapwings’) UK conservation status is ‘red’, which means they are either globally threatened, have a long historical UK population decline or there’s been at least a 50% decline in the UK breeding population over the last 25 years.

Here’s the final curlew picture: cut up prefelt for the pebbles; blue cobweb prefelt over a pewter background for the water; the bird wet felted separately then needle felted into place and given an eye, beak and legs. The beak is made from short lengths of variegated wool yarn and the legs from tapestry wool. The yarn, tapestry wool and silk fabric in the pebbles were all bought in charity shops. I really like the idea of recycling whenever I can, and it’s great that the charities benefit as well.

In the last couple of days I’ve been making 3D oyster and mussel shells. I haven’t decided exactly how I will use these yet, some kind of pictures.

Today I made a light background for one of the mussel shells. It’s still damp in this photo. I think the sea foam area will become lighter as it dries.

I’m still a long way from 40 pictures, although I did have a few already made before I started this picture-making marathon. Now I’ve more or less cleared my diary and I’ve got the rest of March to make more pictures, and to frame them all. I wonder what I’ll do with my spare time?!

I’d be really interested to know what you think so please do leave comments if you have them.

Pictures and Plant Pots

January 12, 2024 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 31 comments

In December I was trying to supply lots of different places with felt things. In truth, I was a bit over-stretched. I decided to focus on making plant holders, with a few tea light holders and a couple of vases. Oh, and some cards. Here’s an overview of the things I made.

PLANT POTS AND VASES

First I made four plant pot covers from merino wool and silk pre-felt and incorporating different pieces of vintage lace

Next a couple of vases, also with a pre-felt base

On to some plant pot holders. When cutting the resist out of the vessel, I use the smallest hole I can that will allow me to fit the plant and its pot inside. All of these have a water proof plant pot holder inside, plus the plastic pot with drainage holes that the plants are supplied in. I like to start by looking at a plant and ‘asking’ it what sort of pot cover it might like.

A festive plant pot holder with green merino and red locks reflecting the leaf colours

These nesting bowls were made using a carded merino and silk batt and are very lightweight

A display of my work in Creek Creative gallery, Faversham

One of the galleries where my work was part of a month-long Christmas local makers market

PICTURES

Now we’re into the new year and I really have to focus on making some pictures. I mentioned at the end of my last blog that I’m delighted to have the opportunity to fill the walls of a lovely local Michelin starred pub / restaurant (The Sportsman in Seasalter) with felt pictures for 6 weeks in April / May this year. The ‘fill’ bit is something of a challenge. I tend to make enough work as I go along for my normal sales and exhibitions. Making an extra 35 to 40 wet felted pictures for this exhibition will take a lot of work. I’m finding the prospect of making all those pictures both exciting and rather daunting.

In preparation for the picture making, in November I ordered 2 batches of solid beach handmade frames from my lovely local frame maker: 10 at 63 x 63cm (approximately 25 x 25 inches) and 10 at 35 x 35 cm (approximately 14 x 14 ins). I will have to order more soon but I thought this would give me a good start. I had some serious studio-tidying to do last week before I set about the pictures… and finally I was ready to start. Where to begin?

First I made a ‘big wave’ picture for one of the larger frames. I say ‘big wave’ in inverted commas as the waves round where I live are generally very small so we’re not talking surfing potential. I’m endlessly intrigued by wave and sea patterns and have made this type of picture several times before. They always end up looking very different. I’ve taken lots of reference photos such as this one……

…..that I use as a starting point.

Here’s the layout using lots of colours of (mostly) merino wool for the water; merino and kid mohair top, silk hankies, mohair and sheep locks and some vintage lace scraps for the wave; and hand-made pre-felt cut into pebble shapes for the beach. These were laid on 4 layers of merino for the base. I’m not really sure why I did 4 layers – it makes a lovely firm base but it’s a lot harder work to felt than 2 layers and as this is going behind glass, it was a bit over-kill. I’ll try not to do that again.

Once it was felted and dry, I used a small metal tool to pick up some sections of wave, to make it more 3D. Here’s the final picture and the picture sitting on top of its frame, waiting for me to get round to framing it.

I’ve worked on this for more than 12 hours spread over 4 days, not including making and cutting the pre-felt pebbles, which must have taken another couple of hours, and I’ve still got the framing to do. I’m very conscious of how many pictures I’ve got to make, so I decided to go smaller and quicker for the next 3.

One of the ways I can speed things up is to use recycled silk fabric to provide the pattern (and texture) for the water and the beach. As an avid buyer of silk scarves from charity shops, I have 2 huge bins of material to rummage through and upcycle.

Picture two – which I’ll call leopard print – I chose a sheer leopard print scarf for the beach and a small blue striped one for the water. Because the blue scarf is not very wide, I have to join two pieces of fabric. To reduce the visibility of the join, I first cut into one of the pieces so that the join would be staggered. You can see it in the layout but hardly at all by the time it’s fully felted.

I’m reasonably happy with this, though I think the wave is a bit too solid-looking.

Picture three – ‘dark blue sea’ – I go with a rather lovely dark blue patterned scarf for the water and a pale patterned beige one for the beach.

Again, reasonably happy with this. I like the sea effect and the less solid wave but the blue cobweb felt strip I put in front of the wave to look like the remains of a previous wave is a bit dense and straight.

Picture four – ‘reversible silk’ – I’m rummaging around for a different piece of silk to use for the water. I find one I like but I’m not sure quite how it will felt. It’s also reversible and I’m not sure which side to use. I decided to make a very small sample to see how it felts and it occurs to me also to see what happens if I cut strips to alternate the two sides of the fabric.

Here’s the sample layout. I’ve run out of merino wool in this pewter colour but fortunately have some Corriedale. I felted it very quickly and forgot to take a picture of the finished sample but it was enough for me to conclude it felted well and it was worth trying the reversed strips thing.

Quick sample layout to test the silk and laying out in strips

The beach fabric is also a little different – with a bigger and higher contrast pattern.

Here’s the layout and near-final picture. I say near-final as I only finished fulling it yesterday afternoon. It’s still damp (I think the silk will become a little lighter and shinier when fully dry) and I haven’t yet picked up any of the fibres in the wave.

This is my favourite actual wave so far – I definitely like the variation in colour and greater impression of transparency. I’m pleased with the way the cut up silk worked for the water too. I’m not yet decided about the beach pattern – interesting or too much?

And finally, a photo of the large and a small picture side-by-side, so you can get some idea of scale

I’m framing the three small ones without glass and the large one with. People react differently to this. Some like to see (and feel) the texture and not have the reflections you get with glass. Others worry about dust. A few (me included) worry about moths. Most of the pictures will be behind glass but a few won’t. I’ll review this as I go along

By the time I write again in March, I should have lots more pictures made. Wish me luck! I will be making some large ones with sea birds but these take so long, I’ve decided to make some less complex ones first to see how long I’ve got to spend on the most time-consuming ones. I’m having to step-up my levels of planning and organising to try to make sure I have enough work to fill the venue.

Happy new year everyone. I hope it’s full of joy, peace and creativity.

Sea Patterns and Acorns

November 10, 2023 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 12 comments

Sea Patterns

I was recently showing some felt pictures in my little harbour hut gallery in Whitstable.

I had two sea pattern pictures and someone was very taken with them, but neither of them was exactly what he wanted. He liked the overall ‘troubled sea’ impression of Sea Pattern (on the left), and the ‘frilly bits’ top and bottom, but he preferred the size in the frame of Summer Sea (on the right).

After some discussion he (Peter, we were on first name terms by this time) decided he liked the idea of commissioning a picture from me. Now, I’ve written once before about my qualms about taking commissions, link below if you want to take a look.

Do you take commissions?

The long and short of it is that I find it very difficult to know what someone else sees in a picture, which means it’s difficult to be confident I can produce what’s in their head. Even aside from whether I can translate what’s in my own head into felt. My conclusion when I was writing previously was that I would take a commission for a picture I’d happily make anyway, on the understanding that if the person didn’t like it, I’d take it into my stock and they wouldn’t have to buy it. So, for example, I’d happily do a picture of a local coastal bird in its environment, but I’d be reluctant to take on anything I didn’t have a feel for and/ or wouldn’t want to make or offer more widely.

This commission fit my criteria so I asked Peter to describe in some detail what he liked about his favoured picture compared with the other one. He liked the less calm, more turbulent feel of the winter sea pattern. I agreed to take the commission and took a 50% deposit as I think it shows good will on both sides.

These pictures are made by creating two lightly felted cobweb felt pre-felts (one in white and one in blue) then laying them onto a (predominantly pewter-coloured) background and felting them together. I’ve developed this technique over a number of years. They’re quite difficult to control but I enjoy the results.

When it came to making Peter’s picture, I first made some blue cobweb pre-felt. I laid out two layers of a pewter-coloured merino wool background with a few greenish wisps on the surface for a bit of extra colour. I then put the wet blue cobweb pre-felt on top. I say pre-felt but it’s very lightly felted – only one step beyond wet wool – so I can pull it about to fit where I want it to go. That’s one of the things that makes it difficult to control.

Rather than making new white cobweb pre-felt I used some I’d made previously – which is where I think I went wrong. I realised in laying it out I didn’t have quite as much as I’d have liked. The client wanted some turmoil, which I interpret as a lot of white, and I was in danger of making a picture more similar to the summer sea pattern.

Indeed, although I like the resulting picture – which I’m calling Autumn Sea – I decided it wouldn’t do for the commission so I had another go.

I do sometimes get carried away with what I like or am interested in trying and forget what I’m supposed to be doing

This time I would include more white, so I made a new batches of both white and blue cobweb pre-felt.

Here you can see the dry background: pewter with some wisps of green and blue.

Dry base layout: pewter with blue and green

And here it’s laid out with first the blue and then the white cobweb added, waiting to be felted.

And finally here’s the finished picture

I sent Peter a couple of photos, fingers crossed, but reminding him that I’d return his deposit if he wasn’t happy. Fortunately, he liked it and asked if he could name it. So, it’s called ‘Upon Reflection’ and it’s waiting for me to frame it so Peter can arrange to pick it up.

Acorns

As a small aside, last month I participated in something called ‘East Kent Open Houses’. People in this area open their homes or studios for 3 weekends in October to show their art. I have two friends (Sue, a potter and Irene, a glass fuser) who I often exhibit with so we decided we’d show our work together in Sue’s lovely conservatory. Here’s a link to a video on Instagram if you’re interested in seeing what it looked like. The potter is @suemortonceramics and the glass fuser is @irenesouthonglass.

https://gbr01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.instagram.com%2Freel%2FCyYOt1isWm_%2F%3Figshid%3DMzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D&data=057C01%7C%7C70becf05589c404a8d9608dbdef23c61%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638348904270177421%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=MJKi64pzispuI75cYcO9V3NkcQBcpqQFxXep0%2BtVqZw%3D&reserved=0

We shared the stewarding which meant I had quite a few hours with nothing specific to do other than sit in the lovely conservatory and wait for visitors. I’m way behind getting anything made for the upcoming seasonal markets so I thought I’d make some acorn tree decorations. I first made these a few years ago when I’d visited a park that had a gorgeous oak tree with large acorn caps. I’d picked them up without knowing that I’d go on to making felt acorns for them. So, I popped into the studio and grabbed my needle felting gear along with a few different wools as I thought I’d experiment to see how much they varied.

I tried 4 different wools: merino tops/rovings, merino & silk batt, Cheviot carded sliver & merino & silk pre-felt. The first ones I fully needle felted. They all felted well.

Felted acorn shapes along with natural acorn caps

You can’t see a lot of difference in the photos and indeed there wasn’t a lot of difference. As the Cheviot carded sliver was by far the cheapest of the wools and produced good results, I decided to go with those. I also decided I got the best results if I knotted the end, lightly needled them into shape until they held their form then wet felted them.

Knotted end ready to roll shape and needle felt

Needle then wet felting gave the smoothest finish and was also quicker than the fully needle-felted ones. Ultimately, I think I just like wet felting more than needle felting. I’ve glued on the natural dried acorn caps and a hanger, so these went off yesterday to a pre-Christmas fair of cards and decorations at Creek Creative Studios in Faversham, Kent. More info on their website https://creek-creative.org/

Felted acorn tree decorations on a stand ready for sale

And finally – an exciting challenge for 2024

There’s a fantastic Michelin-starred restaurant near where I live called The Sportsman. Looking on their website they say they took over The Sportsman in 1999 with the intention of serving good food in relaxed and informal surroundings. It’s a good description. A link to their website, if you want to know more. http://www.thesportsmanseasalter.co.uk/

It’s not a ‘posh’ place. More like an old pub in a beautiful slightly out-of-the-way spot by the sea. As well as serving fabulous food, they also display local artwork on their walls. I contacted them a short while ago to see if they were interested in a display of my artwork. I sent some photos and they invited me to bring some work with me and come along for a chat. Happily, they liked what they saw and have booked me in for 6 weeks from 1 April next year. All very exciting but I hadn’t realised quite how much space I’d have to fill. They casually estimated about 35 to 40 pictures should do it. Gulp. So, I now know what I’ll be doing in January, February and March…..

Prints of textiles?

September 6, 2023 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 15 comments

Summer is a busy time for me for sales, exhibitions and other, non-fibre related things, so when I looked back at the actual felt-making I’ve done since my last blog here in June, I realised the answer was ‘none’! Oh dear, this could be a very short blog. One thing I have wrestled with for some time, though, is whether to sell photographic prints of my felt pictures.

I have slightly (OK, very) purist tendencies when it comes to felting and I’ve previously resisted the idea. Textiles are 3D and photographs are essentially 2D. I do sell photographs, but of my beautiful local area. I’ve always made an exception for greetings cards, and the number of people who’ve bought cards with photos of my felt pictures and told me they’re going to put them in a frame has finally worn the purist down.

I had an exhibition in a local gallery called ‘The Fishslab’ in early August. It’s a lovely gallery and, as the name suggests, used to be a fishmongers. It has a huge sloped marble slab in the window that was used to display and sell the fish while the marble kept it cool. The front window lifted up so customers could see the fish from the street and, presumably, buy them through the window. Here’s a photo standing outside the gallery from a previous exhibition where you can see the marble slab that is the base of the window display and the handles on the window.

So, I ordered 12 small prints of felted pictures I’ve previously sold, printed on foam board, and included them in my week in the gallery. The prints are 20 x 20 cm.

20 x 20 cm photos of felt pictures on foam board

Priced at £20, I sold 9 of the 12 in the week, so I had to conclude there’s an appetite for these. About the same time, the print company I use for my photos had a super-special offer on 60 x 60 cm photo canvas prints, so I ordered 5 of those featuring felt pictures as well.

I’ve just spent a week in the beach hut gallery I sometimes have my work in. So, I displayed the canvases, along with my felt pictures and photo canvases.

It was a quiet week and although there was a bit of interest, I didn’t sell any. One thing I did notice, though, was that people kept touching the canvases to see if they had a texture. Annoying, but interesting. Happily, I took a commission for a felt picture (I’ve blogged previously on my mixed feelings about this too, you can see the link here, if interested https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2021/09/20/do-you-take-commissions/) so I didn’t mind the otherwise low sales but I’m still left feeing a bit uncomfortable about printing photos of textiles. I will see what happens in future sales / exhibitions.

I’ll finish now with another of the many things I’ve been doing recently other than making felt. As I’ve mentioned more than once before, I am lucky enough to live in Whitstable, on the coast in south-east England. It’s a beautiful place and we get a lot of visitors on day-trips as well as longer vacations. There’s a Thames sailing barge called The Greta that in summer moors in the harbour where I often work. Built in 1892, she used to carry grain, malt and building products, and then beer, up the Thames estuary into London. She also took part in one of the most famous operations during World War 2 as a member of the makeshift flotilla that rescued thousands of troops during the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940. Apparently, she’s the oldest active ‘little ship’ from that era. Anyway, some of my harbour colleagues go on an annual trip on the Greta to visit another World War 2 site, the Maunsell Forts, which are about 6 miles out to sea. These were part of a world war 2 sea-defence system designed to shoot down enemy aircraft that would fly up the Thames estuary from the coast to bomb London during the war. They were later used as a base for pirate radio stations broadcasting in the 1960s. Previously I’ve refused offers to join my friends on this trip as I’m a terrible sailor and believe I could feel nauseous in the bath. This year my desire to do the trip overcame my reservations and we set out on the calmest, most lovely day.

It was a fabulous day and I will definitely do the trip again. The final picture here shows the harbour village where I sell my work. I’ve never seen it from this angle before.

Using up supplies: investigating a new fibre

July 8, 2023 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 19 comments

I was looking around my studio wondering what to write about in this blog. I was remembered Ruth Lane’s recent comment in her blog here about using up supplies. I have a carded batt of merino / A grade mulberry silk from World of Wool that’s been kicking around for a while. I can’t remember if I bought it for something specific that didn’t get made or if I bought it on spec. I was interested to find out how it felted and what I might do with it so I decided to make a small test vessel.

I cut out a circular resist using a small mat as a template then started laying out the fibre outwards towards the edge. Apologies that these pictures are mostly white on light colours – I was thinking more about the making than the photography. I laid the second layer in a circular pattern before flipping it over to smooth the overlap onto side 2. After 2 layers on the second side, I flipped back and laid 2 more layers on side 1, followed by 2 more on side 2.

Wet felting resist for a small bowl — The resist & its template

Starting to lay out merino and mulberry silk batt around a resist for a wet felted bowl — The resist & its template

After wetting it down I spent a lot of my time working the edge by pulling the voile over the edge so I wouldn’t get a ridge around the middle of the finished vessel. It felted quickly and I was soon able to start fulling – initially without removing the resist.

Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork’s hand showing how she works the edges of a wet felted bowl made around a flat circular resist — Working the edges

Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork’s hand fulling a wet felted bowl made around a flat circular resist — Working the edges

Once I’d cut out the resist I found, in my vast collection of miscellaneous wooden objects, that the handle of a wooden pestle (as in mortar & pestle) was the perfect size for getting inside the vessel and working it from the inside.

I spent a while fulling it as I wanted it to be smooth and very firm.

Wooden pestle handle being used to help full inside a wet felted vessel with a small access hole — Wooden pestle handle for fulling

Completed merino wool and mulberry silk wet felted vessel packed with green bubble wrap to help retain the shape as it dries — Wooden pestle handle for fulling

I packed the vessel with strips of recycled bubble wrap that I keep for this purpose – you can see it green inside. Looking at this green bubble wrap made me wonder if I could make a vessel with a coloured interior but retaining the pale colour outside. I thought maybe if I used silk rather than wool to add colour I’d get less colour transfer, so I thought I’d give it a go.

While pondering this, I decided to try using the same resist as the test vessel but to make 2 small bowls rather than one vessel: so, cutting it in two around the middle rather than making a hole at the top to remove the resist. I dipped into my big boxes full of second-hand silk scarves bought in charity shops and chose a plain turquoise and a patterned blue one.

Supplies for making two small wet felted bowls on a single resist: merino wool and mulberry silk carded batt with two second hand blue patterned silk scarves: one dark blue patterned, one plain turquoise — Carded merino / mulberry silk batt & two silk scarves ready for recycling

I put a circle of silk on the resist and decided to run a small line of coloured merino tops around the edge: partly as I was interested to see how it would look and partly as I thought I might not know where to cut when I was ready to remove the resist and separate the little bowls – I’ve made that mistake before!

I put a circle of the blue patterned silk on the second side. The merino and silk fibre layout was the same as the previous vessel. This time I also remembered to do the circular layer first followed by the radiating layer – I’ve learned that one before and obviously temporarily forgot for the previous vessel. It makes following the resist with the circular layers much easier and I prefer to try not to overlap that layer if possible – again it reduces potential ridges and produces a better join if you only overlap the radiating layer, in my opinion. I’m sure some of you will disagree but that’s one of the many things I love about wet felting: with experience everyone works out the techniques and tools that work best for them.

A circle of recycled turquoise silk covering a resist with a thin line of dark blue merino wool around the perimeter. The first layer for a pair of small nuno felted bowls — Process shots of the bowls

I was interested that I could see quite a lot of the inner colour throughout. I quickly began to suspect this was more about the amount of dye bleeding from the turquoise silk as about seeing the silk through the wool. I was getting a lot of turquoise in the felting water.

Again, I fulled them thoroughly. During the fulling, I decided I liked the silk on the outside better than the inside so here they are, still wet.

Small wet felted bowls with pale interior and blue rim shown from above — Bowl insides

Nuno felted exterior of two small wet felted bowls — Bowl insides

And here are the 3 items. You can see how green the wool of the little bowls is compared with the vessel. I’m pleased with the bowls’ blue rims – I like this effect – but the vessel is my favourite. In each of the test pieces the fibre has felted beautifully: it’s very firm and extremely light – it has an almost papery quality about it that I find really appealing.

My imagination is now firing about what I could make next with this fibre. I have a dried poppy seed head sitting in a vase next to my desk. The felt reminded me of the texture and colour of the seed head. I’ve felted poppy seed heads before – one of my favourites. Another thing I have in the studio is some vintage cotton lace I was unable to resist when I saw it in a local second-hand shop.

Vintage cotton lace shown wrapped around a card with labels including a description of the item, 47 meters approximately and 9 pounds — Dried poppy seed head

I thought maybe that the lace would add a subtle surface texture so why not have a try? This time I made a small square sample using just 2 layers of the wool / silk mix batt with strips of lace in parallel lines.

Dry layout for a square sample of wet felting using a carded merino & mulberry silk batt with strips of vintage lace laid in parallel lines across the surface — Layout: fibre and lace

Square of wet felted merino and mulberry silk batt with vintage of fine cotton lace strips felted into the surface. — Layout: fibre and lace

Although it’s subtle, I really like the effect. As you can see in the close up shot, the batt has quite a bit of vegetable matter which in this case adds some interesting specks, enhancing the natural look.

I was running out of time but decide to start the poppy seed head. The merino fibre length in the batt is very short which makes the layout quite slow but very precise. In the first photo you can just see the strands of lace which I’ve laid out on top of 4 layers on the under side and are waiting for me to finish the final 2 layers on the top side before bringing them over.

Circular resist partially covered in carded merino and silk batt

Work in progress: 3D wet felted sculpture with multiple resists laid out, wetted down and partially felted

The second photo shows how far I got yesterday before I had to stop. This is a multi-resist piece that will take a while to make. I’ll show it finished in my next blog.

I enjoyed letting the fibre lead my imagination in what I might do next. I’ve done mostly production felting recently – making multiples of things for shops and sales – so it was great just to see where things led me and enjoy felt-making for the sheer fun of it. I’m looking forward to getting back into the studio soon to finish the poppy seed head.

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Author: Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork

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Exhibitions

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Making lots of felt pictures

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Pictures and Plant Pots

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Sea Patterns and Acorns

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Prints of textiles?

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Using up supplies: investigating a new fibre

July 8, 2023 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 19 comments

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