Marilyn aka Pandagirl

4th Quarter Challenge – Monochrome

November 1, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 32 comments

No one will be surprised at my choice of subjects, a panda.

I had some maori batts in a gray color so it seemed an easy choice as a base.

I’ve been trying to add more dimension into my work as I mentioned in last week’s blog post. So, this was one of my goals with this project.

I layed out the batt then made the head of the panda in prefelt, then added the shapes for the ears, and eyes. Since the nose would be the center of the picture, I used a needle felted nose shape in a heavier fiber then covered it with another nose shaped prefelt and needle felted it onto the batt. I don’t know why it looks pink.

I continued to build up the shape, added gems for eyes and covered them with another layer of prefelt and more fiber. I wanted to give the fur a fuzzy effect so I carefully cut and put fibers along the edges and a little shading around the eye. For the body, I blended some gray into the black for contrast. Since the arm blended in with the body I just used a shaded area to give it a little dimension. And of course, the panda is eating her bamboo. Her nose is actually bamboo fiber. Here is a side view.

After securing everything with more needle felting, I wet felted it. The maori didn’t shrink much which was fine because I intended to wrap it around a canvas frame.

A close up.

Well I changed my mind and hung it without wrapping it on a frame.

I may put it on a darker background to make it stand out from the gray wall. What do you think?

Have you done the challenge yet?

I want to let you all know I will be taking a leave of absence. I’m having surgery November 3 and don’t know how long it will be before I can resume felting. In the mean time, several forum friends have offered to help fill in my blog spots. If you have something you’d like to blog about to help out, please contact Ruth, Zed or Ann. I hope to see you all back here soon! Thanks for your support!

Combining Techniques and Materials

October 24, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 31 comments

I’ve been planning this picture for a while. It’s not the first time I’ve combined techniques, but this time I wanted to add more dimension to the picture.

It may seem like an odd choice of subject, but my sister Lorraine has loved elephants all her life and this is a little thank you for the Trunk Show I had at her Quilt Club a few months back.

I started by dyeing some silk and wool, then making batts. My original intent was to use the silk for texturing on the trunks, but the area was too small and since I wasn’t going to use it over all the elephants I let the idea go.

I built up the trunks, faces and foreground legs with coarser wool underneath, sewed them closed with wool thread and used resists under the ears. The eyes are garnets. I don’t know why the pics look brown, the prefelt was shades of gray.

The base was made beforehand with Corriedale. Before placing the elephants on I used batts for the water, sky, background and tree tops. The light beige ground is hand dyed silk gauze. I also used bits of Oussant fiber (from France) sent to me by forum member Aphee. They are the brown and beige areas in the foreground.

Of course, I had to add a little silk to the water and sky.

The tree trunks are silk/merino mix.

Once the background was all laid out, I added the elephants and needlefelted them down. This is before felting and fulling.

I did get some texture in the elephants, but the picture was a little flatter than I wanted so I added some needlefelting and fiber to the tree trunks and around the legs, hand embroidery on the toes and around the eyes, stitching and free motion stitching in the foreground grasses. Also the Oussant flattened losing it’s springy texture so I needlefelted more of it to give better dimension.

The treetops in the background were purposely left vague to let the elephants have center stage. More needlefelting and adding fiber for dimension and texture.

Some detail closeups.

Final hanging on the wall. I may have fulled it a little too much but I was worried about the thickness of the dimensional parts.

I sure hope my sister likes it.

More Samples with Interesting Results

October 16, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 16 comments

We’ve been talking on the forum about how important it is to make samples, especially when using new fibers or unknown fabrics. It’s better to take a little time to make a sample, than to waste a lot of time and fiber.

I still had one fiber from WOW I hadn’t tried. It was actually a Jacob batt. The batt was very uneven so I used two layers and still ended it up with a couple of sparse spots. I only felted the samples to the prefelt stage so I could use them in another project. The end result of the Jacob was it was very loose and spongy. I’m tempted to full it to see what happens. It is very similar to the Black Welsh I featured in a previous post.

I recently did an experiment with one of Fiona Duthie’s 15 minute projects called Mountains. It’s lost it’s bowl shape a little, but I really liked the curliness of the base, but couldn’t remember what fiber I used.

I have been trying to use more of the coarse fibers I have. But I have been terrible about remembering to write down what I’ve used. I thought Icelandic was harder to felt. It has a very long staple, dyes well, and whenever I use it in has to be shaved when finished. So, I decided to make a prefelt of this as well.

What I discovered is it is soft at this stage, but felted easily.

So, have I been badmouthing the wrong fiber? I have a fair amount of Cheviot so I figured I would experiment with that as well. The Cheviot had a shorter staple but the resulting prefelt was soft and a little lighter in color than the Icelandic which I thought was a lighter color. Hmmm.

When I went with Cathy to the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival, I purchased some Navajo Churro which I have never used. It had a short staple and was coarse to the touch and filled with little knots. The resulting prefelt was very hairy and much flatter than the others. It reminded me of Gotland I had made a sample of a while back, but while they look similar, the Gotland was very smooth to the touch. It also had been fulled, so that may make a difference. The Churro was very hairy. I have some white Churro I will try dyeing later on.

Last but not least, I made a Romney prefelt and found my curly fiber. (its more noticable at the sparser edges. It is rougher to the touch but I like the cobweb wavy type look. It also has a long staple.

I had done similar samples using habatoi silk, mulberry silk fiber and yarns on each of them a while back, fulled, dyed and then stitched them together. Here is the Four Day Dye Experiment http://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2014/06/15/four-unintentional-days-of-dyeing/

These samples were fully felted and it is hard to tell the difference except to rub my hands over them. The Icelandic and Domestic 56 are coarser to the touch than the Cheviot and the Romney. Different than at the prefelt stage. I think in the future I may take a smaller sample to full and compare obviously they are different.

Now as a preview to some more future sampling on a pile of fabric samples to test.

What is your experience with sampling?

Nuno Wall Hanging

October 8, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 32 comments

Since I started felting, my daughter in law Lia has been fascinated with the nuno textures. So, a while back we shopped for some fabrics we thought may go with her decor and she picked colors. Unfortunately, after making samples, the gold polyester fabric we chose even with open weave did not felt well.

She loved one scarf I had made in particular that I had hand dyed. So, I went to plan B and dyed more silk gauze and merino. She picked out the wool colors for accents.

Originally it was planned to be a very big wall hanging and I calculated a 50% shrinkage rate that I had achieved with the scarf. I had to recruit another table and used boards on top to give it more length and width to do the layout and felting. I couldn’t even get the whole table in the pic and I was standing on a high chair.

What was really fun was flipping it over to layout on the other side. Not.

When the first side was layed out, I wet it down and began my rubbing until I felt the fibers were catching enough to flip it. I did the same on the second side before I began the rolling.

The process went quicker than I expected and the shrinkage more than I wanted. But the ruching was what I wanted. I had to square it up and then figure out how to hang it. So, I pinned it to a towel and let it dry.

But when dry I noticed there were big spots that were bubbled up. It didn’t help the shape for hanging so I added some wisps of fiber and felted them in and had to re-block it and wait for it to dry again. Fortunately, I put enough fiber around it to get the edges to roll in for a nice finish. But I still had to figure out how to keep it’s shape for hanging.

After adding extra fiber to fill in big bubbles.

Lia didn’t want to put it under glass, but wanted to keep it floating against the wall. I wasn’t sure what a framer would suggest so I came up with an interim solution. I had some thin wire that I sewed around the edges trying to keep it concealed. It gave the nuno felt more stability and shape. I didn’t want to invest too much time in the event she didn’t like it or wanted to take it to the framer. There were a couple of spots I wrapped in scraps of silk that showed thru the front. I tried hanging it on the wall to see how it would look. It’s hard to see the detail.

I felt if she liked it I could wrap the wire later and sew the wrapped wire back on.

The nice thing about the wire it can be bent to help shape it. It is not totally a rectangle and has a couple of tails, but it’s an original.

I haven’t been back to Florida, but I sent it for their anniversary and it’s now hanging on the wall and I’m told she loves it.

It doesn’t show here in these photos, bu the wall color is a very light yellow.

Smartly hung high enough so the boys can’t pull it down.

What do you think of adding two narrow panels one on each side to help fill up the wall?

Dyeing for Special Projects

September 30, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 17 comments

On the Felting and Fiber Forum, I had mentioned doing some dyeing for projects and Zed encouraged me to write about it.

I’ve had a couple projects in mind that I needed specific colors in silk and wool and needed to mix colors to get the shades I needed.

The first one was for my daughter in law for a wall hanging. More about this next week. This one I used a dye bath for silk gauze, silk roving and merino. I also threw in some Corriedale to have on hand. I washed the silk gauze in synthropol an soaked it and the silk roving overnight in a vinegar bath. I soaked the wools in a vinegar bath for about a half hour before dyeing. I didn’t need too mix colors for this job. It was an Idye mix I had made a couple of years ago. I wasn’t sure if it would still be ok, but it worked well.

I was pleased with the results and got the exact shade I needed.

The second project I wanted to try mixing browns, greys and a green with acid dyes for another project. Here are a couple of my color tests. I’m not sure where the rest went I had quite a few formulas I tried.

I used saran wrap, a squirt bottle and a sponge brush to apply the mixed dyes to the pre-soaked silk pieces.

I used merino pre-soaked in vinegar in baggies and steam for this one. I thought I had saturated the fibers enough and rubbed the acid dye into the fiber. However, while it was in the steamer and left overnight the dye settled in spots. I expected the mottling on the silk which was fine.

However, all was not lost. After running the grays through the drum carder the colors were perfect.

Stay tuned for more on this project later. I ended up only using the gray wools, then making prefelt for the project. I will have to think of another project to use the silks and the browns. I did use some of the green wool as well which was fine as it was.

I find it interesting to mix colors to get a specific colors, some times it works well, others not so much. How has your experience been mixing dye colors?

Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival 2015

September 22, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 23 comments

Last year Cathy (Luvswool) and I attended the Midwest Fiber Fair and were disappointed there were no live sheep. So, this year we decided to attend the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival in Jefferson, WI. Since we weren’t sure how big the Festival was and it was a two hour drive one way, we booked rooms for that Saturday night.

They had an extensive schedule of events and classes. Since we were interested in the Stock and Whistle Dog Trials, that’s where we headed first. We were under the impression they had started at 7 a.m. and we arrived around noon. We waited for almost an hour on a cold bleacher with the wind blowing like mad while they had meeting and set up the field (obviously they didn’t start early.) Fortunately, a gentleman with a headset and speaker was walking around answering questions and keeping up apprised of the activity. The first up were the more experienced trainers and dogs. It was hard to get good pictures because of the distance and the fence. The event itself lasted less than 10 minutes. Still unsure of what we were seeing, we listened to others around us say the trial went well.

Cold and hungry we headed for the food stands. After a quick lunch we perused an auction and saw a bit of the Make it with Wool competition and saw the Wonderful Wisconsin Quilts and Wall Hangings Exhibit.

There were two long buildings packed with over 130 vendors. However, it was fairly crowded and dark so we didn’t take a lot of pictures. Most everything was fiber, tools, and some finished goods. We ran across this display and thought of Zed who has been thinking about fiber packs. We thought this was an interesting way to market a variety of mixed fibers.

We even found a a copy of Ruth’s book on a display shelf.

There were contests and displays of all sorts and dozens of classes. We visited the class building but weren’t able to access it. They also had a Walk and Knit Relay challenge, and a Kids Fiber Camp in addition to judging for youth activities and sheep.

We had to visit the Lambing Barn, but passed on the Carcass competition. Here are the lambs born that morning.

There was also a Hall of Breeds, a couple of breeds we hadn’t heard of. But we did get to see many breeds we were familiar with. Although there was an Icelandic sheep there, a vendor told us she had just been to Iceland and our sheep look nothing like the real ones. Huh.

The shearing demonstration was next. The gentleman doing the shearing gave us an explanation as to why the moccasin shoes he was wearing were important to the shearing process. Having his feet close to the ground and animal, he could easily feel the slightest movement of the sheep between his legs to make adjustments as he sheared. He has been shearing for 38 years and does this all over the world. When asked how long it takes to shear one sheep, he answered in averages depending on the type of sheep, size and location. Evidently, shearing in New Zealand is quick. Sorry about the angle of the pictures we didn’t know when we sat down what view we’d have.

Really the whole Festival was indeed about sheep. There were even classes for sheepherders. By the time we got around the whole fair, we had to make one more run through the vendor buildings. We couldn’t go home empty handed.

Cathy bought a handmade broom, black silk tussah, camel/silk roving, white Navajo churro, linen embroidery threads, hand-dyed silk thread, and an eco-dyeing book.

I bought grey and white Navajo churro, black corriedale and black silk tussah.

We were glad we had rooms for the night. We had dinner in Whitewater and returned home in the morning satisfied we had seen plenty of sheep.

Trying to Get Organized

September 14, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 26 comments

The first two years I was felting I used the shoe storage method to store my fiber. But as a fiber enthusiast and one to try new things my inventory and tool collection kept growing. So, it became quite unruly. The picture doesn’t show the overflow and piles in bins I couldn’t fit in.

I had piles of things everywhere.

For the past year I’ve been trying to find a system to keep my fiber and tools organized. I tried a wire cube system next. This was a real test of my patience.

I liked the openness of this system, but didn’t like it was so deep and I’d have to juggle the fibers to see all the colors I had. I did put my batts in bins on the floor.

So, I continued to look for another system. I wanted an open bookcase, but because of the dimensions I was limited to, I couldn’t find something that worked.

Then we had a big discussion on the forum about fiber and bugs, so I decided to try plastic drawers.

Now I have drawers organized by color. Here’s just a few. I also have one for alpaca, one for merino and silk mixes.

But I wasn’t finished. I organized my embellishments in two separate units.

This one is under my table.

I also used the furnace room door for coarser fibers and to hang my scarves and hand dyed yarns.

Here is my table with my tool drawer and a bin full of WOW fibers, some foam for needle felting and other useful tools all close at hand.

More fiber and bubble wrap marked.

Behind my table is my felting machine with more tools close at hand.

And my drum carder set off to the side next to another table.

The cube system is temporarily holding some folders until I figure out what to do with it.

Then there is the daybed covered with samples, bins of yarn, ribbon, scraps, etc. This still needs a bit of work. And my “paper” room which is now my dyeing room. That will also have to wait.

This system works for me right now. Its by no means perfect. I’m fortunate to have two water sources close at hand and extra space. I don’t think we intended it to be a studio but that’s what it is for me right now.

What works for you?

Weaving a Rug from Raw Fleece

September 6, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 43 comments

Our guest artist/author is Zara Tuulikki Rooke. We’ve recently seen the beautiful fleece rugs she’s felted and shown us on the forum with her daughters. But she has taken it a step further and has built a loom and woven a rug from fleece.

Some of you may remember a post I wrote here in April about shearing sheep.

Shearing Sheep in Sweden

Now I thought I would show you what I did with some of that thick winter fleece. For this project, I used fleece from my own sheep, which are all cross-breeds (Gotland and other old Swedish breeds). One is white, while the others are light to dark grey.

I wanted to try weaving with raw fleece. I do own a loom, but it is not set up with warp. Now, I have a basic understanding of weaving, but warping a loom requires more than that. So I started thinking about how to construct something simpler to weave on, and ended up building an oversized weaving frame. The frame itself measures about 1.5 x 2.5 meters (4.9 x 8.2 feet). I happened to have a wooden curtain rod that reached across and could be used as a heddle rod, and I used forked branches to make holders for the heddle rod.

I made a number of equally sized string heddles by tying pieces of sting around two nails, hammered at an appropriate distance from each other into a piece of wood. I wrapped a heddle around every second warp thread and over the heddle rod. The warp threads have a natural opening (shed) due to the thickness of the plank that I used in the top end of the frame. The heddles pull up the lower level of warp threads to create the opposite shed. I was actually surprised at how well this simple construction worked.

I started weaving with yarn, to get a more secure beginning before I started feeding-in the raw fleece. The fleeces had all been skirted, but not washed, and I picked away some pieces of hay and straw as I went along. All I did was grab some fleece and twist it as I fed it into the shed, alternating between fleeces of different colours and pushing each row down with a shed rod.

After a while, I realized that it did help to tease the locks apart a bit before I started twisting the wool. I also twisted the ends around the first and last warp thread in each row. Amongst the equipment I got with my ordinary loom, was a rather ancient looking metal contraption used to keep the tension across the weave (see photos below). I have no idea what this thing is called in English, but it worked really well.

I finished off the weave with yarn again and tied off the warp treads in knots. Then came the washing and rinsing. We simply poured hot water with soap over the rug and walked around on it for quite a while. The kids were ever so helpful at this stage, and I figured that a little felting would help the wool stick together. I gave it a good rinse with the garden hose and also let it soak in an old bathtub for 24 hours, changing water a couple of times until it looked clean.

It took over a week to dry, but then it is made from the best parts of three and a half fleeces, pushed together into a rug measuring 100 cm x 120 cm (3.3 x 3.9 feet). That amount of wool can hold a lot of water. I still have to sew in the ends of the warp threads, but other than that, it is ready to be used on the floor of our living room this winter.
Thank you Tuulikki for sharing this complicated and wonderful process with us. Bravo for a job well done!

Take One, Take Two and Roll

August 29, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 18 comments

While I was getting organized for our trip to Europe, I realized I could use something to keep my jewelry in other than little plastic bags like I have done previously for travel.

I devised a jewelry roll with netting inside to hang my earrings. But my first attempt didn’t go well. Even though I knew in my mind netting wouldn’t shrink, I proceeded anyway.

I used two layers of purple prefelt with a small pocket at the bottom. I’m not sure what I was thinking then either. On the front side I used a strip of from a silky scarf down the middle then hand dyed cheesecloth on both sides for decoration.

On the inside I put the netting in and two panels of the scarf with a thin layer of plastic wrap so the panels wouldn’t felt to the inside. I thought perhaps I could control the shrinkage so the netting would work, but I also wanted that texture the scarf and cheesecloth would provide. Hah!

I got my texture, but the netting just puffed out. I cut it out, but wasn’t happy with the way I could fix it.

So, on to the second try. Same layout only without the netting and the small pocket at the bottom. I put an extra narrow piece of felt along the edges of the panels to help them felt in straight and give it some extra strength.

After I got the ruching I wanted and the felt was dry, I hand sewed the netting around the edges and a line through the middle to keep it from stretching out. The panels were a little puffy, but their job was to hold in the earrings after being rolled so they wouldn’t fall out the sides.

I hung the earrings from the netting.

Success! I sewed on a matching ribbon to tie the roll and I was done!

Now I have to figure out what to do with the first piece of felt. Any suggestions?

Third Quarter Challenge 2015 by Carole Gascoigne

August 21, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 16 comments

Today our guest artist/writer is Carole Gascoigne aka Craftywoman. She also maintains a Facebook page just for fun — Bagsalicious. Here is Carole’s contribution for the Third Quarter Challenge.

I have to say this is a first all round – first time attempting nuno felting and first time writing a blog for this felting site.

It was a treat to be asked, then came the big challenge: what to write about.

We have a quarterly challenge and this one is to take a photo, take it into a colour palette site and find the colours for a project.

I half completed this challenge, in that I found myself trying to capture the image into a nuno scarf or shawl, rather than, as I had originally envisaged, creating something more abstract.

Armed with my 3mm silk chiffon and pre-dyed coloured fibres, I started to develop my scarf.

Top and bottom I used merino and silk in greens and blues. To the blue part I added white viscose fibres for sheen, and turquoise locks. The poppies (sorry about the blurred pic) were first a layer of raw silk fabric cut up into random poppy shapes in salmony pinks, with pink locks and fine red merino over laid.

All of this, the silk fabric and the fibre design was laid out on bubble wrap – bubble side up.

Then came the hard work. I hadn’t appreciated how difficult nuno was going to be. Initially, I covered my design with net and wet felted the design into place. I then rolled it all up onto a foam roller, tied it together and started rolling. I think I rolled about 400 times, 200 each way – then I removed the net.

I re-rolled about another 600 times, changing the end I started with to ensure all the fibres had a chance to be on the inside and the outside of the rolling.

When I was happy that the fibres had migrated through the silk chiffon I added more hot water and threw the piece on to a towel. I continued doing this until I felt it had been felted enough.

Here is my ‘Poppies by the Sea’ inspired nuno felted scarf.

Carole, thanks for completing the Third Quarter Challenge and sharing your first nuno felting journey with us! It was worth the effort the scarf is beautiful!

Felting and Fiber Studio

An International Collective of Felt and Fiber Artists

Browsed by
Author: Marilyn aka Pandagirl

4th Quarter Challenge – Monochrome

November 1, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 32 comments

Like this:

Combining Techniques and Materials

October 24, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 31 comments

Like this:

More Samples with Interesting Results

October 16, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 16 comments

Like this:

Nuno Wall Hanging

October 8, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 32 comments

Like this:

Dyeing for Special Projects

September 30, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 17 comments

Like this:

Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival 2015

September 22, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 23 comments

Like this:

Trying to Get Organized

September 14, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 26 comments

Like this:

Weaving a Rug from Raw Fleece

September 6, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 43 comments

Like this:

Take One, Take Two and Roll

August 29, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 18 comments

Like this:

Third Quarter Challenge 2015 by Carole Gascoigne

August 21, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 16 comments

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: