Over on the felt and fiber forum we had a holiday exchange. This is the wonderful gift I got From Teri Ann.
He is expertly needle felted and the wool in all naturally dyed. the wool was dyed using indigo,cochineal, Barberry twigs and cleavers roots. He will have pride of place when the decorations go up.
this is a short post as I haven’t had any time for felting the last little while. I was getting ready for the North Gower Farmers’ Market Christmas Sale December 1. that meant lots of baking. I made steak and Guinness pies, lamb and vegetable pies and tourtieres. My mom made steak and mushroom and steak and kidney pies. we sold 60 large and 35 small pies. I also made scones and dog and cat treats My husband also backed lots of bread, my daughter made muffins. It was a long day but we enjoyed seeing everyone from the summer market and the new faces too.
This was taken about half way through the day. The bags at the end are sold pies waiting to be picked up after people finish their shopping.
I was tidying up after making something else and had a pile of green trimming. With Zed’s felt scraps post still fresh in my mind they looked like branches to me. I think I must be in a tree mood. I used prefelt for the back ground because I didn’t have any scrap black felt and I wanted to get on with making the pictures and not with felt making.
I used the edge of an off cut in very pale blue piece of felt for the snow and a very thin edge piece for the clouds and moon. its hard to see but I layered the snow pieces on 2 of the pictures to see if it would give more depth after felting. i have never had much luck wet felting finished felt to semi felted pieces but after some rubbing and rolling it all went together really well. I am quit pleased with how they turned out.
There is more depth in the layered pieces. It doesn’t show well bit it does make the snow look more dimensional. They still need ironing to straighten up the edges. They are a bit to big to use on cards. I think they might look nice side by side in a long frame.
I decided not to wait until the last min to do my challenge piece this time. The forth quarter challenge is weather. http://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2012/10/25/weather-challenge/ This piece I did on a piece of black silk chiffon. It’ s meant to be framed. I was going to use this for my exchange gift but then thought It wouldn’t be fair so send something they then had to frame.
The picture on the right is of the snowscape and several other things rolled up. I am messy. You can see the water on the table from me wetting down and it pouring off the corner. It’s OK though I have cement floors and a center drain.
Needling on some of the snowflakes that did not stick during rolling. I think I made the little balls to tight.
The finished picture from the front and back. I like both
I have a second entry on the same theme I will show you in a few days.
The guild I belong to, the Ottawa Valley Weavers and Spinners Guild, had its annual exhibition and sale this last weekend. I had a booth selling scarves and wraps and flowers and cuffs and hats etc. The guild does a display on a theme and has demos and promotes our classes. It’s our big event for the year. The venue is beautiful it is a community center now but used to be a church and has a huge domed center.
Here are some pictures of my booth and me explaining what nuno felt is to a customer.
This is one of the organisers wearing an exquisite shawl she knit using her own hand spun alpaca.
This my friend Judy,http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jumaka.com%2Fspinning%2Fpetfur.html&h=fAQGCIXhy , she not only likes to spin yarn, including dog and cat fur she also likes to spin wood on a lathe to make nostepinne for manually making a center pull ball) and drop spindles in several styles and weights including supported spindles like she is using in the picture. This is her booth, she shares it with another friend who is more camera shy.
The Guild display had the theme around the house and of course we had spinners and weavers demonstrating.
Lastly here are pictures of some of the many booths that where there. We had a good variety with both finished goods and supplies.
All in all it was a good show with not as many people as usual but the ones that came were buying. I hope everyone’s upcoming sales are good.
In the spring I made some shrug jackets using a pattern I saw in a book about making simple garments with your weaving. I don’t weave but I can felt a rectangle instead of weaving it. You would think that I would read what to do instead of just going from memory but that would have been too easy. I made some nice looking shrugs.
Orange shrug after over dying
They look nice enough but they didn’t really fit as well as I would have liked. They were to puffy at the back so not very flattering. I think the problem is the rectangle they are made from was to wide making the shrug to long. I decided to change them. I unpicked them and gave them a wash to get rid of all the thread holes.
I folded the top down about 1/3 to create a kimono sleeve. You end up with something that is more like a shawl that doesn’t fall off as you use you hands and go about your day.
If you would like a larger collar you can wear it the other way up.
You could also just sew a line down the edge or just the other direction to have a larger sleeve opening. I like these much better. I hope other people like them too. I am going to my guild exhibition and sale this weekend and I will have them there. On that note if you are in Ottawa this weekend Drop by the Glebe Community Center to see what we are up to.
I thought a hat making class last saturday. We had a great time and everyone had a wonderful hat at the end. I forgot to take pictures till the end. After a year of blogging you would think I would be used to taking pictures of everything I do. However I do have some pictures from the class I taught last winter. They were given to my by Jan who is in the class. I lost most of my pictures in a computer crash. The hard drive is off hopefully getting my pictures recovered.
Trolley for class materials.
This is my trolley that I use for class. My bins of wool for embellishment and my tub that has the little buckets, pool noodles, bubble wrap, resist material and other odds and sods.
Jan starting to layout of the wool.
Here is Jan starting to cover her resist with wool and the 2 halves of her hat finished and ready to put together.
Laying out the wool for a pill box hat
Here is another student who decided to do a pill box hat in cow print.
This is a red and white hat with a few embellishments to help it not look so Christmasy.
Red and white hat ready to wet.
Getting the wool wet using a ball browser. It is a bonsai watering tool that felters are using now. It sprinkles the water just where you need it.
Sorry no pictures of the felting everyone was to busy to take pictures. They did some rubbing and then some rolling then some kneading and throwing.
This is Jan’s hat ready to do some shaping.
The 2 pieces of the cow hat are ready to sew together once they are dry. The sides are a bit floppy with being wet.
Jan modeling her hat form 2 sides. She did more shaping and ended up twisting the tale and inserting inside the brim.
Jan’s hat finished
and now the red and white hat
Red and White hat finished
And last but not least is the picture of my student from last Saturday wearing their hats
Hat Class Oct. 2012
Everyone had a good time and ended up with a hat that fit them in a style they wanted. Whenever I here someone saying their head is small or large of too round or flat or whatever I always say well come to a class and make a hat tat fits you. The best hat block you have is your own head. So give it a try on your own or in a class make the hat of your dreams.
I have a show coming up soon and I am almost out of felted soap. They are always popular at Christmas time.
Here you can see some of my bins of small amounts of different colours, the pieces of nylon stocking I use for felting in and the first soap wrapped up in wool.
first a wrap a thin strip of wool around the edge of the soap then roll it up in a wider strip of roving. Next I pic a complementary or contrasting colour to wrap around the soap. I usually do a spiral from one side to the other.
I use small pieces of nylon stocking to put the wool in for felting. It’s the only thing I use nylons for these days. The reason I put the soap and wool bundle in a stocking is to keep it under control. the first thing that happens when you wet the wool is it gets bigger and its hard to keep it all in place.
Here is a soap with some silk added. this is silk roving that is teased apart. I also us pieces of silk hanky to give it a marble like appearance.
I managed to get this far yesterday but I didn’t manage to get them felted. so here is a picture of a different batch all finished. there are 2 with silk hanky on them.
That’ s the way I do it. If you have any questions or tales of soap making tell us about it.
We’ve actually had such a long cold wet winter here in oz that the site of some sunshine is so lovely and with the weather finally starting to warm up I found myself at the beach briefly the other day just taking in the ocean and some warmth, so I thought for this challenge we could felt a piece depicting our own weather no matter where in the world we live, and be it the ocean and sunshine or freezing temperatures with your lovely snow topped mountains, its your seasons.
And just a couple of lovely pictures of our Island in the sun !!
This is a place called the Nobbies were all the little fairy penguins live
Just a gorgeous sunset on the Island, would make a gorgeous felt piece
Looking forward to seeing everyone’s weather challenge to see the difference in our temps right now. Happy Felting and we’d love to see you in our interactive forum where we all love to share some great information or just have a chat, so come along and join in the fun http://www.feltandfiberstudio.com/
I belong to the Ottawa Valley Weavers and Spinners Guild. Every year we do demos at various fairs and events. This last week end we where at the Carp fair, http://carpfair.ca/ It is a typical fair with rides and concerts but it is in the country so there are horse shows, both western and english, as well as competitions for cattle, pigs and sheep. There are the quilt competitions and other domestic arts and the best corn, squash and forage contests. After you’ve seen all of that and you make it to the back on the fair there is the antique section with old cars and farm machinery on display and being demonstrated. That’s where we are, in a tent with the antiques. We don’t mind, the men who run the machinery are a great bunch. The only other woman we see demonstrating is the blacksmith.
Here are our display tables. You can see tractors through the windows.
That’s our demo loom on the end. Lots of people give it a try. It has some very interesting patterns on it.
Here I am demonstrating how to make a needle felted sheep. That’s my coffee in the foreground with its wool felt cozy. You will notice I am wearing long sleeves, my felt vest, my wool cape and some fingerless gloves. When we set up in the morning it was about 10 degrees celsius, or 50 fahrenheit. Once the sun came around to shine on me I started to warm up and shed layers. You can just see the tip on my drop spindle on the table. That’s the other thing I demonstrate.
Here are the ladies spinning.
Jan is out guild librarian and she handles the demo loom and is spinning on a road bug spinning wheel. It is designed to fit on the floor in the front of a van so you can spin while your driver whisks you down the highway.
Here is Linda first carding and then spinning from the rolags she made. She has a Louet copy she bought second hand.
Last but not least is Bernadette who has a very pretty wheel but I don’t know what type it is.
We had a great day together. We met lots of new people , we handed out lots of bookmarks about the guilds up coming exhibition and sale. We answered lots of questions and got a few people interested in joining the guild and learning more about fiber arts. Do any of you belong to a guild or go our demonstrating to promote fiber? I think next year we should yarn bomb a tractor what do you think?
My last post showed you some bubble samples I made when visiting my friend Maureen. This time I will show you what we did with them. The first thing we did was try some wrist cuffs. We both used the same colours. They were two scrap pieces of pre felt that Maureen had. We felted them together and down to 22 inches long. The bubbles will bring them to a good length for around your wrist.
I won’t show you all the steps of felting and putting the marbles in but as you can see it was done in the sun on the patio with a glass of wine. We are not all work and no play. In the right hand picture you can see the marble inside the bubble I just cut open.
Here they are on and in the right hand picture you can see we left one bubble uncut. It acts as the button to fasten the cuff around your wrist. We put a felt ball in that one. That was a success so we decided to do hats.
Here you can see the resist and the size of the finished hat with the marbles in it. On the right is Maureen with hers on. They are still wet at this point. We ran them through her laundry spinner and they were dry in the sun in an hour.
By then we had eaten dinner and it was back out the deck for a glass of wine and cutting. Here we are wearing them and a close up of mine so you can see the cut bubbles better. I stretched the large bubble after I cut it open to really show off the contrasting colours.
We had a great couple of days together felting and enjoying the weather. I have to say her husband was great he did most of the cooking and all of the clean up.
and now the red and white hat
