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Art Therapy Update

Art Therapy Update

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We had a go at making nuno felted flowers yesterday at the well-being centre. I made a few samples to take in for ideas. Of course, I forgot to take photos, but I found one of them hiding in the middle of a photo, so apologies for blurriness:

green flowerIt was made with a square piece of cotton gauze with wisps of Merino on top,  I cut it around the prefelt stage and stuck the little leftover bits onto what would become the middle piece. I layered it up and put a little piece of organza at the back, a button in the middle and sewed it together. We had a good selection of fabric to choose from, I’d dyed some scrim and cotton gauze, and so had Joyce who runs the craft group.  Lyn, Teri and Judith sent lots of fabric too.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAWe mostly stuck to reds, pinks, and purples for the wool, you can see a couple of the blends I carded from donated wool at the front:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThere aren’t too many of the blends left now, they’re always the first to get chosen! Starting off laying out:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAEveryone was doing something different, some people had a couple of medium sized pieces, some had a few smaller pieces, the red pieces are Jo’s, she made a poppy, and the smaller pieces are Louise’s:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAShirley put a lot of thought into choosing some gauze and a piece of a mustardy viscose scarf I think Lyn sent.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASome people made larger pieces to cut out later. I think that’s fabric from Teri:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd wetting it down:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAYou can see which piece will be the top of Jo’s poppy:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAShirley picked different wool shades to match her fabric for her different layers:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI’ll have to show you in a few weeks how they turned out. This is one of the pieces from week 1, they have a machine embellisher at the craft group, so extra detail was being added:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd lastly, here’s a piece made by Barbara from our first nuno week:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Getting Ready for the Guild Exhibition and Sale.

Getting Ready for the Guild Exhibition and Sale.

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I have a show coming up in November and I am not ready yet but I’m working on it. I made 2 hats.  Here I have added the embellishment yarn to one of them  and I am ready to flip it. I have covered the yarn in a very fine layer of wool.

gettin ready to flip

Here I have cut out the resist on the other hat and refolded it to roll the “seam” flat.

rolling the other way

Here it is after fulling so show you the shrinkage. It’s a little hard to see the top of the resist but if you look carefully its there

finnished fulling

And both ready to be rinsed. While they are still wet I will put folds in the long pointy part and sew them tight so they will dry properly. They are soaking in their rinse water at the moment.

2 hats ready to rince

I started a pill box hat

Top of a pillbox hat pill box sides

I am teaching a slipper class on the week end but I can’t find my samples so I am making a pair of booty slippers for my grandson, so I can show the class.

Fynns slippers

I think I will do a sample pair for myself using the ear pattern that Nada showed us http://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2014/03/03/felted-slipper-tutorial-using-ear-shaped-resist-by-nada-v/

Have you tried any new patterns lately?

 

Felting, Weaving and Teaching

Felting, Weaving and Teaching

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I had a fairly productive week I made 4 cup cozies.  They need their buttons and elastic loops but I should get that done this week. I need to sort out if they are narrow enough to go through the handle on a coffee mug. If they don’t fit I will make them for travel mugs without handles.

cup cozies

Here are some close up pictures. The top two have throwsters silk waste. The bottom left is a silk scarf and the right is cotton cheesecloth.

cozies close up

I also got the inklette loom warped to make a strap.

incle loom

The weaving is not great but it is getting better as I go.

ingle weaving

Lastly I had t very nice ladies to may studio to learn to make nuno felt scarves. As usual I was busy with the students and forgot to take pictures until the end.

nuno finished scarves nuno scarves close up

 

Felted Flower Class and Some Lambs

Felted Flower Class and Some Lambs

Comments 23 comments

I taught felted flowers this last week as a short evening class. We had a good time. This is proved by me not taking many pictures again.

First they did a morning glory style flower to get the idea of laying out. Some of the students had not ever used roving before. Here they are shaping their flowers.

shaping flowers morning glories

calenes morning gloryThis is Carlene’s flower

Next they made more delicate flowers using silk hankies and they learned to make stamen and stems.

Carlene’s again

carlenes silk flower

and everyone together

Flower class finnished

And be cause it’s spring her are some lamb pictures.

lamb on mom lambs and mom 2

when lambs are born we put them and their mom into a small pen to make sure mom has milk and  everything is going well. After a few days the lambs get their eartags and vaccinations. Then into a small group pen with other moms and lambs and then after a few more days out into the big group pen were they can get outside too. It is fun to run and jump with other lambs.

This is my house lamb, he is a preemie. He is very small with not much wool and no body fat. He was born late Tuesday night. And just because I like them here are the roosters roosting on some lambing pens for the night. They go to bed early as you see it is still daylight out.

preemie lamb roosters

Felted Flower Samples for a Class Next Week

Felted Flower Samples for a Class Next Week

Comments 14 comments

I got a request for a felted flower class after some people in my guild saw a  picture of some very delicate flowers on Facebook.  It is going to be a short class done in the evening. I haven’t made any in a while so I had to do a sample.

I made a stem

rolling stem  stem

I also did some stamen. I wrapped them in plastic wrap so they wouldn’t stick to the rest of the flower while I was rubbing and rolling.

stamen

For the body of the flower I used a silk hanky and added a very thin layer of merino  wool.

silk hanky add some wool

and this is the result

finished flowers I also made some little rose like flowers to show them.

roses

Flowers are fun to make and do not take long.  I am going to work on some other methods and see what they want to do at the class. We will make them 2 different way in the class do to time constraints. I will take pictures at the class to show you how the students do.

Birdhouse Class and Lambs.

Birdhouse Class and Lambs.

Comments 20 comments

It is spring! Saturday I taught a Birdhouse Class.

Everyone had fun decorating their birdhouses.

Bernadette bird house 2

birdhouse 3 birdhouse 4

Of course there was rubbing and rolling and throwing

rubbing rolling

throwing

and everyone ended up with great looking birdhouses. Bernadette (second from the left) wanted a feeder so she made her opening much bigger.

birdhouses finishedThe other way I know that spring is here I we had our first lambs . We started with a bang, quadruplets. They are less than an hour old here, so not even cleaned up properly yet.

quad lams

and the reason my post is late this morning is because I have a visitor.

Fynn

 

 

Exciting News and a Giveaway

Exciting News and a Giveaway

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We’ve been working on a new venture for The Felting and Fiber Studio … online Workshops and Classes!  The first class we’re offering is “Wet Felting Workshop for Beginners“. The first one starts on Sunday 1st March 2015. It’s a 3 week course developed to give absolute beginners a good foundation on which to develop their wet felting skills. Not only are there the expected ‘How to Felt’ instructions, but there are also simple exercises designed to show what happens when wool felts under different conditions so you can control the outcome. There is also lots of info on using different types of wool and animal fibres, tips for inexpensive tools, alternate techniques etc. For more info on the course, have a look here: http://feltingandfiberstudio.com/wet-felting-for-beginners/

We have lots of ideas in the pipeline and some classes are in development, keep an eye out on our Classes page for further info. We are also hoping other fibre artists will ‘hire’ the Studio site and the Class support forum as an online venue to teach their own classes from. We haven’t figured out the details for this yet, it’s still early days, but it won’t be expensive, we just want to cover hosting costs and media storage expenses; our aim has always been to support the community,  not make our fortunes 🙂  Feel free to contact us if you’re interested.

wet felting FOR BEGINNERS flyer GIVEAWAY smallSo, to celebrate the launch of the Workshop, we’re giving away 4 free class places. The giveaway is for the 3 week course, you just need the supplies and felting equipment listed on the class information page. All you have to do to win is leave a comment in reply to this post. We would really appreciate it if you would blog about it or share the info on Facebook or other social media. We’ll announce the winners on February 6th and contact you with the details. If you’d like to sign up for the course, please use the Contact Form at the bottom of the Class Info page. Good Luck!

***Just to clarify: if you want to enter the giveaway leave a comment on THIS post. To sign up for the class, please use the contact form on the class info page: http://feltingandfiberstudio.com/classes/wet-felting-for-beginners/

The Giveaway is now closed. Please have a look at the winners announcement post if you’d like to know who won and for more details about the course. Thanks to everyone who entered and helped spread the word 🙂

Needle felting class and Lambs

Needle felting class and Lambs

Comments 16 comments

Recently I taught a needle felting class were we made little sheep.

Making Bodiesfelting bodies

Adding Legsadding legs

And Earsadding ears

Then its time to give the sheep some wool. These are hand dyed Blue Faced Leicester curls. They are small tight  curls perfect for small work.

adding curls purple sheep adding curls blue sheep green sheep with red heart brown sheep

brown sheep 1 blue sheeep and snowman

All very cute in the end and a snowman for company.

And this morning we had 2 new real lambs arrive. twin lambs 2015 It’s not a great picture but they were very new and not interested in posing for a good shot.

 

 

Final Project

Final Project

Comments 20 comments

Happy holidays everyone and to those who celebrate,  Merry Christmas!

As we wind down for the year and start planning for next year, I’ve decided to share my final project from Fiona Duthie’s Surface Design class.   My intention is to use it as a reminder of incorporating more of these techniques in my felt work going forward.

I didn’t set out to use a specific number of techniques, but let the picture dictate which ones to use.  We learned many more than I used here.

I started with making a bridge using the lace technique and decorated it with pencil roving and stitching with yarn on the top  to create a handrail on top and matching decoration below.

2014-05-16 13.41

I added the cracked mud/tile effect to the ends of the bridge.

2014-05-20 16.03
Before adding techniques and felting

 

The water is fabric manipulation using some silk habotoi with some shadowing under the bridge.  The hills in the background were prefelt cut outs with silk embellishments for texture.  I also used pencil roving to define the shoreline in the distance.

2014-05-24 16.18

On the beach is a tree trunk made using the shibori and carving techniques then added beads, cotton batting  and gems as inclusions under silk gauze.  I used silk and locks for the water rushing over the sand and to embellish the sky.  There is a 3D water lily on the waters edge.

2014-12-07 12.14b

2014-12-07 12.14

I also added loops on the back to be able to hang the picture.   I debated straightening the edges, but decided I like the organic edges.  While its not gallery material, I enjoyed making it and am proud to hang it in my family room.

The class was fun and I learned a lot.  I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to expand their felting techniques in a classroom setting working at your own pace.

What projects or techniques are on your list to try next year?