Slow progress is happening on my new nuno felt landscape. Again, it’s the find the difference in the photos challenge 😉
I had laid out the background trees at the end of my last post. Now I have stitched them down. I haven’t stitched the more foreground trees down yet because I need to work on the forest floor section at the front.
I wanted to play with some shapes of fallen trees on the forest floor. I had some cheesecloth scraps that worked with the colors so far. I added some shadows on the larger fallen tree.
Here I have added more shadows to the fallen tree. I am using another edge of nylon scarf in a dark red violet and a few scraps of blue violet silk organza.
Then I needed to figure out what to do with the rest of the foreground. Here I have added one layer of orange nylon scarf over the top of the fallen logs. Hmmm…
I changed from one big piece of orange nylon scarf and had multiple strips across with fringed edges. I realize you can’t see it very well in the photo. I put the fallen logs on top this time. Hmmm… still needs something. Aha! My usual suspect, it needs value changes.
Here I have added some darker red violet pieces of scarf amongst the orange. I think you will be able to see the changes more easily in the next photo.
Here it is with more of the darker red violet interspersed among the orange. That gives more contrast, so looking better.
I added the fallen logs back into the foreground and another tree. I am planning on adding more trees but now I need to get some of this stuff sewn down. I hope you aren’t getting tired of this project, still a ways to go yet.
I’m working on my grove of trees nuno landscape slowly. I think that some of you may think that this is a “find the difference” in the photos as they look pretty similar. But this is how I work, I add something, take a photo, look at the photo to see if it works, then add something else etc. That means there may be only one small difference from photo to photo, maybe I took something off, maybe I added something.
I had the background “horizon” and the large dark tree on the left when I left off. Now to add more trees. There are three little lines added on. These are the folded edges/hems of the nylon scarves I use to add layers of color. I usually just cut them off and don’t use them but I thought they might work for background trees. I tried maroon, yellow and orange. Not exactly what I wanted.
Then I added a mid tone grey one. I liked that better as it pushed the line further into the distance.
I added more mid tone grey trunks and moved the orange one closer to the “sun”. That looked better.
The I added a few more orange ones keeping them on the right hand side where the light is coming in.
I wanted to use more of the silk organza for a few more bigger trunks in the mid ground to foreground.
And a couple more smaller ones in the same deep red color. I was happy with how it was coming along.
Here I have added a few white “branches” to see what that would look like. I am inspired by Wolf Kahn’s tree paintings and was looking at several that showed white marks to denote branches like in this painting. I would need a lot more of the white lines to give the same effect. I will be pondering on that idea a while yet.
I decided I didn’t want to add too many layers without starting to stitch down the under layers. So I stitched the darker “horizon” background down to the nuno felt. Now I need to stitch the skinny trees down. I still need to figure out the foreground and there will be more layers of fabric on the larger trees. Still a long way to go. But I’m happy with my progress.
It’s the new year so it seems appropriate that I am starting a new “grove of trees” nuno felt landscape. I am trying to be a bit more abstract so I thought I would start with strips of silk instead of one piece of silk and see what happened.
I had a lovely dyed piece of silk in my stash from my friend Paula. So I tore it into strips and laid it out horizontally. I wanted to emphasize the lighter area at the top as sky.
I laid out some short fiber merino batts with more yellow at the top.
Then I put my strips in place, ready to felt.
Here is the felted result. The ends of the strips didn’t felt in well although the middle portions felted fine. I worked on the ends as much as the middle so I’m not sure of the difference. Oh well. Then I started trying to ‘see’ my landscape. I didn’t take photos but laid some fabrics on top to get started. I didn’t like it. I trimmed the visible wool edges and started looking from different directions.
After reorienting the piece, I “found” my landscape. This direction gave a feel of trees in the background and the sun shining from the right. This was much more exciting to me. Here comes that vertical landscape again.
Here’s a piece of sheer nylon scarf (dark blue) over the bottom portion to show the horizon. Yes, this should work.
I cut and frayed four pieces of the nylon scarf to give a feeling of ground in the tree grove. I will work more on the foreground as I get there. But I need to get some trees defined.
I used the strip of nuno felted fabric on the left as a guide and placed blue violet silk organza into a tree shape. I have loads more to do as I want to put a lot of applique texture and hand stitching into this piece. But I have the idea going which sometimes is the hardest part. What are you working on in the new year? We would love to see, submit a photo of your work here.
I know you’re thinking, fish for Christmas? Don’t you raise turkeys? Why are you having fish? Well, we did have turkey and the traditional fixings. In this case, the fish was a present. When I asked my husband what he wanted for Christmas, he said fish.
In the last few years, he has taken to cooking, particularly new things. I appreciate this so much. I have been cooking dinner since I was 15, and I just do not want to do it any more. Anyway, his idea was he does not know how to cook fish and would like to figure it out. He thought if he got them as a present he would get on with doing that. My thinking was, if I buy fish before Christmas, it will be in the fridge too long before he has a chance to cook it, what to do? I could just make a card, I owe you some fish fillets of your choice. How boring is that?
A couple of days before Christmas I decided to make him a fish.
I drew an image of a fish and traced it onto some fulled wool from an old wool coat.
Then fixed the nose. I didn’t want to needle that close to the edge. Having done that before I know it can distort things.
Then onto the felting. I did well with following the lines not remembering until after that the easy way to do it is to lay the wool across the line, felt the line and then fold it over to the correct side.
Fish HeadTail
I decided the front was a bit plain. I thought of adding gull lines but I didn’t want them to show on the skeliton side. Instead, I made a fin separately and added it, completely forgetting to take a picture. You can see the line from it in the first picture below. It was covered by a piece of the skeleton. I didn’t want the bone lines to show on the front so I used “invisible” thread to sew the skeleton down. the felt Snakes are from scraps. when I cut open a reaist I always roll the cut of bit into a snake and then store them in a bag for later use. Then I carefully cut it out of the background.
And this is the finished fish.
He was thrilled with the fish. He loves hand/homemade gifts. So next week we will go pick out some fish.
This is my first post of 2025 so I will wish you all a Happy New Year! I hope you have a happy and healthy year.
Happy Christmas everyone! At the moment you are probably up to your eyes getting ready for the days of festivities which lie ahead. So, I will give you a few options here. Here is a slideshow of my blog which you can go through in a few minutes if you are stuck for time. Alternatively you can read my narrative or if you have a while to spare why not grab a cuppa, pull up a chair, watch the slideshow and read the narrative!
I covered the resist with orange viscose and two layers of red merino
Then I added silk paper I made. I didn’t like it so I pulled it off when it was at prefelt stage
This is the lid of the furniture polish I used to shape my bells
Here they are after drying. I cut them to size as they were rather long
Here is a view of the inside of one of the bells
I rolled the bottom edge to show the orange viscose
I pinned the soluble paper to the bell and drew my pattern
I cut back the excess paper ones I had stitched the pattern
Then I added the beads
Here they are ready for dunking
The paper dissolved once the water hit it!
Then I crocheted the ‘rope’ I painted the silver bells with some bronze nail varnish
Here they are, ready to go!
A detail of the free motion machine embroidery and beading on the tree
Disaster struck using masking tape on the inside of the card. Back to the drawing board
I stippled the card using a stencil brush and red then gold paint
Inside the card (no masking tape this time!)
A selection of handmade Nepalese paper for Karen to play with
All packed in the box
Here’s the finished card which I glued to the lid of the box
All ready for posting
And finally, here they are, on Karen’s beautiful Christmas tree
I was so delighted when I drew Karen in the Christmas card exchange this year. I was also a bit daunted as I have been going through a bit of a dry patch creatively over the past number of months. I knew I wanted to do something that ‘stood out’ (in other words 3D) but this can be a bit of a challenge when it comes to postal systems.
While searching through one of my fibre presses I came across a deep small box that I had used to transfer a porcelain bowl home from my holiday in NZ earlier in the year. We won’t even talk about how my weird creative mind works but seeing the box instantly brought to mind bells so, decision made, I got to work on them.
First I made my resist. I intended making two bells. I covered the resist in an orange viscose fibre and then laid two layers of red merino on top. I added a hanging loop to each bell and some silk paper to each bell which I later pulled off as I didn’t like it. Once prefelted I cut through the resist to make two shapes and then started working on shrinking and shaping. Next, I searched for a suitable bell shape which I could use for the next stage. That’s where the beeswax came in! The lid is shaped like an old fashioned beehive which is an ideal shape to work with. Lots of rubbing and shaping ensued (and I will admit a bit of cutting as the shapes were too long), until I ended up with bell shapes I was happy with. Then I rolled the bases so that the orange showed on the outside.
I decided I wanted a simple embroidered design on each bell. I drew my tiny design on water soluble paper and added my stitches and a few beads to each bell. Then I dissolved the paper and reshaped the bell on the top of my little beehive! Once dry, I got to work on the ‘rope’ and the bell. My little jingle bells were silver and I had been searching, to no avail for gold ones which I thought would look better. Then I thought of using some nail varnish on the outside of the bells. Worked a treat! I then took some cotton embroidery thread and made the ‘rope’ which I attached to the body of the bell and to the inside of the little ‘jingle’. Then I threaded ribbon through the loop at the top of each bell so that Karen could hang them up. They fitted nicely into the box but I felt there was something missing. So I added a few little squares of Nepalese paper which I thought Karen might like to experiment with. Some of these are quite a lot heavier than the usual ones which are used in felting but I have managed to felt them into pieces. I thought she might have fun trying them out.
Next to the card. My cards were the same size as the box so I thought it might be fun to attach it to the box when it was ready. I opted for a monochrome effect to start with; I prefelted a tree which was made from black merino and margillan silk. Then I laid the tree onto a white merino background and felted the lot together. Once fulled, I cut it to size. Then it was decorating time which I did on my sewing machine using free motion embroidery. I added some beads too.
Time to address the card! I stippled the outside of the card with a stencil brush using red and then gold paint. Then I decided to do the same on the inside but got too creative and used masking tape so I could control the area where I was adding the colour. Once happy, I went to remove the masking tape. Disaster! It took away a goodly portion of the card too. I was not a happy bunny! On to the second attempt with the card (without masking tape this time), I was more successful. All done and ready for the post.
Karen has received her card today and I got mine from her yesterday. I love my card. Karen has gone to such detail with it I am going to treasure it. Like Lindsay’s card from a previous swap, it will be putting in an annual appearance at Christmas time.
I love the concept of the card swap. It keeps my felting friends close in my heart, especially at this time of year. Thank you to Ann who organised it and us.
Wishing everyone a merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and peaceful 2025!
I have been volunteering in the shop attached to our local Museum for several years now. I have to keep an eye on the Museum, welcome any visitors, dispense information (if I can) and serve in the shop. Visitors are infrequent unfortunately and, because I get bored easily and can’t stand doing so, I tend to bring in something crafty to keep me occupied between times. As I am using the Museum’s electricity to light and heat my work space, I feel that I should use the time to make something that could be sold in the shop to help to raise funds for the Sturminster Newton Heritage Trust which runs the Museum and also the town’s Water Mill, renting the latter from the Pitt Rivers Estate.
I have told you about the Mill before here and thought you might like to hear a little about the Museum and the things I have made (or attempted to make) over the years to sell in the shop. Though first I must show you a chap who, a few years ago, came to visit the Mill with his mates from one of the local biker groups.
Biker Dog – So cool! I’ve forgotten what his name was, though it might have been Jack, but he certainly attracted a lot of attention from others visiting the mill at the time, and he lapped it up!
This is the building which the Museum Society, as it was then called, purchased from the Town Council in 2007.
The building started life in the 1500s as a cottage. In the early 1800s it came into the ownership of the then Lord Rivers and was occupied by a farmer/baker and then a well known clock maker (we have one of his grandfather clocks in the Museum). After being sold in the mid 1800s it was occupied by an insurance agent and then an auctioneer, before becoming a sweet shop and restaurant as well as a home.
Infamously, before the Second World War, the restaurant was visited for a meal by Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists.
After the war the property was bought by a solicitor and eventually sold to the Town Council in 1996. The Town Council occupied the building until 2007 when it was purchased by the then named Museum and Mill Society.
The Town Council moved into purpose built Council Chamber and offices, which are part of The Exchange building. The Exchange was built and opened in that year on the site of what had been the largest Calf Market in the country but which had closed some 10 years previously. The Town has had a market/fair since 1219, having been granted a Charter by King Henry III, and we continue to have a (much reduced) market each Monday with stalls around the town.
The first of my donations which the Museum sold (eventually) were these two small felt pictures of the Mill. They were my versions of photographs which Graham, my husband, had taken.
Mill Picture 1
Mill Picture 2
Then I had a go at crocheting snowflakes, which did sell quite well in the run up to one Christmas. I seem to remember that I have shown you these before but I can’t find the link so here are some of them again.
A few Snowflakes
The Museum Shop has a number of items to sell which sport images of the Mill, Museum and, in the case of tea towels, our mediæval bridge over the River Stour. I did use one of the tea towels to make a Memo Board for sale, with the intention of making a series of these if they sold. Unfortunately that was not to be, the Memo board I made is still hanging on the shop wall. Though to be honest I’m not sorry that there’s no call for more of them because it took a lot longer to make and was a lot more complicated than I had anticipated, and I had actually made it in my workshop rather than in the Museum shop, so it didn’t really meet any of my criteria.
The “one off” Tea Towel Memo Board.
In fact over the months I have come up with lots of different ideas for items for sale which haven’t worked: Making books in boxes using unsold cards sporting very old photographs of Stur (as the locals call Sturminster Newton). Making Etuis, but I couldn’t work out how to get Mill, museum or bridge images onto them; I would have had the same problem with making chatelaines with fabric covered thread cutters, scissors and needle books. I did think of making pincushions to sit inside glass or ceramic pots or ornaments bought from charity shops but I couldn’t find a way to make sure the pincushions stayed inside them without using lots of glue, which I hate doing. I did try fabric paper weights and door stops, but obviously couldn’t use my sewing machine in the shop and hand stitching would have taken ages and probably wouldn’t have been strong enough to keep inside the grains of rice, which I was to use for the weights.
I was fast giving up on ideas for things to sell in the shop when my stint at trying to sell my scarves and fabric covered note/sketch books in 1855, our Artisans “Superstore” https://www.1855sturminsternewton.co.uk/ came to an end. I had not been able to sell much during the 6 months I’d allowed myself so the Museum Shop ended up with most of the unsold stock!
Some of my Scarves
More Scarves
Nuno Scarf with beaded flower scarf pin
The covered books and the silk scarves aren’t on display at the moment due do lack of space.
I have at last found some things which I can make in the shop and which are going on sale in the runup to Christmas – I have become addicted to making Norwegian Gnomes. Some people these days call them Gonks, but they are nothing like the Gonks that used to be around in the 70s. Here’s one I made back then – it still sits on my landing windowsill. I can’t bring myself to get rid of it. It is made out of a hat which was left over after one of our WI jumble sales. I stuffed it, putting in a scrap fabric base, and added eyes, ears, hands, feet and a tail, and have loved it ever since!
My vintage Gonk
For the gnomes I used scrap fibres, mainly scoured but unprocessed merino, to make the basic shape and stitched large buttons on the bases to help keep them upright. I stitched on noses, in most cases these were wooden beads, though there were a couple of needle felted noses.
Gnome “cores”
I covered the bodies in various unused fibres, mainly prefelts or carded batts which had become compressed in storage, or failed UFOs. I added “hair” – some of the large stock of locks that I found in my stash (I’d forgotten that I’d got so much!) and added beards and moustaches from the same source. Then I covered the pointy hats with more of the fibres used for the bodies. A few of the Gnomes were female – plaits from scrap yarn rather than curly hair and facial fuzz.
I started off making Autumn Gnomes but soon ended up making Christmas ones. There were quite a collection in the end as I was making them at home and at various workshops as well as in the Museum – I told you I was addicted!
Gnome Manufactory at an IFA get together
Autumn Gnome and yet another scarf
Here’s what the Museum Shop looks like at the moment in it’s Christmas finery and with all the goodies currently for sale.
Some of the Gnomes already on display
Shop Display 1
Shop Display 2
Shop Display 3
Some of the books by local authors about the area and its history; and the Children’s Corner
Christmas Hamper Raffle
Christmas Goodies 1
Christmas Goodies 2
The Museum proper has 6 rooms housing various alternating displays which at the moment include:
Our famous writers/poets Thomas Hardy (he wrote The Return of the Native while living here); William Barnes (his dialect poetry is famous – you might remember the song Linden Lea – if you’re old enough!); and Robert Young (he also wrote dialect poetry under the nom de plume Rabin Hill).
A fascinating display on the history of weights and measures (for instance a cricket pitch measures 22 yards long, or a “Chain”. I always wondered why a chain? Now I understand, there was an actual metal chain used as we have one on display.)
We have the earliest map available of the Sturminster Newton and surrounding area dated 1783.
Swanskin (as mentioned in the link at the beginning of this post)
The Hinton St Mary Roman Mosaic – this was part of the floor of a Roman villa found in the next village up the road from us, which is also the base of the Pitt Rivers Estate previously mentioned. The mosaic was discovered in 1963 and unfortunately was removed and is now in the possession of The British Museum. It was hoped that it could be returned to Dorset when the Dorchester Museum was enlarged but they won’t let us have it back!
As part of the Roman display there are a number of photographs showing what flora and fauna was introduced to this country by the Romans. You’d be surprised what plants and animals they introduced that we now consider to be “native”.
Upstairs we have a new working model of Sturminster Newton Railway Station showing how it used to look before being closed in 1966. Very few of the original buildings are still here. That will be a permanent exhibit (hopefully!) whilst most of the others will change from time to time.
Certainly the Museum is well worth a visit at any time of the year.
The last time I showed you my Indian Paintbrush piece, I was undecided about the way the stems were ending so abruptly on the background. So I left it for awhile before making a decision on what to do.
The first thing I decided to do was add some stems to the blue flowers. I didn’t want the stems to be too visible so I chose a thread that was close to the background color. You can click on the photos to see them enlarged.
It’s probably hard to see here but I did think that the stems helped the piece feel “more grounded”. But the stems of the main flowers still looked like they are not integrating with the background. So I decided to add paint to cover the end up a bit. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo with just the paint over the bottoms of the stems and over the lower third of the piece.
I added more blue flowers with stems over the base of the larger flower stems and the stems are looking better. I have decided it’s finished and now need to find a background fabric so I can finish it and get it ready for framing. This one is named “Painting the Landscape”.
Firstly, if you’re Jan and don’t want a spoiler about your card, stop reading immediately!
I think I’m jinxed. There, I said it. For last year’s seasonal card swap, I was paired with the lovely Hélène and the card I sent her was returned to me by Irish Customs, who didn’t deign my wares good enough to cross its country’s borders. This year, I am unable to send my finished card to Jan because Royal Mail says no (well, Canada post says no, they’re not accepting any mail until their strike is resolved).
If I take part in next year’s swap, you might want to avoid me as a partner…
This year I decided to take the notion of a postcard rather literally; I wanted something the size and look of one, and so decided to put my sewing machine to use.
I cut some pre-felt almost to size and marked down the lines typical of a postcard using a heat-erasable pen. See the twisted red wool on the top left corner of the photo? At first I had the idea of felting the lines with it, until I realised it would take me forever and not look half as good as using the sewing machine. I changed tactics.
After sewing those lines I wrote down my seasons greetings. I was ambitious in what I wanted to say, as you’re about to see.
Using yarn, I worked with a felting needle and carefully started following the outlines of the words. I immediately realised my “handwriting” wasn’t going to be as small as I intended. Oops. If you look carefully at the picture above, you’ll see the next word I was meant to write was “holidays,” which is larger than the already felted “Happy.”
Where did the word “holidays” go? Well, sometimes you have to pick your battles. Let’s pretend this was the plan all along, shall we?
And then, off to the decorating and making it a more seasonal card.
There was something missing in the background… so I did the foolish thing of working that part after having the foreground finished. However, I think it was worth it, but you can judge by yourselves.
Much better, I hope you agree! I particularly like the detail of the present with the bow made from yarn.
Now it was time to cut the card to size and glue it to a real postcard (a blank one made from watercolour paper). I sadly don’t have a good enough photo of the card’s front, so you’ll just have to imagine the above image in the correct size and without the markers that I removed with a steam iron.
Here’s the back of the card:
“I hope this card reaches you in time” was written before I knew Canada postal services were not only delaying deliveries but had altogether halted them. Sorry, Jan!
I will have this on its way to you as soon as possible.
(By the way, see the smudge under the flying bird? That wasn’t me being clumsy at all, no siree, that was completely on purpose and represents the movement and plight of the avian creature as it strives to reach its maximum potential. Cough cough…)
Hi All It seems I forgot I had to post today so I am late. I am reposting a post showing some of the past Holiday Exchange Cards that we have done. I did remove the links to sign up for this exchange.
Hi all, for those who may not know we also run an interactive forum for felting and fiber folks. It’s a great place to share your work, ask questions and help each other out. http://feltandfiberstudio.proboards.com/
Each year we have a holiday exchange. You make a small felted postcard or similar size card with some felt on it.
Here’s the timeline:
October 4-Nov 9: people sign up
November 10 partners are announced.
November: Make your card, contact your partner for an address
December 1: Mail your card
Here are some of the cards from our past exchange, there has been lots of variety.
You may remember I had to redo the Shepherdess’ cloak. I didn’t like the way the hood on the one peice cloak fit, so I made another one making the body and hood separately.
I sewed the hood to the cloak and it looked much better but, naturally, I did not take a picture of that. I immediately moved on the decorating the cloak. I thought if she had multicoloured sheep she would want to show that off on her cloak and so I decided to add some nice fuzz to her cloak to help her show it off and keep warm.
Next, the shepherdess needed some hair, up to now she has been bald. It’s a look that works for some but I thought she would be cold or might get sunburn so she needed some hair.
Very quickly she became a lovely brunette with some naturally coloured Teeswater.
trying on her new cloak (ignore the messy background, there is no time for housework when cloaks must be made.)
Time to be put together. Off to the guild studio for a photoshoot.
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And lastly, they got installed at the gallery for the guild show. Jan will have more pictures on Saturday. I stole these from a guild post she made because I haven’t made it to the show yet. Thanks to Lianne for giving them some grass to stand on.
You may think this is the end but there is more. Someone’s Dragon raided my flock
She says he is just lonely but he looks a little hungry to me.
