I have been working slowly on my grove of trees landscape. I finished stitching down all the trunks and foreground fabrics.
So here’s a photo with it all stitched in place. Next up was adding a bunch of branches and I wanted to see how I could do that.
I took a piece of clear plastic and used paint pens on the plastic to look at various color choices. The photo on the left shows white paint pen and the one on the right shows using grey, peach and brown paint pens. The white definitely felt too stark. So I thought I would use a mixture of colors.
I looked through my stash to see what colors I had that might work. I decided to use wool thread as I wanted the branches to not stand out too much. I thought adding “shiny” cotton thread wouldn’t work well.
So I started with grey thread and this photo doesn’t really show the true colors of the thread. I used the grey on the grey trunks in the background.
Then on to adding peach branches to the peach tree trunks. I couched the threads down using the same thread for the couching stitches.
Then I needed to decide if I was going to keep going with light colored threads or add some darker branches. I tried a piece of pink thread by laying it down on the right and then a dark maroon thread in the center. I decided the darker branches would work the best. As the light in this piece is coming from the back right, the lighter branches give that feeling of light shining on them. The foreground branches would be darker with less light shining on them.
So I added a medium value red thread for the three red trees to the right side. Again, all the branches were couched down.
Then I added in the maroon threads for the darker trees on the left side. I also turned the silk that was loose on the top under to the back. I will hand stitch all of the loose silk around the edge down to the back. The piece is now hanging on the design wall. I think I will add some peach “grass” in the foreground just as I have couched down the threads for the branches. But I am letting it sit for a bit so I can see if it needs anything else. What do you think?
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.
Hi all, although I haven’t been doing much felting myself I have been teaching others to do it. I ran my Nunofelt scarf class again this last weekend. I had five lovely ladies at the Ottawa Valley Weavers’ and Spinners’ Guild classroom.
The first part of the class is talking about all the fibres. Students are amazed at all the kinds of silk. I usually bring hankies, tops, throwsters waste and recycled sari silk along will wool BFL locks and sparkly nylon. They get to pick their hand dyed scarf blanks and then spend at least 15 min trying to decide what embellishments they want to use. It’s lots of fun watching and helping with colour and texture choices.
Silk hankies
Silk Tops
Dyed Silk Throwsster’s waste
sari waste
Sparkly nylon
It is so hard to pick.
Then it is on to lay out the wool. Once this starts I put the silk blanks away so no one is tempted to change their mind halfway through the layout. I keep all the wool and embellishments out until they wet everything.
Everyone enjoys using the ball browser sprayers to get everything wet.
In this group, they all stayed together during the different stages of felting. Often they become staggered; someone wants to be first done and another will be very relaxed and go slower. In the end, they always finish and it’s interesting to see the different styles of learning and doing the same thing.
rubbing
rubbing
rolling
rolling
I didn’t get any pictures of the gently squishing and tossing to full but here they are finished.
nuno scarf
nuo scarf
nuno scarf
nuno scarf
nuno scarf group
nuno scarf group
All in all a great class with happy students.
The only odd thing that happened was one lady had brought her own wool, marked merino and she was sure it wasn’t superwash. She added my embellishments. One of her colours did not stick to the scarf anywhere. My first thought was it was superwash. However, it did seem to felt and grab the silk embellishments on top of it. Nowhere she had used the copper coloured wool stuck to the silk backing. It was attached by other colours surrounding it so it’s all one piece but I have no idea what was/is going on with the wool, any ideas?
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.
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.
Scarf I made more than 10 years agoView of scarf from the other end
‘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.
Light ‘rainbow’ prefelt
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.
Original scarf layout
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.
Anyone who knows me knows I’m not big on Christmas and up until last year I rarely gave, let alone made, Xmas cards. Then Ann reintroduced the holiday card swap and after making Caterina’s “non Christmas” card I found myself sketching comic reindeer and having fun making a whole batch of stitched cards! This year I’ve resurrected the same designs but changed the colour schemes. I enjoy making these and using free motion stitch to attach appliqué fabric shapes on to a card base. Finer detail is then added using felt pens before stitching the coloured base on to a blank card using the machines zig zag stitch.
For Helene’s card I wanted to incorporate some fibre so decided it should be a quirky Santa with a bushy Merino beard. This is how he started out but in my rush to meet our agreed deadline for posting I completely forgot to take any other photos so you’re just going to have to use your imagination to fill in the blanks!!
Let’s just say that when I received my wonderful Christmas Box from Helene with her gorgeous felted card, red bells and those lovely papers I wished I had put more time and thought in to my contribution!!
Anyway, moving on…….There must have been something in the air the day I was making my cards as Mark wondered in to my workroom and asked if he could make one too. This is a man who rarely (and only at a push) sews his own buttons on and who has never ever used a sewing machine in his life. Here he was saying he wanted to sew a card!!! I suggested he draw out a basic shape and we’d take it from there. He drew a snowman (thankfully simple enough) and traced the shapes on to fabric before cutting them out. I have to admit, I was a little apprehensive at the thought of teaching him how to use a sewing machine. Turns out he’s a natural and I was amazed at how well he did, not only that but he looked to be enjoying it, just look at the concentration on his face! He doesn’t know I’m sharing these photos though so, if you’re reading this and you know him, please don’t let on!!
Did I mention I’m not big on Christmas? Once the cards were made and my tree was up and decorated I felt I’d peaked and got the urge to get away from it all! A quick search on Airbnb and I found a beautiful apartment just a twenty minute walk from Valetta so we flew out to Malta on the 14th December for a week.
The weather was changeable but very pleasant with temperatures ranging from 17 to 20 degrees. You could easily spot the tourists in their sandals, shorts and sleeveless tops because even on the warmest days most of the locals wore boots, sweaters, hats and coats!
Malta’s capital Valletta is a fortified city located on a hilly peninsula between two natural harbours. It’s built on a grid system with its narrow, steep streets fanning out from the main thoroughfare, Republic Street, and dropping down to the waters edge. Approximately one kilometre long and pedestrianised Republic Street runs from the City Gate to Fort St Elmo and houses buildings such as the Maltese Parliament, the Courts of Justice, the Royal Opera House, and many more. This is the area to be if you’re looking for lively bars, restaurants and shops but you only need to walk a few steps either side of Republic Street to feel like you’re in a different world!
Ornate balcony windows are a big feature of Maltese architecture and they are everywhere you look in Valetta.
Exploring these narrow streets you can find fabulous boutique hotels serving great coffee and home made pastries, tiny bars with wonderful atmosphere and good beer. I also came across these impressive window displays with outfits constructed from folded paper…..
Another window display that caught my attention was this one in Sliema with skull shaped vodka bottles.
And instore was even better with these bottles of tequila encased in very elaborate beaded heads. Unfortunately my budget didn’t stretch to bringing one of these home!
Back in Valetta I came across a sign for the St Paul Shipwreck Church above a narrow entrance on the equally narrow pedestrianised St Lucia Street. When you see a huge impressive building you have a bit of an idea of what you are going to find inside but when I stepped through this open door I had no idea of the cavernous interior that would open up in front of me! I’ve since read of others who have struggled to find this church so I’m pleased I popped my head through that doorway!
Obviously we didn’t escape Christmas altogether in Malta but it was nice experiencing it in such a scenic setting.
Valetta is the smallest capital city in Europe with a surface area of just 0.55 km² and approx 7,000 inhabitants and the city was recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980. It’s a beautiful city steeped in history with a wonderful climate and friendly inhabitants with the added bonus that at this time of year there are not too many tourists so it proved to be the perfect getaway.
I’ll leave you with a couple of small wet felted pieces I’ve made since we got back. The first is a little Nuno snake inspired by a free online wet felting tutorial from feltmaker Yaroslava Troynich (also known as Bibabo Puppets) If your not familiar with her work or online classes I recommend taking a look. Hissing Sid makes the perfect pet and now sits on his felted stone on my desk keeping his beady eyes on my every move.
The other make was this very tactile small spiral shell approx 7cm wide and made from 10gms of Bergschaf.
I hope you’ve had a lovely Christmas, however you’ve chosen to spend it, and wishing all of you a Happy New Year and a very creative 2025!
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”.
