In my recent art and design class, I painted a series of tree spirit portraits. In researching tree spirits, I found many photos of young women with ‘beautiful’ faces. I thought that if a tree had a spirit, it would be the same age as a tree, which can live for hundreds of years. I decided to base my tree spirits on the beauty of older women, with wrinkles, grey hair and wisdom shining through. Once these were painted, I decided to create tree spirits in felt and stitch. I will be continuing with this series as I found stitching and creating portraits a challenge.
I printed a copy of the original artwork and found a piece of deconstructed screen printed fabric that worked for the background. The fabric was silk organdy and I nuno felted it to a dark green wool. Then I taped a piece of water soluble fabric to the artwork and traced it on the light box.
I pinned the traced outlines of the face and the pinecone down to the nuno felt. Then I used a dark green to stitch the face outline and a dark brown to stitch the pinecone. It’s not shown here but I used a white thread to stitch the outline of the hair. The tree on the left hand side was developed free hand as there was already dark green in the background fabric that reminded me of the shapes of the tree branches. Once the outlines were stitched, I dissolved the water soluble fabric and let the piece dry.
Then on to stitching. This will probably seem like an exercise/game of find the differences as some of the photos seem very much alike. I used 1-2 strands of cotton floss and stitched in a distorted cross stitch. Unlike regular cross stitch, this is a very loose form of cross stitch where the stitches do cross but they are different lengths and directions to fill the space. It is a fairly easy way to shade for darks and lights without doing precise stitching such as long and short stitch. I started with the eyes. I have found when stitching a portrait before, that I stitch the “important” areas first. If I don’t like the eyes, I can either re-do them or start over without wasting loads of time on the rest of the face.
I continued using various shades of green and developing the face and then on to the hair. It was a really interesting process as it seemed like I would add more dark into an area and then find that I needed to add more dark to other areas. There are many layers of stitched threads and hours of work in the final piece.
As you can see, I didn’t take many photos of the tree development or of the pinecone stitching. But I continued with the distorted cross stitch for these areas too. The pine needles were done with stem stitch.
I changed the hair multiple times. I had added stem stitch curls but those seemed to stand out too much. I went back in and stitched over that with a variety of shades of lighter green to make the hair look more natural. I also worked on deepening the wrinkles around the eyes and mouth.
I probably could have kept working on this piece but decided to stop.
Once I was satisfied with the face, I needed a background fabric. I had linen that had been screen printed at the same time as the silk organdy. I tried an overlay of blue green silk but ended up choosing the linen for a background. The nuno felt was stitched to the linen background and laced over a matte board. The final piece is 10″ x 10″. I was planning on framing it but couldn’t find the correct size frame for it. I ended up covering a 10″ x 10″ canvas with green felt and stitching the edges of the fabric matte to the canvas. Sorry that I don’t have a photo so that you can see the edge of the canvas and how that looked.
The piece is named the Essence of Nature and will be in an exhibition in May at 4 Ravens Gallery in Missoula, Montana.
Some time after the Panto to be performed in February 2026 had been chosen and before rehearsals started in 2025 I was approached by the director of what is to be our 2027 Panto to give some thought to making headdresses for the villain and her cohorts.
That Panto is to be Goldilocks and the 3 Bears. Apparently the “baddie” in this version is a Queen bee, and the director is thinking well ahead – which makes a nice change from the usual last minute panic. Anyway, I set about thinking how best and how cheaply to do this.
But before I got very far I was asked by our wardrobe mistress to make crowns for the King and Queen of Gooseland, for the 2026 Panto, which was to be Mother Goose. By this time we were well into rehearsal and so I had to stop thinking about bees and start thinking about geese. The wardrobe mistress wanted crowns that fit around the head rather than “tiara” type that sit on top. They should be white and should incorporate goose feathers.
We had some white feathers in stock, but none long enough to look like goose feathers, so first of all I would have to make some. We had, in our initial discussion, thought about how many would be needed. I was anxious that a fully feathered crown should not make the king look as if he was aping a native American Indian chief wearing a War Bonnet. We decided that I would make 5 feathers for each crown, taller ones for the king and slightly shorter for the queen.
I used one of my white nonwoven cotton cloths and some black (all I had) plastic rods. I used an old and well washed cloth, which when ironed stretched and ironed again became paper thin but remained flexible. I cut 10 strips about 2” wide and 8 or 9 inches long. Using “washable PVA glue … (yes, I’d never heard of it before either, it was a gift from our odd job man/friend. According to the lable on the bottle it was a mixture of water, PVA, glycerine, stearic acid and sodium hydroxide) … as I was saying, using washable PVA glue I stuck 2 lengths of the cloth together, sandwiching a plastic rod part way up the middle – short of the top and protruding from the bottom, so that it represented the quill. In this way I made 10 basic shapes which I trimmed into feather shapes, and carved 2 or 3 “notches’” randomly in the sides to add to the feather-like appearance. I painted the black quills white and, to give them extra strength, painted each side of the feathers with more of the PVA.
Making the feathers. That funny bottle shape at the bottom right is one of my eyedrop dispensers but handy for spreading glue!
Then I could consider the design of each crown; the king’s would need to be “manly” and the queen’s elegant. Having gone through my design source images I chose 2 crowns from the film version of Lord of the Rings on which to base my ideas – Elron’s crown for the Gooseland queen (No he’s not a bloke, he’s an elegant Elf – can’t you see his pointy ears?) and Aragorn’s for the king.
Elrond and his crown
Aragorn wearing his crown
I went through my stash of beads, stones and jewels and picked out items which could adorn either crown – the idea being that although they weren’t identical they would be a pair. I found a strip of muslin which had pearls and clear beads already attached to it and also some large round green cabochons mounted in “silver” frames. I painted the stones with several coats of pearl coloured nail varnish and I brightened the frames with a coat of silver nail varnish, and both with a top coat of clear.
[I find nail varnish very useful in making costumes and props, so whenever I see any reduced in price, especially odd colours, or colourless, I snap them up.]
Having obtained approval for my ideas from the director and the wardrobe mistress, I then had to wait some weeks before I received details of the king and queen’s head sizes. We had a cast of 35 in this Panto, some of whom played more than one character, and there were at least 2 costumes for most of the characters, not to mention 5 or 6 for Mother Goose, the dame. It is not surprising therefore that our poor wardrobe mistress, who does most of the work herself with the help of a couple of members, took some time to get round to sorting the wigs for the king and queen and measuring their resulting head sizes. Once I had these I was able to get a gallop on!
I started with the queen’s crown. I made a drawing based on the Elrond crown and then blew it up to the size needed. I transferred 2 copies of the pattern to the card stock I was going to use, cut them out and, after auditioning the feathers and jewellery as to placement, proceed to decorate one of them.
I’m not keen on using just glue for holding things together, whether on costumes, on props or on actors (I once lost my Polly parrot beak mid performance!) It’s belt and braces for me, so I sewed the strip of muslin with the pearl and clear beads along one of the sections of the crown, front to back on either side of the centre “V”. I also sewed the feathers to the inside of the crown and I added a shield shape to the back of the centre front to add a bit of strength. It was as well that I had cut out a second pattern, the stitching of the muslin to the narrow sections of the crown in fact weakened the card. So I attached the second pattern to the inside of the crown and then added a cut out shape of non-slip mat to the inside front of the crown. I was concerned that the weight of the stones on the front might cause the crown to slide down the actor’s forehead. (In the end however I needn’t have bothered as the actor’s coarse and curly wig had a large fringe, on which the crown sat, but again belt and braces I suppose.) Finally I joined the two ends of the crown with a large hook and eye (the sort covered in fabric and normally used by furriers) painted white.
Half a Crown design with initial choice of decoration
My design for 1/2 a crown(!) Sorry about the black Fleur de Lis on the back of the paper.
Rehearsal of design, feathers and decorations
Bead decoration stitched to crown ready for cabochons and feathers to be attached
Attaching the feathers and support for the cabochons
Attaching the strengthening lining to the crown after attaching the cabochons
The Queen’s Crown
Adding the final non-slip fabric to the inside of the crown
Then on to the King’s crown. I had found somewhere on the internet a pattern page of the pieces used to make a version of Aragorn’s crown.
Pattern for Aragorn’s Crown
I liked the basic idea of some form of emblem at the front which could hold up the feathers but I didn’t want to use the actual design from Aragorn’s crown – it was too “serious” and the Gooseland King was a comic part – so after trying out various shapes, which would also hold 3 of the cabochon stones, I decided to use a shield shape, with a smaller version at the back and smaller versions still at the two sides. I decided that I would not use the remainder of the muslin with the pearl and clear beads for the King’s crown (too feminine) so I decided to add a border of yarn around the edges of everything to add a sort of metallic rim as if the metalsmith had added a border of twisted metal, as indicated on the page of pattern pieces. So here I deviated from my glue+ method and just soaked some white yarn in PVA and ran it around the edges of the shields and the bands of the crown. I did stitch the cabochons to the front shield and also the feathers. I covered this on the inside with another shield shaped piece of card. I wasn’t sure how to decorate the two side and the back shields and I wondered if I could find a suitable monogram for Gooseland. In the end I found, somewhere on line, a drawing of a winged shield, I added a capital G to the centre of that and printed off three copies which I attached to the centre of the 3 blank shields.
Rehearsing placement of decorations 1
Rehearsing placement of decorations 2
Rehearsing placement of decorations 3
Rehearsing placement of decorations 4
Attaching the front shield and joining the side pieces
The edging cord is in there somewhere
Glueing the cord edging to the Shields
Glueing the front shield to the back shield to sandwich the feathers after sewing on the cabochons
Glueing the side and back monogrammed shields
Once all the glue was dry I packed them up and delivered the Crowns a couple of days before the first dress rehearsal.
The Queen’s Crown
The King’s Crown
King & Queen of Gooseland
King and Queen with daughter, Princess Priscilla, (who laid the golden eggs) and Dame, Mother Goose
My post this month is another mixture of things. I have continued my reacquaintance with knitting, and I want to become a more skilled hand knitter. It is such a comfortable task to sit with in the evenings, and time passes very easily. I have made another hat, and an asymmetric triangular scarf. I loved the hat that Carlene wears sometimes, and Ann suggested where to get the pattern. This hat has a wonderful name “Anemone Hat”, the main body looks so complicated, but is quite straightforward really.
Pattern obtained, then some time spent studying it, especially the rib, or the Moebius half-twist as it is called. However, I have only just become familiar working with a circular needle, so this form of beginning the hat was a stretch too far for me, or a little like ‘double dutch’ as the expression goes, so I did some plain knit and purl rows instead. I may try the moebius another time. The yarn used was from my sister, and is King Cole stylecraft, 50% wool and 50% acrylic. There is a much wider variety of yarn types today than was available when I was younger.
Leonor connected me to a free pattern for a scarf on her website, that promised to be easy to knit. I had one skein of wool, from West Yorkshire spinners 70% Falkland wool, 20% lyocell, and 10% Cashmere, in a lovely soft green shade, and is soft to touch. I was hoping it would be soft around my neck, because sometimes wool can be prickly.
I needed help with a scarf because I could not figure out how the triangular shape would be achieved; in the end this achievement was actually quite simple really. So I began knitting, starting with a few stitches and ended up with over 150 or so, and I could carry on until I was happy with the length, with enough yarn to continue, and in the end I had a triangular scarf. Then a cool wash and pinned it onto the ironing board to block it. I practiced some simple lace pattern stitches to break up the plain knitting.
Early on during the winter, the Dean of Gloucester Cathedral put out a call for some volunteer embroidery people to help repair an altar cloth that has a lot of wear and tear from use over the years. I belong to a group of women who do crewel work; we meet twice a month for two hours each time, to work on our own projects, or just to stitch. Four of us decided to help out with this task, and we car share twice a month over to the Cathedral. The Dean provides use with tea and coffee! Gloucester is about a 45 minute drive from me.
The altar cloth needs repair to many areas. All of the embroidered motifs have been appliqued onto a base of hard wearing linen. Many of the motifs have become loose, and some of the motif threads are degrading almost as soon as they are touched. There is a lot of gold work on the cloth too, much of this is also loose, and takes time to stitch back down, but so worth the effort, and it makes for a lovely sheen on the work. We are using cotton embroidery thread, and some silk thread.
The cloth will be returned to use as an altar cloth, we are repairing it for use during church services, and not to museum conservation quality.
No one is quite sure how old the cloth is, the embroidery thread is disintegrating in places, and the only thread that is not perishing is the white thread that is couched around each motif. This is an example to us of how likely it is that the dye used could be the main reason for the coloured threads to perish.
This work will keep us all busy for some months, but I do enjoy it. A sample of my stitching is the featured image – practice work really.
On looking through my file of possible posts I have found that there are several subjects on the list about which I don’t have a lot to say, so I thought I’d put them all together.
First, my work basket. You may recall that I told you about the craft basket makeovers that I had done some years ago https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2023/06/12/craft-basket-makeovers-part-1/ After we moved to Dorset I acquired a marketing basket, can’t remember where from now but at the time it was “in” to be seen wandering around the shops with a basket on your arm. I didn’t use it for that for long though as I was worried about my purse sitting on top of shopping and being a bit of a temptation. So I decided that I’d turn the shopping basket into a work basket. At that time I hadn’t been introduced to felt, I was still spinning, crocheting, tatting, sewing and embroidering so a market basket would be ideal for that.
I used some more of the fabric remnants which I had bought from the same shop in Maidstone where I’d got those which I’d used for the spinning baskets. I lined the basket, having attached some internal pockets to the lining and made a padded/quilted lid. That was fixed at one end of the lining and a covered button and loop held it closed at the other end. I had found a miniature washing basket at a charity shop and I turned that into a pin cushion and I made a small pouch to hold small accessories like cotton reels. That was fixed to the side of the basket lining with a snap fastener.
The basket got quite a bit of use, as you can probably see from the state of the lining. One drawback I’ve found to sewing the lining to the basket is that it makes laundering it a bit difficult!
My marketing basket.
The lining sewn to the top edge of the basket. A bit rumpled I’m afraid.
The underside of the open quilted lid
Work basket with quilted lid.
Miniature cane basket with handles, containing a pin cushion made from more of the same fabric
The small accessories pouch.
One of the first projects I undertook once I had learned to needle felt was a challenge from a company which used to supply packs of mixed yarns – at least I think it was from them though it might have been a Guild challenge. It was back in 2002 and as I did not make any notes that I can find, I’m not entirely sure. I seem to have taken some progress images as I have found lots of these though unfortunately they are not of particularly good quality.
What I do remember is that I had decided that I would make a miniature of a herb knot garden but |’m afraid that my memory of how I found/chose the design is now so hazy that I can’t be precise. I do remember that when I learned to needle felt our teacher gave us pieces of old woollen blanket on which to draw a design that we could fill in with needle felted fibres. The idea was that we could then wash the work and it would become permanent. I have amongst the progress pictures images of the design as drawn on a piece of blanket and of the lines becoming “box hedges” and the spaces being filled with “flowers”. I can also see from the last couple of pictures that I added a “topiary tree” in each corner.
Knot Garden design
Initial needle felted sample (made a sample? me? Now that’s very unusual!)
The design drawn onto a piece of woolen blanket.
Starting to fill in the spaces with fibres and yarns.
The “box hedges” and most of the “flowers” filled in.
Finished Knot Garden with topiary trees in the corners.
A couple of years later, I acquired a quantity of (I think) Jacob fleece which had been carded all together so that what I had was a sort of grey mixture. I didn’t really want to spin it as I think I had been duped into buying a bag of really rough fibres. At about that time I had become interested in stone carvings – gargoyles (water spouts), grotesques, and heraldic beasts – particularly the Queen’s Beasts which are statues on display at Kew Gardens. Anyway, I decided that I’d have a go at needle felting some gargoyles using the grotty grey Jacob. No progress pictures I’m afraid, just finished pieces mounted on fabric covered card or canvas blocks.
The “Infernal Goat” gargoyle. The colour reproduction is poor it does actually look like grey stone (from a distance!)
Stone Man Gargoyle.
This Gargoyle is a direct copy of a waterspout mounted on the corner of a church tower.
Horned Man gargoyle. His curly hair and beard was, I remember, quite “fun” to do!
Ann’s idea made me think that some miniature gnomes impaled on the metal “spike” could look good as bag charm gnomes to sell in the Museum shop. I had to change the description from key chains to bag charms because the gnomes were a bit too fragile to sit inside someone’s bag/purse, but should look good dangling on the outside. Here are photos of the “shaft” on which the gnomes are made, and a few of the gnomes.
For my post this month, I have made a felt tea cosy, started and completed a quilt, and my grand daughter photographed me in the denim jacket that I have worked on over the last few months. Tea cosies seem very popular just now – I’m thinking about Lyn’s wonderful cosy from a couple of weeks ago – my cosy is a little more sober than Lyn’s beauty!
I had watched a video tutorial some time ago from Fiona Duthie; she was demonstrating a vessel in a vessel technique, I thought it looked intriguing and so very effective. I don’t think I had the skill to make something similar, but I thought perhaps I could make a tea cosy using the instructions.
I made a paper pattern for the cosy, then made a double pattern using some flooring underlay, and made it bigger by about 3 inches all round, for the inside and outside layers. I was hoping that this would yield the correct size when shrinkage is complete.
I found the layout to be a little confusing, especially the inside out view of one side of the cosy. I had the tutorial up on my laptop while I was doing the layout, along with a pair of socks – one right side out, the other inside out – to ensure I got it right. I wanted the outside to be green, and the inside – that would be visible through some apertures – to be purple. It is even confusing trying to describe the process here.
The felting went well, the shrinkage worked, and the size turned out as I hoped. I think (know) that I made the green (outer) side thicker than the inside; I thought that the inside would not fit properly if it was the same thickness as the outside. My other conundrum was where to cut the windows in the outside layer, how many, the shape and size – a one time only decision. It is now dry and the inside fits very nicely. I will probably try to do a vessel in a vessel next year sometime, and I hope to manage the challenge of the vessel’s narrow neck that is in the video tutorial.
So, onto the next item – my quilt. This has been brewing in my head for a little while, and I needed to get on with it. It is made using the many, many hexagon shapes that I have made and squirreled away over the last few years ‘for a future project’. These hexies, small and large, some pieces of my old embroideries, and some vintage tray cloths, were used for the quilt top. All of these various items were then appliqued onto nine rectangle shaped pieces of fabric (an old cotton high thread count bedsheet). These were then joined together using some coordinating fabric as sashing, into one large piece of ‘fabric’. I used some of the same fabric for the border around the quilt edge, and also used some to make the binding.
I had to find some backing fabric, and batting for the ‘sandwich’. The backing fabric is actually a deconstructed king size duvet cover, and it coordinates very well with the quilt top. Then all I had to do was to put the three layers together and to quilt ‘the quilt’. I used my sewing machine to quilt in straight lines, in a sort of grid, but not a complicated design, and I drew the lines on with a Frixion pen. It was quite heavy to move the quilt through the machine, and that was a bit tiring really! I am super happy with the result, and it looks just how I imagined it would. Quilts can be very expensive items to make, both in materials and time. The quilt top materials were all repurposed, and charity shop finds, the backing fabric – a duvet cover, was a charity shop find too, a good label though, so the batting was the only item I had to buy.
I had promised to show my jacket, so attached is a photo of me wearing it, and I am very pleased with it too, lots of compliments given which is very gratifying, there is a little difficulty in understanding how I completed the stitching – even after I have explained how I worked the shapes – eyes tend to glaze when I mention a grid!!
Some of these photos are very large again, apologies.
Our group meeting this month was inspired by some Instagram tutorials that we saw by Neha Sachan. Here’s her Instagram if you want to see the videos we followed.
We started with white or painted heavy watercolor paper cut into approximately 5″ x 7″ pieces. I had collected a variety of twigs and sticks. Everyone chose their twigs and our friend Deb had donated some dried grapevines that were such fun shapes we had to use some of those too. Then on to punching holes into the paper and stitching. It’s really fun and relaxing to sit and stitch with a group of friends.
Here’s Louise doing a bit of stitching. She’s doing backstitch in between her fly stitches.
Here’s Louise’s finished piece. I love the lichen that’s growing on the branch.
Here’s Louise’s other stitched down vine. The seed pod was a separate piece that she added as it seemed to fit perfectly. Not much stitching here besides couching down the various pieces.
Here are Sally’s two pieces. She hadn’t finished the bottom piece but had attached a twig from a Tamarack/Larch tree.
This is the beginnings of Paula’s piece. She has since added a bunch more French knots but I don’t have the finished picture.
Here’s a closer view of the French knots.
Here’s photos of my piece with the twig, fly stitch and back stitch. I made it into a greeting card. I tried to send it in the mail but got it back as it was “unmachinable”. I had to add more postage to get it sent. Always fun at the USPS.
Here’s my final piece with grape vine and little balls of wool stitched down.
We had a great time stitching together and once you have the holes punched in the paper, this is pretty simple. We have decided that this coming year, we will be working on creating a fabric book. We will be doing quite a few dyeing and surface design techniques to create our book pages. Our next meeting, we will be clamp dyeing on felt.
To finish the back of my jacket, I needed to decide what pattern to stitch on the remaining back panel. I wanted it to have a similar look to the panel on the other side.
I drew another grid to help me with the design; it is a 2cm grid, again drawn with a Frixion pen. I used an egg cup to make the semi circular shapes.
The initial long oval shape I drew can be done in a portrait or landscape orientation, and it can be left like this if using a smaller grid, for example 1cm, and a smaller item to aid with drawing semi circles. I repeated the design in the opposite direction with the egg cup, and now it looks completely different.
The design has a tessellating feel to it, and I think it does look very effective; hopefully you can see this in the stitched pattern. I have taken the design up to the back yoke to match the other side. I have added some further stitching to the earlier patterns I made on the back yoke – two further circles stitched along with a pattern development on the completed circles.
Both side panels together, showing the different patterns achieved with a grid and a pen!
Extra stitching, and another couple of circles to the back yoke.
Again, I have used a variety of embroidery floss to stitch the design, and I feel that both sides compliment each other very well. Some of these patterns do look complicated to sew, but are really just a wavy line, and stitched on the diagonal. The tricky bit is where the lines meet, or cross over.
The inside of the stitched area is not too untidy, so I will leave it for now while I think about it for a little longer. I may add some lining to the yoke area especially, and I will probably sew that to the seams.
I will probably add more stitching to the jacket as time goes on, mainly to the front yokes, but I feel that it is fine for now, and time to look towards something else.
I am really glad that I made the decision to do some stitching on this jacket. I am having second thoughts about whether I should have used just one colour to stitch, but this is not classic sashiko, it is just some decorative stitching in the style of sashiko. I wear it out too.
My photos have turned out a little better I think? They look ok on here as I am typing this, and inserting them into the text, but what they will look like when posted is another story. Probably huge again. Pale denim with some stitching on does not make for good photography I feel. One photo looks a little blurred as I am writing this, but that may possibly be due to the remnants of the ‘seasonal cold’ that I have had for the last 2 weeks, but I am gradually recovering.
The International Feltmakers Association has been running an annual Felt Swap – setting a theme and linking members who’ve elected to join the challenge with a “swap partner” from somewhere in the world – since 2020. I spotted the invitation to join in the 2025 swap on one of the regular emailed Newsletters and decided to have a go. I started to write this post about the entry and remembered that I’d entered the first Swap and had posted about it. However, when I trawled back through my posts to find the link for you, I found that I hadn’t actually written the post, let alone published it. So we’d better start there.
The subject of that challenge was “Light”. I thought a lot about this as it seemed such a wide subject and I didn’t know where to go with it.
To begin with I listed as many things as I could think of that could have anything at all to do with light and came up with: Light bulbs; Bright light – dazzling – blurred; Rainbow; Prisms and light splitting; Dark area with light coming in from one side; Sun beams from behind clouds; Fire light; Moon light; Lighthouse; Northern Lights.
Clouds and especially stormy skies fascinate me and I thought that I could do something with this idea. Initially I went for a sun low on the horizon just showing through some dark clouds but with rays going upwards behind the clouds. For some reason this was not a success so was abandoned.
Then we had a thunderstorm and I had a lightbulb moment! So I looked through some of Mr Google’s images just to remind myself what forked lightning looked like and then went for a storm over the sea, and used this image for reference.
Lightning at Sea
I have a collection of fibres, yarns and fabrics in my “stormy” project sack – too big to call a bag – and my first thought was to use some of those in the picture I had in mind. I had already made a mixed media image of a storm at sea using various textiles and fibres and thought of doing something similar.
Storm at the Coast
So I looked out some of the fabrics and yarns and other bits and pieces to see what I might use.
Part of my stash of “stormy” textiles
Some stormy fibres and some sequins to give light?
But in the end I decided that I wouldn’t use these for a couple of reasons: 1. this was supposed to be a “felt” swap; and 2. using the mixed media would possibly need a larger picture than I was making – we were limited to A5 size – 5.8 x 8.3 inches (sorry I don’t work in “the foreign” if I can help it). I did use my stormy fibres though.
I was reasonably happy with the picture after it had dried, but decided to do a bit of tidying up and embellishing with some needle felting.
This is the final result
The swap picture of LIGHTning
My swap partner, from Denmark, sent me a felt bag, which was really good. I didn’t want it to get dirty or damaged before I was able to use it and show it off so I wrapped it up and put it in a safe place. So safe that …..!
Anyway, back to this year’s swap. The theme for this one is “Inspired by an Artist”.
Again this was a very wide subject, first choose your favourite artist then find a piece of their work that sparks an idea. I don’t actually have a “favourite” artist, I love the work of many: Constable; Canaletto; Turner; Rowland Hilder; William Morris and most of the Arts and Crafts artists and architects; Rennie Mackintosh…. I could fill up the page with names. I trawled through works by most of these, bearing in mind the maximum size of the piece I was to make (8″ x 8″) the while. In the end I decided that I would go with Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
I searched google and found several stained glass windows, one wall carving and a draft fabric design that I liked.
Stained Glass at The Willow Restaurant
Rennie Mackintosh Roses
The terracotta tiles on the wall of Queens Cross Church
Stained glass window thought to be by Rennie Mackintosh – the whole window
In the end though, I decided to go with a section of the last one, which I squared up and manipulated to make it the right shape and size. The window is typical of the Art Nouveau period and “attributed to Mackintosh”. I could not find out if it is actually his design but it is certainly very like his work.
Stained glass window thought to be by Rennie Mackintosh – the whole window
Picking the reference section
Squaring the image (sort of)
I picked the centre of the window to work on and the enlarged and reshaped (slightly) design was printed off in greyscale and laminated. I would be able to use the laminated design as a base on which to lay out the fibres.
All ready to lay out the fibres
While I was looking through my stash for suitable fibres and pre-felts for the project I happened to glance at the design which was inverted. I immediately saw a face with an extremely runny nose!
This was when I spotted the runny nose!
Nevertheless I thought it would be fun to use the design of the face, since we were to produce something “inspired by” a favourite artist, rather than copy what s/he had produced. This would allow me to get rid of the runny nose and I also wanted to change the colour scheme.
I had decided to use a piece of pre-felt which I had bought from Wingham Woolwork some years ago, especially as it was slightly moth eaten and I could use what I might otherwise have to throw away. This was a lovely strong purple colour so I decided that my colour palette should be purple, turquoise and orange.
Picking colours and materials
The basic design was laid out in reverse, that is with turquoise knitting/felting yarn “face down” on the design, with some fillings-in of orange fibres on top and two squares of turquoise where the “eyes” would be. The purple pre-felt backing was placed on top of that and the whole wet felted. Unfortunately this resulted in the straight lines becoming distinctly wavy – a good job this wasn’t a straight copy of the original!
After the piece was rinsed, dried and ironed, the remainder of the design was added by needle felting (which, together with the shrinkage during wet felting, had effectively removed the moth holes) and finally some simple embroidery stitches.
Beginning the reversed layout of fibres
Just finished wet felting
Needle felting more features
With more features added with a sewing needle
The piece has been mounted on foam board for stability.
My post this month is – surprise – more stitching on my jacket. Last time I was unsure of what pattern or design to stitch on the side panels at the back of the jacket. I did think about a group of straight lines in a vague fan shape for these panels, but I wanted something that would be a little more challenging for me to do, and also, would be interesting to look at.
I saw a design that I liked very much from ‘The Green Wrapper’ on her Youtube channel – I have mentioned her work previously. I changed the pattern slightly and worked it on a 2.5cm grid, and then used a 5cm diameter circle, in a pattern, so that each circle interlocks with it’s neighbour. This interlocking of circles provides the final pattern.
I drew the grid, and circles with a Frixion pen; some circles are misplaced, and are clearly visible, but I did not risk removing them with the iron, for fear of removing too much of the correct marking, and having to repeat it all again. Luckily, I could clearly see the path of the pattern, and I added extra pen marks to assist. To draw the circles I used a small sherry glass, it was a touch under 5 cm diameter, but also just perfect! The two photos below show where I have made mistakes.
The next decision was to decide to use just one colour thread, or many colours. I went with the latter, and I did not think too much about the direction of each colour in the stitching. I used stranded embroidery floss, and a little wax to help ease it through the fabric.
Initially, I planned the pattern up to the armscye, but halfway through the stitching I decided to extend it up to the yoke. I do think it looks better having the pattern fill the space of the panel. The stitching is almost complete on this side, and I have removed the pen marks on the lower half of the panel with the iron, so that the pattern is more easily visible. The colours are not as bright in the photos as they are in real life, but I hope that you can see the pattern fairly well.
Now to decide what to put on to the other side panel, whether to do the same one, or find a different design.
I started a couple of small landscapes this past week using pieces of nuno felt for the backgrounds but using the wool side instead of the silk side. I thought the “backs” were more reminiscent of forest than the silk side.
I already had some of the “birch” silk paper that I made several years ago so I used it for making trunks. Here’s my inital layouts for the two pieces. They are both about 5″ x 11″.
I then stitched the trunks down with 30 weight cotton machine thread in a very light grey. You might have noticed that I added a few more tree trunks to the right photo as it seemed a bit bare.
Then off to the machine to stitch the branches with free motion machine stitching. I only got one of the pieces machine stitched as I got tired with machine stitching. I am out of practice, I guess. Now what to do for the leaves? I could hand stitch, or use some type of applique.
It could be like ‘Thick with Green’ where I used cheesecloth for leaves.
Or perhaps more like ‘The First Leaf’ with green leaves instead of yellow. Or I could hand stitch the leaves? What do you think?
Thanks Carlene for providing me inspiration to create more birch trees!
I drew another grid to help me with the design; it is a 2cm grid, again drawn with a Frixion pen. I used an egg cup to make the semi circular shapes.
