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
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.
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.
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 grove nunofelt landscape is finally complete. I added a bit of ‘grass’ in the foreground to balance all the lines at the top from the stitched branches.
I didn’t think that it needed a lot, but just some suggestion of the higher grasses. I also stitched down the loose edges around the entire piece. Now to move forward on getting it ready to frame.
I didn’t have a lot of fabric to audition to see how the background matte would look. This is on a piece of tan fabric. To my eye, it is too close in value to the piece itself and doesn’t match with the colors.
Then trying on medium gray. This is slightly darker in value but still feels very similar to the values in the piece. It doesn’t do it for me.
Next up is a dark grey background. The darker value is definitely better and brings out the light in the piece. I could use this color, it’s okay.
Then I found a piece of dark red maroon/burgundy colored silk fabric. I won’t use the silk for the background but it was in the color scheme so I thought I would try it. The value is good again, making the light from the back of the piece feel more prominent. The color seems to work pretty well.
What do you think? Would you use a different background fabric color? Or do you like one of the ones I tried?
I’m thinking of naming this one “Golden Grove”. Any other name ideas?
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.
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!
