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Ponderosa Pine Bark Applique

Ponderosa Pine Bark Applique

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If you have been following my posts for any length of time, you will know that I am a lover of trees, leaves, bark and anything forest related. For my Level 3 Stitch course, I have been working on a variety of types of applique. So I wanted to try a combination of felt and applique to create a bark piece.

Specifically, Ponderosa pine bark. We have many of these trees on and around our property and I love taking photos of the bark as well as collecting the pieces of bark that this type of tree sheds on a regular basis. The pieces always remind me of puzzle shapes. Lyndsay wrote recently about creating bark and I was inspired by her piece. But I wanted to include applique in my bark. So it was time to try a sample or two.

I laid out black wool as the base. Then I added a cut up strips of felt that were in my box of samples from some of my online classes. I decided to use a variety of thicknesses and colors of felt to see the differences when felted. I then added a brown/tan felt over the top. I just used what I had on hand. I did make a smaller sample later to use for sampling stitch ideas.

Here’s the piece after felting. The variety of thicknesses in the underlying felt pieces actually helped make the piece seem more natural. The variety of colors also worked well.

This photo shows you what the real bark pieces look like. I laid them out on the wool for inspiration. I have a big bag of these bark pieces. It was tempting to either glue or stitch them in place. That would still be applique, right? 😉

One of my original thoughts was to use complementary fabrics or sheers in orange and blue to create a more colorful effect. I tried a variety of these ideas but I wasn’t satisfied with the results. This idea would have worked better if I had included orange and blue in the felt base. So other samples may be forthcoming.

This is my small stitch sample. I used every square inch of it to try out different ideas. You can see that I tried machine stitching down the orange/blue samples but I didn’t like the “pillow” looking result. I tried some raised chain band to hold down the fabric but that didn’t actually hold the sheer fabric well. The fabric kept fraying under the stitches and pulling loose. I then tried some brown and neutral colored silk fabrics using different hand stitches. The assignment was to be a combination of machine and hand stitching. The machine stitching was done between the thicker felt strips in a dark brown. I decided that the final hand stitching would be small straight stitches and a few French knots.

I forgot to take a photo after I completed the machine stitching. This photo shows how it looked after fusing down the pieces of silk. I used a powdered fusible just to get the silk to hold in place. Then on to the hand stitching. I ended up using wool lace weight thread. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any that was dark enough for the darker value needed. So I used a heavier wool yarn for the darkest value.

Here’s the finished piece. Next time, I think I will try nuno felting the silk in place. I’m not sure it will look as “peeling” as the laid on silk does though.  But that’s what further experiments are for, right?

 

This and that.

This and that.

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I haven’t done much this week but I did decide to do some stitching on one of the circles I made earlier for the jewelry challenge. Seeing Antje’s post reminded me I had made a few stitching blanks. this one is just over 2.5 inches/7cm. I don’t think mine is quite as artistic but it was fun to do with the bright threads.

Next, I thought I would like to do something a little more 3D. I have a box of stretched silk hankies and bits of silk hankies left over from other felting.

I stretched out some circles from bits to make the flower bases.

And a bigger blog of pieces for leaves.

I added some wool.

And then some more silk hanky bits.

I rubbed them all and then I decided to roll them up and pop them in the dryer while I made a few small landscape blanks for stitching. I cut out some prefelt and added the sky and grass. They went into the dryer too and then it was time to feed the bottle lambs and head of to work.

Next week is our school break so I am hoping to get some felting time in.

Resht Applique Complete

Resht Applique Complete

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Last week I showed you the beginnings of an applique sample. I guess I wasn’t the only one that had never heard of Resht work. Always good to learn something new, isn’t it?

So I started with chain stitching the central flower parts down. I didn’t follow the example exactly but it is similar to the inspiration photo. I had drawn the stitch lines on the background out in advance but didn’t adhere to the drawing exactly. This actually stitches pretty quickly as the chain stitch is easy and stitching through handmade felt is wonderful. I’m not sure why I’m surprised each time I stitch a lot on a piece of felt. It is so nice to hand stitch. I have a tendency to be a bit minimalist so I might have stopped here but the sample was pretty heavily stitched so I decided I would add more.

So on to what I’m calling the drop shadow stitching. I added the dark blue violet chain stitch using a Sulky #12 machine thread. It worked great. Slightly lighter weight than the perle cotton #12. I was really surprised at the impact the dark thread made. Again, I shouldn’t have been surprised because it did need some darker values in the composition. I also added a regular blanket stitch around the leaves with a red violet thread. This pulled the red violet from the central flower out into more of the background.

Then I decided that I needed some yellow orange in the flower. So I added just a little bit of that and decided it was complete. I actually could keep adding more stitching but I didn’t want to overdo it.

I will definitely be cropping off the edges so here’s how it will look cropped. And I thought you’d like to see the surface from a side view. It was a fun piece to try and again reminded me why I like to stitch on felt.

 

 

 

Rock Wall Picture Part 2

Rock Wall Picture Part 2

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I had a whole day of no work and no grandchildren last week so I got my picture done. Although this is a good thing, I discovered all those little people’s interruptions are actually good. I rather overdid it with the needling and have aggravated my tendonitis again. I need a better needling pad. the one I have is quite dense. It’s good for travelling as it’s light and it does last well but it is too dense to be poking into all day. I know not to poke way into the foam but when you’re doing a picture you always seem to go into it a little.  I got several suggestions for alternatives. Jan had a nicer kneeling pad that I will look for not so dense but still lightweight. upholstery foam is popular and a new one to me was rice in a cloth bag. I may try this for home. I think it would be heavy to carry around. What do you use?

On to the picture.

When I put the rock shapes in I wasn’t very happy that the stuck up a lot from the wall so I wet felted it again. It looked much better, more subtle.

Before wet felting
After wet felting

 

After wet felting-close

Next for the wall was some moss and some shadows

 

Adding moss

Next was some shadow to the bottom of the rocks and to the gate.

Adding shadows -close

I added some sheep, I know you are all so surprised. I added the trees to the place markers and some vegetation to the foreground.

 

Sheep trees and vegetation

That looks ok but it is kind of bare on the top left and the vegetation is a little boring so I added some more trees, another sheep( you can’t have enough sheep) and some french knots for flowers on the vegetation.

Finished
Vegetation close
Vegetation close 2

I hope to get a better picture of the finished piece. The camera really doesn’t like the fuzzy white. the piece is 7 inches by 9 inches. It should have been 8 x 10 but when I refelted it I shrank more. it hadn’t originally been very felted because it’s a picture and didn’t need to be. Oh well, I will get a frame and Jan will help me cut a mat to the right size.

Resht Applique Sample

Resht Applique Sample

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I am taking a two year course from the Gail Harker Creative Studies Center, Advanced Studies in Experimental Stitch.

Part of my homework for the second session is looking up different forms of applique and doing a few samples of different applique techniques. One of the suggestions on our list was Resht work. Having never heard of this one, I decided to see what it entailed. I found several wonderful examples and learned that it was a Persian technique that used mainly chain stitch to attach cut felt pieces to a background, sometimes felt and sometimes wool cloth. That sounded like a perfect reason to make some felt and give this technique a try.

I printed out one of the examples that I had found. This one was on 1860-1960 One Hundred Years of Fashion and Accessories. I picked out some short fiber merino batt in similar colors to create my background and the pieces that I would cut and applique.

Here’s the felt pieces I created. I didn’t worry much about the edges as I was going to cut them anyways. I did want fairly thin felt as it gets a bit thick to stitch when layered. I did great with this except for the yellow orange piece. It was a bit thick.

Next I worked out a simpler design in the size that I needed. The final piece will be 7″ x 7″.

I traced the main design on tissue paper and cut out that as patterns to cut the felt. Originally, I thought I would overlap the pieces. But once I had them cut, I decided that would be too thick. I didn’t make any pattern for the yellow orange leaves. I just cut those free hand.

Here are the pieces all cut out and pinned on to the background. Now I needed some threads for the chain stitching.

Here are some of the hand dyed thread choices. Now on to chain stitching. I will show you the results in my next post.

25 Million Stitches

25 Million Stitches

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A couple of people have introduced me to the project 25 Million Stitches. After taking a look at the site and seeing the work being created and the vision behind it, I thought all of our readers might also be interested in the project. The site has a lot of information so make sure to look through all the pages. Take a look at the 25 Million Stitches website.

Here is what the project is about in the words of 25 Million Stitches administrators:

The world is in flight. 25 million people* across the globe have been forced to flee their homelands as a consequence of genocide, war, poverty, natural disasters, targeted violence, and other grave threats. They leave behind everything they’ve known and possessed in order to live; they face immense struggles, misfortunes, and perils on their journey; and, through it all, survival, much less successful resettlement, remains but the slimmest hope.

Please join this project to hand-stitch 25 million stitches: one stitch for each refugee. How does making 25 million stitches help refugees? We believe that this project is a way for us to engage with this global crisis instead of ignoring it. And even though no single stitch can fully represent an individual, the act of stitching and the resulting work will help bring attention to the scale of the crisis. Two objectives of the project are:

  1. To engage as many people as possible to raise awareness of the global refugee crisis and

  2. To amass 25 million stitches to visually represent the sheer volume of this astronomical figure of refugees.

This is a community art installation. We are asking volunteers to hand stitch on fabric panels. We now have over 1,400 participants from 44 states and many countries overseas. However, another 1,000 panels will be needed to be stitched to add up to 25 million stitches. This huge community art project will come together into a single striking fiber arts display. When the panels are returned to us, we will assemble them in a grand installation of everyone’s personal expression of solidarity and support for the refugees. Once woven together with other lovingly contributed panels, each contribution will be a part of a tapestry of profound community support ⁠— but we can’t do it without your participation!

Take a look at the panels that have been created so far here.

Here is a rendition of what the inaugural show might look like. The rendition is by Joe Weber. The first show is planned for June 2020

at the Verge Center for the Arts, 625 S Street, Sacramento, CA
June 5–August 15, 2020
Opening Reception: Friday, June 5, 5–7 pm

I also wanted to share with you the 25 Million Stitches pieces by people that I know. Josie Dakers-Brathwaite, one of our forum members, recently shared on Instagram that she got together with a group of stitchers to work on their pieces.

Here are Josie and some of the group. They look like they were having great fun. This photo was contributed by Lenny Van Eijk, thanks Lenny!

And here are some of the works in progress. The photo on the right was contributed by another of Josie’s friends, Sarah Fader, thanks Sarah! I hope that we’ll get to see the finished pieces as well!

This is a work in progress by Penny Peters. This is just a portion of the design, this is about a third to half of the full panel.

Sally Glutting, in my art group, also created a piece for the cause. The photo above is Sally’s stitched piece that she is contributing to 25 Million Stitches.

I’m not sure that I currently have time to create a piece for this but they are looking for more participants. If you’re interested, check out the information on their website. If you have created a piece for 25 Million Stitches, we would love to see it. Share it with us on the forum.

Holiday Card

Holiday Card

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Now that my partner has finally received her card I can tell you about it.

First I made a background using some prefelt and added some northern lights. I then wet felted it all together. they are not felted hard because it is small and is an art piece.

Next, I added the trees along the far hill and a nice big evergreen and a barn using prefelt again.

I added some snow to the tree and added some definition to the barn. I also added the fence wire using perspective so I could add the posts along the right line.

Then came the fence posts and some shading for the snow-covered ground.

and finally I added the sheep( I bet you are not surprised that I added sheep) and trimmed the northern lights so I could turn it into a card. I always do my card as a postcard so they can easily be framed if someone wants to. I just print off a postcard back from the internet and iron it onto the back with a fusible web. I was in a hurry to get it in the mail at that point and didn’t get a picture.

I made a second one at the same time. I like to have 2 to choose from when sending a card. This one I kept. I will frame it. I haven’t decided if I will keep the northern lights projecting over the mat board or trim them off as I did in the one I sent.

I wish I had a better picture for you but I have put it someplace safe and now I can’t find it. I am sure I will come across it when I am looking for something else.

Three Goals in One Project

Three Goals in One Project

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Happy Thanksgiving to all of you from the states. I hope you are enjoying a wonderful day with friends and family.

Last week, my friend Deb told you about her experience with nuno felting. This is the piece that I made during that nuno party.

The plan was to get a nuno felt piece completed at the party. This piece is only about 5″ x 5″ and I planned to get at least one more done but somehow I didn’t manage that. The other two goals were to create a colorscape for the 4th quarter challenge and to use the end result as one of my Level 3 color studies.

So the color scheme is red orange, green and blue. I originally thought I would lay green threads on top and then couch them down. Then I would add some french knots as poppies? But here I go being too literal again. It was just supposed to be a “colorscape”. I needed to keep it simple.

So I found some thin, hand dyed green thread and added it in with running stitch, also called Kantha stitch.

Then I added the red orange thread in Kantha as well. I like how the Kantha mimics the same texture as the nuno felted silk. So here is my colorscape for the 4th quarter challenge which is also going to be part of my homework for class and it was completed at our group meeting. So I managed to get three things off my list in one piece. Yay!

 

Machine Needle Felting a Wool Collage

Machine Needle Felting a Wool Collage

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I have begun another class at the Gail Harker Creative Studies Center in LaConner, WA. The class is Advanced Experimental Stitch 301 and lasts for two years. Our first session was all about color, dyeing and then creating different fabric collages in a variety of color schemes. If you want to follow all of my progress and homework, you can take a look at my Permutations in Fiber site.

I decided I wanted to try a few of the color schemes in felt. I could use up some printed felt that were samples from my online courses and also use my Janome needle felting machine that has been languishing in a corner of my studio for years. A win-win!

I started out with a dark violet background and then cut out two partial printed leaf shapes and three circles from orange printed felt. The color scheme is violet, orange and green. It is hard to see the violet and green since they are both such dark values.

First I had to unearth my needle felting machine buried under a ton of stuff. I should have taken a photo of the buried machine but didn’t think of that in time. I began by felting in the two leaves. Since everything was felt, the machine handled it very well. The only issue is the edges get a little wonky and you need to start from the outside edge and work in. The felt leaf shrinks as you go and will get all bunched up if you try to needle felt down the outside edges first.

Here is the end result. The photo on the left shows the front side. Because the felt is printed, it is white underneath and I didn’t like the white showing through so much. I turned it over (middle photo), and liked the back side much better. But still a little too much white. What to do? I have no problem with mixing medias so I found an orange and green Sharpie and just added a little ink to the wool to get the colors the way I wanted them (right photo).

On to adding a little hand stitching with hand dyed thread. I had originally planned to do chain stitch and cover the green and orange completely with chain stitch as a filling stitch. But then I decided I like the colors of the mottled orange and green. So I stuck with just outlining. For the leaves I used stem stitch. I could add some veining in the leaves but decided to leave it as is for now. It’s not a color scheme I use all that often but I like it. Do you try different color schemes? Or do you stick with your favorite colors?

 

Second Quarter Challenge Almost Finished.

Second Quarter Challenge Almost Finished.

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I will show you how things have been going with my second quarter challenge piece. If you missed my last instalment it is here. seascape-progress

I finished adding the green for the vegetation.

Next I worked on the flattened serf

First I tried this,

But no, and then this,

I might have been able to make this work by adding something to the edge of the wave but I didn’t like it

And finally I went back to silk throwsters waste. I also broke the water edge up into 3.

Next moved on to the foliage. I added green stitching here and there to give it a more vertical look. It doesn’t show much but does add to it. I added some handspun yellow that a friend Bernadette made up for me on the spur of the moment when I was moaning about not having the right yellow.

After this it was just a matter of adding more stitches. I did add more of the yellow to mingle them more and stop them being a line across the picture.

This is where I am, stitching away and I still need to add a little dark wool between the planks of the path. I had forgotten about that until seeing the pictures. They are more defined in person.

I was going to just keep going with the stitching.   The picture if you recall is quite plain but I was finding it boring, and to uniform in proportion. It needs something else. I wondered about a railing. Not this railing I think, it looks like a Japanese character (badly build temple maybe) or something.

I think I will finished the stitching  even if I add something else. Anyone got another idea? I have seven more days to be finished in time.