My March stitch page was done in time. I did the last thing on March 31. After doing February as a Valentine’s theme I thought I would do March as a St Patrick’s Day theme. so having an odd sense of humour I decided on green threads on an orange background. I am not sure which side of that( orange or green) would care the most. but after looking at symbols for St Pat’s I decided to give up on that idea and look for other March symbols. March has a lot going on. This is where the quiz comes in. I am not going to tell you what each thing represents as we go. You have to guess at the end. I will make a bit of a break in the post and then put the answers and you can see how many you got right.
I don’t have as many progress pictures as I might as I do most of it out and about. I did start with a shamrock. They are quite easy as they are 3 harts and a stem.
Before I remembered to take a picture I also added this dagger. I knew I bought silvery thread for a reason other than it was pretty.
Then 2 more important days were added.
Then there is this one that is so important to remember for all our struggles past and future. With a nod to my LBGTQ friends
This last symbol is for some great kids I drive to school. It didn’t turn out quite as I wanted but it was a new stitch for me.
The last thing is not a symbol. It was just a flower that popped up in my FB news feed and I decided to try it. It was easy and effective.
Here is the whole thing, followed by a numbered picture for your guesses.
Scroll down to see the answers
Shamrock for St Patrick’s Day
A Dagger for the Ides of March( Beware!)
Pi, for Pie Day: March 14 ( 3.14)
The symbol for women for International Women’s Day
Easter egg for Easter and spring fertility
The symbol for Down Syndrome for Down Syndrome Awareness Day
Although a number of people didn’t think I needed any leaves on my embroidered tree, I decided to go ahead with the leaves.
I used a lighter value yellow green to contrast a bit with the blue green background. The thread is a #8 hand dyed perle cotton. I’m not sure that you can see the variations in the thread color as it is subtle but it’s not a solid color. I used a solid fishbone stitch to create the leaves. I decided not to mark the leaf shape on the background fabric, thus there are some that are a bit wonky, but that doesn’t bother me.
Here’s a closer look at the stitching.
And here’s the piece after the stitching is finished. If you can see, the width of the fabric shrunk a bit with the stitching. The piece of fabric was barely wide enough to make a cover for my tablet to begin with and now I decided it wasn’t going to work to make a cover. So my first quarter challenge effort was a bit of a fail.
But never fear, the piece fit into a frame that I already had so it was a good use of stuff lying around the studio. I realize that I could have made a cover for the tablet and added the tree to the front but I wasn’t sure I would use the cover and the framed piece can always go to one of the galleries.
I suddenly realized that it’s already March and nearing the end of the first quarter. So I needed to get going on my entry for the 1st quarter challenge. Did I have something that needed a cover? Perhaps my tablet needs a little felt surrounding it and keeping it safe.
I found these two pieces of nuno felt in my stash that were already cut to approximately the right size. I found a copyright free design of two entwined trees that I decided would be nice to embroider a design on the cover. I traced the design on tracing paper and pinned it in place.
Then I used machine thread in dark brown with a running stitch to follow the design. It works for a fairly simple design but might be an issue for really complex designs. I used brown thread so that if it showed on the edges of the stitching, it wouldn’t stand out. You can remove any of these threads if the embroidery doesn’t cover them. I have found with thin pieces of the design such as branches, that it works best to have just one line of running stitch and it takes less time to stitch the design.
The next step is to remove the tracing paper. I saw this on a YouTube video but don’t remember who to credit for the idea (Sorry!). Use your needle to run along the line of running stitches and that will tear the tracing paper so that it is easier to remove the paper without pulling on the stitches as much.
Here’s my design now transferred on to the nuno felt and ready to embroider. I considered using various brown yarns to couch down but they were too large a scale for this small of a tree. So back to my stash to find brown perle cotton thread. I ended up deciding that #8 perle cotton was the size that worked best and that I had the right colors in.
So I started with the darkest brown threads and started couching them down with the brown machine thread. I did a little bit of this on a recent car trip but did most of the couching after I got back home.
So here’s the finished tree trunk and branches. Now to add some leaves. Once I have finished with the embroidery, I will work on construction of the cover.
If you recall I did a small slow stitch piece in January. Look here if you missed it: https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2024/01/26/slow-stitch-on-felt/ I enjoyed it so much that I thought I should do one a month. They are not very big, 4 inches by 5 inches or 10 cm by 13 cm. The base and all the bits and pieces fit in a sandwich bag in my purse.
February has Valentine’s Day so I decided on a heart theme. I rummaged through some offcuts and found this piece with lots of silk embedded in the surface.
I then had fun going through my threads to pick out my colour palette. Mostly pinks and a contrast. Later I will add a dark blue as a contrast.
As you can imagine with this being a slow stitch project and a portable one I didn’t take as many pictures as I should have but I think I have enough to show my progress through the month.
I wasn’t sure where to start so added the month and a felt heart with a simple outline stitch heart to make it pop a little. You can see I was thinking about the second heart when I remembered to take a picture
Some were online I saw someone stitching over an object and wanted to try it. I wove some pink floss over it. I didn’t like the white and did try to carefully cut it out but that did not work at all. The cardboard was much too stiff.
so I did some unstitching and then tried again. this time I took a Ferrero Rocher Chocolate wrapper and after smoothing it out some, covered the heart. and tried again.
Just as an aside I was very disappointed in my Quality Street chocolates this year when I discovered they were in waxed paper. One of my favourite things to do at Christmas as a child and now was to flatten and smooth out the foil and transparent plastic wrapper. I know it’s more environmentally responsible to not use shiny plastic and foil but it is just not the same.
Anyway here is my foil heart.
I added more hearts as the month went on.
You can see in the last picture I added some multi-strand multi-coloured colonial knots, here’s a close-up. I didn’t like them they just didn’t seem to have anything to do with the other part of the piece. I was hoping the multi-colours would tie them in but it didn’t.
So out they came. I decided that scattering little X’s around to represent kisses would work better.
Here is the finished piece for February.
I know there are no X’s on the left edge but I did that on purpose, with a view to making them a book later and that would be the bound edge. So now I am on to March, You will have to wait to see what it ends up.
Finally, I hear you saying. I have finished the forest floor nuno felt landscape that I have been working on since October.
I pinned the leaves in place and hand stitched them down. I also did a bit of trimming on the leaves that were further back in the landscape to give a feeling of distance.
Here they are stitched in place. I also added a few bits of darkness to leaves that were partially in the shade. I used a green felt tip pen for this.
And next, I auditioned flowers. Those of you who are felt purists, look away. I cut the flowers out of sketchbook paper. I think the contrast between the smoothness of the flowers and the matte fuzziness of the felt leaves make the flowers stand out more. Then I needed to make sure the flowers on the left were in the shade so I used a bit of Payne’s Grey watercolor to create the “shade”.
The flowers were stitched down with French knots and wool thread. The flowers on the left have a bit darker yellow than the ones in the “sunshine”.
I even got the piece stitched down to the background matte fabric and laced around a piece of matte board. So it is ready for framing, Yay! I have decided to call this one “Sunlit Dance”. Not sure what is on the agenda next but perhaps I should think of something to cover for the first quarter challenge.
As January started I found I wanted something unimportant to fiddle with. You know something that didn’t have a deadline, had to be made for a class or show, or have any practical purpose. I had been sorting through all my bits and pieces of felt that accumulate, the ones that may be good for a picture or are just too good or interesting to get rid of. I was trying to sort them into possible uses and tidy up my area of the living room. I wasn’t very successful at either of those things but I did manage to get the felt into sizes.
I decided a slow stitch, random sampler sort of thing would be good. I had lots of small pieces to choose from. I chose a quite dark piece with some lumps on it. I have fiddled with the picture to show the colours properly. This is the best I can do. The dark green is darker or maybe deeper. The light areas are not as light as they show. The shine on the silk areas is causing a lot of bounce back and messing with the colours.
I think I used the rest of this strip of felt for a needle book. I marked out the year before I remembered to take a picture.
Next was picking out some threads. I wanted to stay with the same palette. They are different brands but all 6-strand floss
I started with the year. Strangely, the 4 was the hardest number.
I thought it might look interesting to make a flower on one of the bumps. I used lazy daisy stitch and colonial knots
I added some little leaves under the flower. I did them 4 ways but they are too small to see the stitches properly. They look like leaves so that’s good enough. I wanted to do something else with another bump and did this wheel sort of thing. I didn’t like it but I lived with it for a few days trying to think of a way to improve it.
In the end, I just decided it was just ugly and I cut the the stitches off. I added another lazy daisy with much looser petals and added a contrasting stitch to the middles and I used stem stitch and outline stitch to a…. swirl? ….curly queue? not sure what you call it but I like them.
Next was a bug for one of the bumps. It doesn’t look in but he is nice and round. I added a stem and leaf to the daisy and another swirl thing but in back stitch.
The swirl looks very white, even though it is cream. It stands out too much so I took it off and changed it to a darker colour. I also did stem or maybe its outline stitch. I can not remember, left stitches are one and right stitches are the other. Both give a much smoother line than back stitch.
I like the light streak of silk on the right and thought it looked like a tall flower so that was the next step. I used colonial knots and French knots for the flowers.
That’s as far as I am. I am going to add some more arms to the swirls but not sure what else. I was thinking I might stitch the month on it and start a new one on Feb 1 and see if I can keep it going all year. Then I will have to figure out how to make it into a book like Ruth does.
When you look at this, what is missing? More shadows. So I needed to add the cast shadows from the trees.
So I added more blue sheer fabric to cast the shadows from the trees. Suddenly, there’s another glaring ommission (Antje pointed this out in her comment on my last post). The rocks on the left need to have shadows cast on them by the trees. So more dark blue sheer fabric is needed.
Ah, that’s better. You can really see the sun shining through the trees now.
Next up is leaves. The leaves on the left need to be in the shade, thus darker and more grey blue. The pieces of felt scrap that I originally found was not going to be enough.
So I searched for more felt and found a neutralized green that should work. Here you can see my messy workspace while I’m working. Other projects that are in process are on the back of the work table.
Here’s as far as I have gotten. I need to change out the leaves on the upper right as those are too bright in the shade of the tree. I may use some ink or paint to tone them down or I may just cut out more leaves in the neutralized green I used on the left. Then on to the flowers. I will need to find some light grey for the flowers on the left and brighter white for the flowers in the sunshine. Getting close to the finish now!
And just for entertainment purposes, here’s my dog Edgar in the big snow we had last week. The snow is almost as tall as he is and he’s decided that he doesn’t need to go wading!
I have continued to make slow progress on my forest floor piece. Since I showed you last, I have stitched down the rocks and added some shadows.
I decided on the final rock placement and then stitched them in place. I moved the rock that is now on the top right over from the left since it was much lighter. This reinforces the feeling of the light shining from behind the trees. Once the rocks were stitched in place, I decided they needed a bit more definition as they kind of looked like potatoes to me.
I remembered a book about nature journaling that I had checked out from the library by John Muir Laws. I decided to look him up online to see if he had some information about drawing rocks. I found a wealth of information on his site about drawing in nature. If you would like to improve your drawing skills, this is an excellent resource.
I took the photo from above and printed it out. Then I used a piece of tracing paper to sketch the rock placement. Then I used hatching techniques to give some shape to the rocks. These aren’t specific rocks. I find it much easier to draw/sketch when I have a photo of what I am trying to draw or I can look at a specific rock or landscape. But they look more like rocks than potatoes now.
I decided to use the same blue that is already in the nuno background for the shadows. That would tie all the blue bits in as shadows and move the blue over on to the right side of the composition too. I used a straight stitch to do the “hatching” on the rocks using #12 Sulky cotton thread. Once those shadows were in, I knew I needed to add cast shadows from the rock on to the ground. So I brought out my navy blue sheer fabric to create some cast shadows.
Here’s the piece after adding the sheer fabric around the rocks. I stitched the sheer fabric down with #40 machine thread with tiny stitches. Now guess what? I need more shadows in front of the trees. It’s always funny to me that I am working along and when some shadows are added, I can immediately see that I need more. So the next step is more sheer blue fabric to add the cast shadows from the trees. Then I will begin adding more leaves and the white flowers so that it will resemble my original collage below.
Having just read Kiki’s tutorial https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2023/11/19/left-overs-yessss/ on using up prefelt scraps, it occurs to me that I may not have mentioned something we used to do at our Guild (Dorset Guild of Weavers Spinners & Dyers) mainly to raise funds for the Guild but also for fun.
When I attended the Stitch and Creative Crafts Show at the Bath and West Showground in Shepton Mallet (Somerset, UK) back in 2010 – I saw a stand selling (for £8.00 each) bags containing 35gr of silk fibres, yarns, fabrics scraps, carrier rods and cocoons in various colours, left over from old projects which, when put together, made a fascinating collection for future projects. So fascinating that I bought three of them.
They must have made quite a bit of profit on them because they appeared mainly to be the “waste” from artwork.
At that time (when I was part of the sub-committee organising the Guild’s Exhibition and Sale of Work) we were looking for a Guild Project which could be part of the exhibition or something hopefully to help raise some funds. Well, I thought, our weavers must have lots of off-cuts of hand woven fabric, not to mention warp ends. Then there were the spinners who would have odd bits of spun and unspun fibres of all types and colours. We also had members who were dressmakers, beaders and embroiderers, and a soft furnisher, who were bound to have the odd bits and pieces that they didn’t really need. So, with the blessing of the committee, I put it to the members in the next newsletter that if they would donate to the Guild any odd bits of fibres, yarns, threads, warp ends, bits of fabric, beads, button, feathers, felt, cords, braids, tassels, sequins, sequin waste, ribbons, silk flowers and any other bits and pieces they could think of, we could make up some “Bags of Inspiration” and sell them to members of the public at our open days and outside demonstrations. (I don’t know about in the rest of the world, but in the UK the word “bags” means “lots of” as well as “containers”, so the punning name “Bags of Inspiration” seemed apt.)
We used A4 sized polythene bags (which I was able to buy quite cheaply from our local green grocer) with an A4 sheet of card inside for stiffening, and I made up some stickers with the Guild’s logo on and a brief description of the contents, and posters also giving details of the contents.
Bag of Inspiration Poster
We arranged a few bag making days at a pub in the village where our then President lived. She had persuaded them to let us use their skittle alley at no charge, and we had a great deal of fun making up the bags and tucking in to “refreshments” from the bar and kitchen.
The members who came to these, brought with them all sorts of goodies which we spread out on tables, so that we could make collections of pieces which seemed to go with each other. Those who didn’t think that their colour theory was good enough, could pick out a picture from a selection of magazines and have a go at matching colours from this It was amazing how compulsive making the bags became. You could pick up a piece of fabric that looked so dull and dreary and be amazed how it perked up and positively shone with life when paired with different fabrics, yarns, trimmings etc. You just couldn’t stop picking up likely bits. The difficulty was keeping the weight of each bag between 80gr and 100gr, so we quite often ended up making up at least 2 bags with similar contents.
Equipment & Extra “Bits” for making up BagsProspective contents of at least one Bag of Inspiration
We put a price of £3.50 on each bag and they went like hot cakes – we sold out on their first appearance at our exhibition and sale of work. Embroiderers and mixed media artists in particular liked them.
After a couple of years, we didn’t get so many volunteers to make up bags but we still had mountains of “stuff”. So we added another string for our open days – Pick and Mix Your Own. I had remembered that Woolworths (now there’s a blast from the past) used to have a counter full of different sweets and you could take a bowl and pick and mix what you wanted, and in the process buying a lot more than you would have if just buying a ready filled bag.
Pick and Mix Sweets.
It worked with our stuff too. We gave the visitors the polythene bags and they could wade through all the bits and pieces picking what they needed, and we weighed them when they’d finished, charging £3.50 for 100gr.
We had had a lot of fibres donated so we started making up what are now called Art Batts and selling them as “Batts of Inspirations”, but because we were mainly selling these to Guild spinners and felt makers, they didn’t do quite so well as they were mainly able to make their own.
In all we made around £1000.00 for the Guild in the four years we were doing this. Eventually though the members got fed up with spending time on making up the bags and the whole thing was shelved, as the Guild seemed to be relatively well off at the time.
Some time after that I took the idea back to myself and I was making up Batts to sell at Guild meetings, using luxury fibres as well as merino and synthetic fibres. I made up some bands to fix around the Batts detailing the various fibres included in each.
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I was also making up and selling Bags, mainly at a Needlework Festival in Dorset where most of the vendors were selling materials and equipment for crafters, as well as various craft fairs and so on.
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I was getting the odd question like “they’re lovely but what do you do with them?” and “can you make a bag out of what’s in here?” So I made a sign from images of items that I’d made myself over the years and that helped.
Some of the things I’ve made with the contents of BoI over the years
However, once Covid started causing problems, my selling opportunities dried up. I had been intending to try selling Bags and Batts via my website, but it was very difficult and too time consuming to photograph the Bags so that the contents were visible, because of reflections on the polythene bags. So that sort of died a death too and I’ve now shelved that project, and am using the bits and pieces I’ve collected over the years on theatrical costumes and props.
Perhaps some of our readers’ organisations, like Ann & Jan’s OVWSG, might use this idea to raise funds?
We decided this year to do a “card” exchange amongst our members. Ann M. drew the partner names and I got Carlene’s name. I decided that since Carlene likes to weave, that I wanted to include some needle weaving on her card.
I wanted a wintery feeling so I chose this piece of nuno felt cut to 4″ x 6″. I can already see birch trees in the background so my go to trees this year were an easy decision for the design.
I used a stitch technique that is usually used in cut and drawn thread embroidery. Since my background was felt, I couldn’t cut the surface to get my base threads so I stitched them on the felt base. It’s a very simple stitch as you just take the thread and move over and under each time filling in the “woven bar”.
Here’s the first one completed. I used white perle cotton in different weights for all the trees. If you look closely, you can see that on this first tree, I was catching the wool fibers that were coming through on the silk surface of the nuno felt. I was a bit concerned with this but then when I looked again, the wool just adds in the “spots” on a birch tree.
I used some yarn to work out the tree placement before I went any further. I cut a piece of nuno felt to cover the bases of the background trees which I would stitch down after completing all the trees.
Then to continue on with the weaving. This isn’t a hard stitch but it’s a bit time consuming. I was able to hold the thread away from the surface to prevent catching the wool fibers but it really wasn’t necessary. Now I needed to add in the “spots” on the trees.
I could have stitched them on but I decided to use dark brown ink. You can see I cut down the foreground nuno piece a bit and then I stitched that in place.
Now to add some snow. I stitched random French knots over the trees and background.
And here it is matted as a “card”. I made it as a small frameable artwork instead of a card. I sent it off to Carlene in Canada and she received it quickly. I’m always hesitant about the mail service these days, but all was well! Happy Holidays Carlene!
