I have been busy trying to get pieces ready to go to the framers and I also needed to create my tree piece for the 3rd Quarter challenge, summer trees. Here’s the piece I created called Thick with Green. I am sorry about the quality of most of these photos. Somehow, many are blurry but at least the final few photos came out OK, my apologies.
I was thinking about a thicket of birch trees from a distance with green leaves. The sketchbook page above was created in one of my art and design classes. I used this as inspiration.
For the background, I used a piece of nuno felt. The silk is on the back this time. I had some white yarn that I decided to couch down to make distant tree trunks.
Then being inspired by the leaves Ann M. used on her summer tree, I decided to try some variegated green cheesecloth. I tore it into pieces and stretched it to give a more organic feel. Then I hand stitched it in place. The stitching disappears into the cheesecloth.
Then I added more tree trunks. This time I twisted two pieces of the yarn together and couched them in place.
More cheesecloth was stitched down on top of these tree trunks. Now what to do with the ground? I feel like I am always saying that about my landscapes. I never seem to plan the ground very well in advance. I don’t do much needle felting but I decided in this case, it would work the best. I felt like stitching would be too detailed since this was supposed to be a more distant landscape.
Here’s the grass added with a variety of green roving and needle felted in place.
Then I found I already had some green fabric that would work for the “matte”. I stitched the nuno landscape down and laced it around card. This piece ended up to be 8″ x 12″ and it’s ready to frame. Now to take all the pieces to be framed and then send them off to the gallery. Check, another task off my list.
This is the final installment of my large nuno felted autumn landscape, it is finally finished and I have even stretched it over stretcher bars so it is ready to go the framer next week. It is my entry for the 4th Quarter Challenge of the year long tree challenge. I’m way ahead this time. Yay!
In my last post, I was trying to determine how to handle the ground and prevent the background trees from “floating”. I decided to try leaf litter on the ground. I used the same fabric and paper that I used for the leaves on the branches. You can see on the left hand photo the first attempt. I had some leaves that were already cut out but these were much too big. It made the ground move forward since the leaves were the same size as the foreground tree leaves. Not the look I wanted. So I cut the leaves into tiny pieces and scattered them about. I didn’t want to bore you with all of the time I took arranging the leaves. You can see the progression from left to right. I had taken over 10 photos of this progression but thought I would show the first, middle and last photos. Perhaps you can tell a difference that way! Once I had the leaves where I wanted them, I glued them down with an archival gel medium. I don’t usually use glue but these pieces were so small, I thought that was the best option.
Next up was to determine the color of the “matte”. This is the fabric that I stitch the nuno felt down on to hold it in place for framing. I decided to go with the darker grey fabric. Then I stitched along the edges of the nuno felt to hold it to the background fabric. Normally, I would then lace the fabric over matte board or foam core but this piece is big and I decided to use stretcher bars instead. The stretcher bar frame is 23″ x 34″. I wrapped the fabric around the stretcher bars and stapled it in place. The hardest part of that process is getting the nuno felt landscape in the right position since you staple from the back side.
Here’s the piece on the stretcher bars ready to be framed. I will use my usual slim black frame. Did anyone notice anything else that was changed at the very end? Calling Down from the Branches is now ready to go to the framers and then off to the gallery.
I have been continuing to make progress with my large autumn landscape.
I began by looking for silk fabric in the correct colors. I found a yellow orange and a yellow green. But I needed a lighter mid yellow. I didn’t have that in silk fabric but I remembered some rice paper that I had painted yellow and coated with matte medium. I could use that for leaves too. To prevent the silk leaves from fraying as much, I ironed a light weight fusible to the back side of the fabric. Then I cut out a variety of leaf shapes. The secret to making leaves look more natural is just cut them out freely by hand. The shapes will be all different and the sizes won’t be exactly the same but that is what you want. I found a photo online to give me an idea on how the leaves should look and used that for inspiration.
When I was stitching the leaves down, I wanted some movement and the feeling of the leaves about to fall. Therefore, I only stitched them down with one or two straight stitches. This allowed the fabric leaf to come out from the background and be more three dimensional.
Cutting and stitching individual leaves takes a bit of time but I liked the result.
Here’s the piece after adding leaves. I may add a few more in a couple of places but I am evaluating now to see what else the piece might need. I haven’t cut off the bottom edge but I will be doing that shortly. I could add fallen leaves at the base of the background trees. Or I could add a bit of grass here and there. Or I could leave it alone. What’s your vote?
My idea for a name for this one is “Calling Down from the Branches”.
I have been continuing work on my large autumn landscape. I added the large tree trunk and branches and was planning on adding leaves to complete the piece.
However, I decided it need darker branches on the larger, foreground tree. I had some black wool yarn that I decided to use for machine cords. I twisted three pieces of black yarn together and then zigzagged over them by machine with a near black thread. Some of the yarn pieces I left apart so that there were narrowing branches of either two or one yarn diameters.
Then to start stitching them in place. I didn’t have a specific plan as to where they would go, I was just winging it. I couched the cords in place and in the thicker areas, I used two machined cords couched side by side.
Here’s the piece after I had couched all the machined cords in place. You might also notice that I have folded the bottom of the piece up to see what it would look like without the bottom four inches or so. I liked the look of it better. It feels like a better scale to me. I haven’t cut it off yet, but I think I will soon.
Then I decided that I needed thinner branches coming off the thicker foreground branches. So I used the same almost black thread in size 12 (Sulky cotton machine thread) and stem stitched the other branches. Click on the photo to see the branches in more detail.
Next up is leaves for the foreground tree. I will be cutting those out of yellow, yellow orange and yellow green silk. My plan is to add fusible web to the backside of the leaves so that they will not ravel at the edges. Then I will probably add a bit of grassiness at the base of the backgrounds trees and call it good. But you never know, I will evaluate to see if it needs anything else when I get to that point.
I have managed to get some stitching completed on my large autumn landscape. The background birch trees were hand stitched down first. I want to do background leafiness before I add the larger birch in the foreground.
To add the distant leafiness, I looked through my stash for fabric that would work. The photo on the left shows painted nylon organza. The photo on the right is dyed silk habotai.
It’s a little hard to see but I have added the nylon organza at the top. First, I used a wood burning tool to burn out areas of the organza to give it a leafy appearance.
Here you can see the effect better in the close up photo. I hand stitched all the pieces down with very small stitches to hold it in place.
Next I added some single cut leaves from silk organza. I had these left over from The First Leaf.
The next step is to stitch down the foreground birch trunk and add foreground leaves. At that point, I will decide how many leaves might be on the ground. I don’t want to make it exactly like the smaller piece. What would you suggest adding to the foreground at the base of the large birch?
So sliding in on a cloud of dust I have the branch finished just as the quarter runs out. I know we don’t have to get it done in a specific time but it is nice to get it done in the quarter the challenge is posted.
After looking at it and especially seeing it in a photo I decided the larger flowers at the bottom of the flowers should have yellow centres. So I added them. I used mostly french knots with 2 threads. The single french knots are smaller than the colonial knots. The Yellow stands out more in the photo than in real life.
It still looked pretty sparse so I decided leaf buds would help. I looked them up online. It was best to look up flowering trees and look at the buds in the background. It didn’t seem to matter the kind of tree the leaf buds looked pretty much the same. I made all the leaf buds at the same time so I would get them about the same size. It didn’t take long and I only poked myself a few times. That’s the problem of working small.
first I had to make the green I wanted. I had Christmas green, lime green and a very yellow-green. I mixed them with a couple of dog brushes.
I made 2 at a time. Then cut them in half and finished shaping them while holding them. I poked myself working on the pad not in my hand and I know Jan will tell me she just gave me a tool so I wouldn’t do that. But I forgot until after I poked myself, naturally.
I fiddled around placing them. and felted them down…… without poking myself.
I had originally thought I would add a bit of brown near the base of the buds but I didn’t like it and pulled them off.
I am quite pleased with the finished branch. Now I need to steam it a bit, to block it square. The dent on the left is really bugging me.
In my last post I mentioned a few of the projects I was working on with the “Making Waves” theme, along with other members of the Waltham Windmill Textile Group. I’d begun work on a 50cm x 90cm felted wallhanging inspired by the markings on large stone slabs on the beach at Seahouses in Northumberland.
Having recently bought myself a drum carder I carded a variety of left over bits of fibre, mainly blues, greens, yellows and neutrals, to make my background and laid them out with off cuts of hand dyed silk fabric, scrim and large nepps. On the left is how it looked after felting and on the right is where it’s at right now. I’ve added synthetic sheers, machine wrapped cords, hand and free motion stitch and in some areas I’ve heavily machine stitched to push them back and encourage the adjacent areas to stand out. The original bottom left section wasn’t working with those silk circles so they were pulled off and replaced with some stiffened, rust dyed fabric circles, recycled from another piece of work. I’m calling it Going With The Flow because a) it’s inspired by a trip to the beach b) it has flowing lines and c) like most of my work its design wasn’t preplanned. It’s evolving as I work on it, adding bits in and taking bits off until it feels right. It’s got a way to go yet before I can call it done.
One of the other challenges within the Making Waves theme is to make a 3D fish and my immediate thought was to create what many would regard as an ugly fish but which I prefer to think of as a fish with shedloads of character……..one that would get noticed amongst a group of pretty fish!
AnglerfishTasseled ScorpionfishOyster Toadfish
Having typed “ugly fish” into Google I lost many hours over the next few weeks looking at images and some incredible videos of life deep in the depths of the oceans. Each new search revealed yet another fascinating species of fish, some quite honestly didn’t look real while some, like the Tasseled Scorpionfish were strangely beautiful. One of the weirdest I discovered has to be the Red Lipped Batfish. If ever there was proof we descended from the oceans this red lipped, whiskered fish that “walks” on its specially adapted fins has to be it!
Red Lipped Batfish
Last month the Waltham group had a day making felted fish, some are finished, others are still work in progress.
Lucy made a wonderful wet felted Puffer Fish adding recycled plastics, including pipette tips, wine bottle netting and glass beads with recycling symbols underneath, to highlight the plight of our oceans.
Sue is very new to wet felting but she’s taken to it like a fish to water (couldn’t resist!) and has made “Angry Fish”. I think he looks more sulky than angry but he’s terrific!
Barbara’s felted fish is still work in progress but looking great, as is her sketch book and fabric fish purse!
Originally I had intended to wet felt my ugly fish but, after all those hours of studying them and getting excited about what I was going to make, for some reason when I took out my carded Corriedale fibres I found myself felting a cartoon version of an Angelfish…….I didn’t see that coming! Her name is TroutPout and she’s approximately 33cm x 36cm excluding her fins.
I’ve been enjoying teaching 3D Seed Pod workshops recently using wire wrapped with Tyvek fabric so decided to make my Anglerfish from wire rather than fibre. It was only when I’d got the 60cm x 33cm framework made that I sat back and realised I’d gone past the stage where I had meant to start adding my fabric! Time for plan B…..maybe I could use wire mesh to give it “body”?
I looked for some online but hesitated as I wasn’t sure how flexible or suitable the mesh would be. Having put the fish to one side, a few days later I joined the Lincolnshire Textile group and at my first meeting I was offered a piece of silver coloured Sinamay. Sinamay is one of the most popular hat-making foundations. It’s woven from the processed stalks of the abaca tree, a type of banana native to the Philippines. I couldn’t believe my luck……..being silver coloured this off cut looked like wire mesh but wasn’t and if I sprayed it lightly with water I could easily shape it to fit and stitch it with aluminium wire to my framework. So this is how far I’ve got. I’m going to add a few more wire spirals and do something more interesting with the eyes. He should have menacing teeth but I might not go that far!
Wire frame Anglerfish
Another feature of next years Making Waves exhibition will be an Octopus’s Garden so once the fish are done it’s straight on to making lots of coral and a few Octopus. I’m loving this theme and could quite happily continue with it way beyond our event next year…….it has to be the most interesting and enjoyable we’ve had so far!
I have finished my flowers but I don’t think I am finished with the picture.
The last time I had gotten this far
I started adding flowers, thinking that the branch end would be the last to open, I started with a darker colour and fewer threads to make buds. I made smallish french knots.
Next, I went to a lighter shade of pink and a few more strands for the next size-up flower buds
For the next group, I used my final pink colour but added in a few strands of the darker colour. I should have probably used half and half because the darker pink didn’t show up as much as I hoped. I did these at home so you got 4 progress pictures.
Today while I was at the market, I finished, with the lighter pink being for the bigger flowers. I decided to try colonial knots instead of french knots. I am not sure I wrapped them all the right way band I added some extra wraps around the needle to bulk them up a bit.
I liked the way they turned out. I am thinking maybe I should add a little bit of yellow to the middle of the bigger flowers to make them look more open. I also think adding some green flower buds might be a good idea too. So that is next, and hopefully, I will make it before the end of June.
And now just because they are cute, the 2 ducklings that visited our booth this morning. they belong to the Farm and were out for a walk with their youngest.
A good few years ago now, after I had acquired and learned how to use my spinning wheel, I was casting around for some means of storing the associated equipment in a reasonably respectable way. The wheel and associated bits lived with us in our living room and needed to be tidy.
Quite by chance I came across a shop selling off cheaply a large deep cane laundry (I think) basket. It was only going cheap because one of the handles was broken and it had no lid. The much reduced price compensated for something which was no problem as far as I was concerned.
I used to work in Maidstone (Kent) and nearby there was a lovely shop called C&H Fabrics (sadly no more) which sold both dressmaking and curtain fabrics and haberdashery. I could never bypass their remnant section – they almost always had something good and large enough to be really useful. I managed to purchase several large pieces of curtain fabric of a design which was really “with it” at the time (most rarely for me, I am usually following several years behind fashion fads). This was during the time when Macramé made it’s first appearance and I was very “into” this. So I removed the remaining cane handle and instead added two twisted cord macramé handles.
Then I set to and lined the whole of the basket using the curtain material, making sure that there were pockets around the sides of sufficient size to take threading hook, spare bobbins; flyer; carders; ball winder and my Neatsfoot oil – my wheel had a leather connection between the treadle and the footman – the bits that actually drive the wheel, and the neatsfoot oil is a good natural conditioner for leather and ok for oiling the metal parts. The rest of the associated bits – fleece, box of carded rolags, tea towel used as a lap cover, cord for tying skeins and niddy noddy would just sit in the middle.
Now I needed a lid for the basket to keep the dust out (our bungalow was very dusty because part of it was still a building site). So I cut two circles of the fabric and a circle of wadding. I attached the wadding to the wrong side of one of the circles, by machine quilting around the pattern/motifs printed on the fabric. On the other circle, which would be the underside of the lid, I added a zipped pocket. I then finished the lid by stitching the circles right sides together with another length of macraméd cord attached to one side. Then, after turning the circles the right side out, and hand stitching the turning gap, I attached the other end of the cord to the basket. The lid sat on top of the basket with everything safely inside; well except for the niddy noddy which was too tall and had to stick out of the side, so it made do with a length of cord to attach it to the basket. My brother in law had made the niddy noddy for me, having already made one for my sister. It is purposely on the large side because each circle of a skein wound on it would be 1 yard long. This made it easy to calculate the skein’s length.
Finished basket open
Finished basket, closed.
The fitted out basket sat comfortably by my chair and spinning wheel while I was working at home, but was a bit big to take with me when I went to my spinning group each week. Luckily my sister, having visited the Willows and Wetland Centre on the Somerset Levels, gave me a large basket which she had bought there. The Levels is a large flat low lying area where Withy Willows have been commercially grown for basket making for at least the last 200 years. In fact willow baskets and other items have been made there since pre-Roman times. If you are interested there is more information on the area here: Somerset Levels (As an aside, Glastonbury Abbey, also referred to in the link, used to own much of Sturminster Newton where I now live, despite Shaftesbury Abbey being much nearer to us and owning most of the rest of the surrounding land.)
But I digress. The basket which my sister gave me was intended as a picnic basket. It was short and wide and it’s carrying handles positioned so that it was carried flat.
See how the handles work to carry the basket flat?
It was just what I needed to carry tops (roving?) and spinning equipment when I was away from home. Of course it needed to be fitted out with pockets to keep everything tidy and safe. I had sufficient fabric left of the remnants used for the large basket to make them match. I lined the base of the basket adding pockets at one end for flyer and bobbin, lap cover and oil. I didn’t want to spoil the look by using the plastic box for my rolags and by then I had learned basket making courtesy of the WI. So I made a basket to fit, lined it and made a lid with more of the fabric. The lid of this little basket was quilted in the same way as the lid of the large basket, and also attached with macramé cords made from fine crochet cotton, with a wooden toggle closure.
Rolag basket in the sun
By this time I was also “into” Tunisian Crochet. I had been making ordinary crochet items for as long as I could remember but fell for this new (to me) technique. So in addition to storage for threading hook, personal bits, glasses etc., I needed storage for at least one Tunisian crochet hook – this looks like a knitting needle, but instead of a point it has a hook. I also needed somewhere safe to put large sheets of paper patterns, as I tend to use diagram type patterns and they take up a lot of room. So I set-to to line the lid of the basket with just one layer of the fabric, but with pockets, short & fat and long & thin attached. I sewed this onto the inside of the lid but left one of the shorter ends unattached so that I could tuck paperwork etc., inside.
All my equipment (almost) in the basket.
Incidentally, the sharp eyed amongst you may have noticed that odd bit of hooked wire tucked away in the longer tube/pocket and be wondering what it is. It’s a do-it-yourself lazy kate – a device for assisting with plying yarns from one, two or more separate bobbins. An old shoe box (or a basket) and this bit of wire are all you need, poke the wire through one end of the box, slot the bobbin(s) on and poke the wire through the other end of the box. It’s not the best way to do it, but if you put some tension on the yarn by passing it from the bobbin around the wire once before taking it to the wheel for plying, it works.
Oh and a quick boast – can you see the handle of the threading hook poking out of one of the lid pockets? The handle was actually a light pull which I had made while having a go at wood turning some years earlier, and the hook is only an unbent paperclip – but it works ok too.
So that was my basket set up and ready for journeys. Oh yes, the niddy noddy. That was too big again, so it had to sit on top.
Basket with niddy noddy (but the handles are down so I’ll have to remove the niddy noddy, put the handles up and replace it because the right handle won’t go over the end of the niddy noddy – then I can pick up the basket.)
Eventually the cane hinges of the lid, and the cane closure wore out so they were replaced with macramé cords.
Some time before I moved from Kent to Dorset in 1999, I wrote an article about these baskets and submitted it, with photographs, to the Journal for Weavers Spinners & Dyers as I thought it might be of interest to them. Apparently not though; I eventually received a letter returning the photos (but not the article, so I’ve had to rewrite it!) and saying “… the Editorial Committee … felt that the article was rather too indirectly concerned with weaving, spinning and dyeing ….” Oh well!
I have finally completed my winter birch landscape that I have been slowly working on. You can see the prior posts here if you missed them. I had about determined to skip adding any extra snow in the foreground but then I decided I should try a sample of needle felting the snow.
And, surprise, surprise, it worked better than I thought it would. So I added a bit of snow and then needed to figure out the distant red twig dogwood bushes. (You can see the snow in the final photo.)
First I tried using a marker on my sample to see if I could get away with something easy. The thinner marker made a very light line and the heavier marker was too heavy. Plus, using a marker on nuno felt gives a very uneven line. On to the next idea.
Next, I tried needling the wool thread into the sample background. It didn’t feel like there was much difference between the stitched bushes in the foreground compared to the needled line on the top left.
I decided I would try a cotton machine thread (30 weight). The stem stitched sample on the left shows two different colors. The redder color is straight off the spool but I wanted the thread to be a bit darker and variegated. So I colored the thread by hand with a black marker. The photo on the right shows the thread before it was darkened (left side) and the thread on the right side of the photo has been darkened with a black permanent marker. It worked perfectly although it’s a little messy on the fingers.
So here’s the finished landscape. I used the machine thread for the distant red twig dogwoods and you can see the small amounts of snow that I added. I’m happy with it but I will put it on the design wall to look at to make sure it’s finished. Then I will need to choose a “matte” fabric and get it ready for framing. I’m thinking of calling the piece “Winter Color”. Or I could stick with “Winter Birch”. Which do you prefer?
