I had my first workshop of the fall season last weekend. It was a fun one, Vessels. I like vessels because they do not have to fit anyone when they are done. They can go completely sideways from the original idea and still turn out great.
I had 5 lovely ladies for the day. They had a great time( or seemed to at least) and I had fun too. I love to see people marvelling at the magic of felting and go from very sceptical to amazed at what they have made.
In this class, they all started with the same round resist. Everyone always asks about size. In this case a good sized dinner plate. Very technical.
On to the pictures
Laying out the wool. I like to teach laying out 2 sides without wetting and then go back to do the wetting and wrapping. I don’t know that there is any great difference but I don’t like laying out wool on a wet resist of wet wool.
here they are wrapping one side of the wool around the resist. For those whose layouts grew a lot, we feather the wool towards the middle so it will be more even. You can see the second side waiting to be placed on top, wet down and then wrapped around.
Next, were the embellishments. This part is fun for them and me. I love to see how diverse the ideas are. I usually bring wool, handspun yarn, silk tops, throwsters waist, trilobal nylon, sari silk waist, silk hankies and locks for people to use. I seem to be missing one pot.
Then, of course, there is all the rubbing and rolling. This is the point where I usually gabb on about wool and felt, the eganomics of making felt and sheep….. and anything else that helps pass the time so there are fewer complaints about how long they have to rub or roll. It is a boring sort of thing to do, I usually listen to an audiobook.
We talked about different ways to cut open your felt to get different types of pots and how shaping can change them. one lady said she wanted a pot more like a fruit bowl shape. I suggested turning her pot into two bowls by cutting across the middle. She decided not to but it inspired 3 others to cut their pots at 1/8, 1/4 and 1/3 to get 2 pots as a set.
I am missing one there Not sure how that happened. Here are some pictures students sent me of the pots dry
There’s a proverb I like: “necessity is the mother of invention”. Apparently it started with Plato. I’m going to test it today in two ways. Firstly, I’ve had a lot of sales and exhibitions recently and I haven’t made much new work. I’m writing this while stewarding an exhibition. So, as my blog is due and I’ve nothing new to show you (necessity), I’m drawing on some work I did earlier in the year and reflecting on that (invention). Secondly, it was actually the need to create a lot of pictures quickly (necessity) that led me down the different style of pictures (invention) that I’m going to talk about.
As I’ve covered in previous blogs, I had a large exhibition to fill in April/May this year so had a big push from January to March to make lots of new pictures. As all wet felters will know, wet felting is not a quick process and there’s no mileage in trying to hurry it. So, as well as making my usual style of pictures, I had a think about the quickest felt pictures I could make while not skimping on the quality of the felting. Quicker pictures would also allow me to offer them at a slightly lower price than my other work.
Nuno felting (which is including fabric in felt) with patterned fabric is a quick way of creating colour and pattern as it bypasses complicated and time-consuming wool layout. And now that I can print onto felt (again covered in a previous blog) that’s a comparatively quick way of introducing images.
This was my first picture.
“Monochrome Tree #1”
The fabric was a lovely fine wool scarf that I had bought (as always) in a charity shop. I have the solid beech frames made for me in batches in advance so I knew what size I was aiming for. I used a commercial prefelt of merino wool and silk – again trying to minimise the layout time and it’s also lovely to work with. There are plenty of legitimate, free-to-use images on the internet. Sourcing, scaling, printing and transferring them to felt is quite time consuming, especially as I only planned on using each tree once for this first set of pictures, but I’m sure I will come back to them.
Monochrome Tree #2Monochrome Tree #3
For the next (and subsequent) ones I decided to make them slightly smaller than the frames, leaving a small border around the felt. I added a line of recycled tapestry wool at the top of the fabric, just because I liked the look of it, and decided against patterning the sky.
I then fished out some black and white silk scarves from my charity shop finds and used those instead of the wool scarf.
Monochrome Tree #4 with crowMonochrome Tree #5
I added a crow silhouette in the tree on the left picture. A bit fiddly but I liked it.
Monochrome Tree #6 Two TreesMonochrome Tree #7
My next experiment was to switch from black and white to coloured silk, tapestry wool and trees.
Green Tree #1Green Tree #2
When I was printing on Green Tree #1 I accidentally pressed a fold in the corner. It came out with a hot iron but I didn’t remember to photograph it again afterwards.
After I’d made these two, it occurred to me that I could double the width of the wool and fabric to make two pictures at the same time, cutting them apart before printing on the trees. Why hadn’t I thought of that sooner? Super-speedy.
Continuing with the limited colour palate, I chose a silk scarf that was red / orange with some colour fade across the scarf.
After felting and before printing
When the felting was finished I wasn’t sure I liked how much the white fibres showed through the red / orange silk. The previous fabrics had either been partly white or were light coloured so the movement of the white wool and silk fibres through the fabric had been less visible.
As I contemplated this, I decided that I liked the long rectangular shape for a change. I happened to have some frames that were more or less the same shape and proportions….and so “Red Trees” became a double-width landscape with two trees.
“Red Trees”
That wasn’t where I thought I was heading but it’s fun to take an unexpected turn,
I have now sold more than half of these pictures, and I’d say they’ve sold slightly better than other work. I’m a little ambivalent about this. I like the new pictures but I don’t feel as much for them as my usual bird, beach and/or water pictures. I suppose that shouldn’t matter. They have definitely attracted a slightly different audience. When I get back into the studio I will be making some more. Not because of their speed as I’m not now under the same pressure, but because people seem to like them and I’ve enjoyed trying something new. I think I will stick to the monochrome fabrics but try out some different colours. Having a group of different strong colours like the red and green might make a good display.
And so, it seems, on this occasion, that necessity was indeed the mother of invention. I made a new line of work and I have a blog to post!
I left you last time as I was about to felt my sequins. I put the fabric on both sides of some felt and felted them most of the way. They felt quickly. The fabric they are attached to has a very open weave.
After they were dry I cut out diamonds.
I now have a great admiration for everyone who sews costumes or anything with sequins. What a mess they make. Sequins have ambitions of being glitter and being everywhere. I am sure I will be finding them in odd places they flew for quite a while.
I felted then again to seal up the edges
A quick trip in a side direction. Jan did some shopping for me at Twist. I didn’t ask for anything but she knows I would have bought it if I had been there.
A New Brunswick woold worker who specialises in fibre arts accessories, had made a palm felter. It looks really beautiful, it feels really nice in your hand, and it works great. It has a shorter profile and shallower indentations and is lighter than the other similar ones we all know. I found that one quite heavy when I had a look at it at a fibre show.
Back to sparkle. I made 4 colours using super bright trilobal nylon to make some squares. The nylon is on both sides. Again I felted them most of the way and they will need to be felted a bit more to seal up the edges.
after cutting them out I had little shards of sparkly nylon all over. I guess sparkle just likes to spread.
I think I have way more than 75 diamonds already. Jan has been working on her dragon hand for this project. I am sure you will hear about it from her. I have had to pause this project to get on with my sheep and shepherdess for the Guilds retrospective at the Museum. They need to be ready much sooner. I need to make more legs. but that’s another blog post. As always seems to be the way, you curse along ( lol, that was supposed to be cruse along but curse seems to fit too) with no deadlines or pressing projects then, all of a sudden you have too many.
My American Aunt, Rose (born in Ireland but she lived her adult life in the US as a religious sister and kids’ teacher) used to have a phrase about nice things. They were ‘for special occasions and bonfire nights’. I suspect it was from a time when folk had one good outfit in their wardrobe but it’s a phrase that has stuck with me and, while the saying sounds fun, it has led to me not letting go of beauty, storing them up in boxes or in the wardrobes for that ‘special occasion’ to come along. As I get older I have come to realise that every day I get to be on this beautiful earth is a special occasion and so it is time to get out the glad rags and let loose! I am finally applying this simple principle to my fibre stash; so in this post I want to talk about some of those gorgeous samples that I made during the various dyeing workshops I have taken over the past nine months. I wrote about them in my last three posts and you can find them all here if you would like to catch up with them. Adventures in colour Part 1; Adventures in colour Part 2; Dyeing to Eat.
I have to confess, it took a while for me to brave using the results of the workshops – the special occasions and bonfire nights phrase was stuck in my head and I was afraid I might ruin the samples (silly!). In the end, I decided to simplify things and just play. I started with a little weaving. Some time ago I bought a small loom, nothing fancy, it cost less than €13.00. It’s from Sostrene Grene, it’s a great shop for reasonably priced bits and pieces and it now is online. Their website is here
Here is a photo of my little loom. It’s great for playing as I watch TV:
Small wooden hobby loom with pen included in the photo for size perspective
As I did not have specialist thread and as this was just a play, I set the warp up using cotton thread. Then I got to work, using some of the fibre and yarn which I dyed during the natural dyeing workshop last November. I also used a cotton yarn for the background of the piece. Here is a photo of some of the hand dyed fibre:
The final result for the fresh nettle dye. I love the variety of tints!
Here is the result of my first play:
Background is cotton yarn and highlights are provided with wool skeins merino and linen fibres.
Next, I decided to use some of the yarn which I dyed during the Procion dye workshop. At this stage I had purchased proper warp thread and I decided to use a metal hoop for my base. I used a small nylon ring within the hoop and I set this off centre when I was setting up the warp. Again here are some photos of the fibre and thread used. I love the vibrancy of these colours!
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And here is the result. I plan to add nylon fishing line to this and hang it as a mobile.
Hand dyed (procion dyes) fibre woven onto a circular hoop.
Next, it was finally time to be a little brave and use one of my favourite fibre samples. This is merino wool which was randomly dyed in the dye pot. I loved the result as it reminded me of photos taken of deep space by Hubble. Here are two photos of the fibre sample I made.
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I felt I might ruin the effect if I didn’t felt it carefully. So my layout had to be simple. In the end I decided to make a cowl with it. The sample length was 60cm and it was quite thick so I divided the fibre lengthways into two equal bundles being careful to keep the colours intact. I took the two bundles and stretched both out very thinly width wise, again being careful to maintain the colours. As the fibres were going to run in one direction I decided to use the nuno technique to stabilise the piece. I used margillan silk for this purpose (measurement length of sample x 2 by the width of the stretched fibre).
Then I cut a resist which was the same length as the sample. I wrapped the silk around the resist as it was to form the base of the cowl. I wet this to keep it in place (margillan is so light it has a habit of wandering!). Then I carefully laid the fibre on top of the silk. (Tip: the start and end of each of the two lengths of fibre were not placed at the edge of the resist to avoid any possibility of creating a ridge). I wet the piece down, rubbed and started rolling. (lots of rolls to encourage the fibre to go through the silk). Once this was done I started fulling the piece. Here are some photos of the process:
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And here are photos of the finished piece. I am pleased with how the colours have kept their integrity and it has not become a muddy mess! All set for the cooler weather.
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Next, I took some silk fibre which has been dyed in the same pot. Here is a photo of the fibre:
Front view: Silk fibre. I can’t help thinking about Hubble when I see this photo!
This time I set it onto a black background. I was so pleased that it adhered well to the fibre but the black did not destroy the colours. This was probably helped by the fact that I did not fully felt the piece as I intended to frame it so I knew I could stop my process whenever I found it aesthetically pleasing. There’s lots of texture in it which I am pleased about. The black background definitely reminded me of deep space! Once rinsed and dry, I set to work doing some free motion embroidery. Lots of little stars. I then added some silver seed beads for a little starry sparkle. What do you think?
Mixed media: procion dyes were used on silk fibre which was then felted onto merino. Machine embroidery and hand beading introduced stars to the piece
Next, a quick update on my more recent dyeing exploits. I attended wedding recently and I needed a cover up which would tie in with my dress. I did not have time to felt a piece but I knew that I had some light wool fabric which would be perfect if dyed. Previous samples from the Mexican dyeing course I attended confirmed that I could achieve the colour I wanted from avocados. I prepared my fabric (scoured and used an alum mordant) ate the avocados and then I dyed the fabric. I threw in a little prepared merino and silk fibres too to see what might happen. Once dyed, I hemmed the wool shawl. I am delighted with the result. This is one piece that will not be kept for ‘special occasions and bonfire nights’. Here is the result:
Handmade wool fabric wrap (dyed with avocado skins and stones) natural dyeing
Then I decided to use the merino and the silks which were dyed in the same pot to make a flower. The colour achieved was a lot lighter but I am pleased with the result of the experiment:
hand felted and beaded flower (dyed with avocado skin and stone) Merino and silk fibres used Natural dyeing
Finally, every year, there is a local collaboration between two of our neighbours a farmer and a food producer (we live in a rural area). They grow a field of sunflowers which members of the public are invited to pick and make a donation either online or through their honesty box to the local hospice charity. It is always a popular event. I picked some sunflowers this week and they are now looking gorgeous in my sun room. I took off the bottom leaves from the plants before placing them in water. I decided it might be fun to see if I could extract dye from them. I also made a little pigment. Unfortunately, the photos do not fully do justice to the beautiful green tones I achieved from the dye, but I thought I would share them anyway:
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I know I am not alone in my need to behave like a squirrel and hoard my treasured items. I am so pleased that I have taken a tiny percentage of my mine and transformed them into something else which in my view are aesthetically more pleasing.
Now it’s time for you to share. Are you a hoarder too? If so, what do you hoard and do you ever think about transforming some of your stash?
Did I get your attention? My quest is to make diamonds, felt ones, that sparkle and shine. As you have heard from several of us the Ottawa Weavers’ and Spinners’ Guild is 75 years old this year. It is our diamond anniversary, so the exhibition theme for our Fall Sale and Exhibition is diamonds. You can interpret that any way you want. I thought Jan and I could collaborate, My part is the diamonds and probably a helmet but I will let Jan tell you about her part.
So now I am on a quest for the best way to make the diamonds. Originally I thought I would use a small resist that I could leave inside to help them be more 3D. I was thinking I could pull and shape them.
Well, that didn’t work out at all. the squares couldn’t be pulled and the diamonds didn’t look right with the middles pulled. It was partly because trying to get them pulled and a bit pointy was so hard. The big reason though is their size. When you try to stretch them you are pulling on two ends of the same fiber. Jan said kind things about them but truthfully they are terrible. It would only be worse if I tried to make them nuno felt. They look better in the picture than in person.
On to the next idea. I decided, who cares if they are 3D? Flat would be fine if they are the right shape. Next is a piece of shiny ( probably polyester) fibre from my stash. I thought it would felt in but wasn’t sure. Also, I decided I wanted August’s page to be pink so I combined the two. I used a piece of white prefelt and pink merino
I added some red sparkly fabric to one corner. It doesn’t look sparkly but it is.
Even dry the camera wants to focus on the wool and not the sparkle. It needs shaving but I am out of razors. The next stop Dollarama for the econo bag of razors.
One more try this week. I cut out some silk, some sparkly and some sequined fabric. Wow, is it fiddly to cut without cutting the sequins and they still fly everywhere. I put some face down and then put red prefelt on top.
Then some black prefelt and I tried to match up the fabrics to the bottom ones.
I rubbed this longer than usual to make sure the fabrics were stuck. My plan had been to stop at the soft felt stage. Cut out some diamonds and then finish felting. Unfortunately, I was listening to a good book and just kept going on autopilot. and before I knew it it was done. Now it is drying. I will cut out some shapes tomorrow and see what they look like. We may have to modify the project.
How would you make felt diamonds? All advice gratefully accepted.
In my previous post I had completed two nature inspired collages https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2024/03/28/inspired-by-nature-part-1/ and had then decided (in my infinite wisdom!) to create a third and form a set. Collages one and two were partners, now I was heading for a family!
1 My original completed piece
2 My second piece
As I was now creating a ‘triptych’ – meaning the two different nature inspired collages needed to be tied together – I had to concentrate on colour and texture, because I didn’t have enough snippets of all the various fabrics previously used. At the same time, I needed to think about the design direction.
One of the hardest decisions was deciding which way up, I finally wanted to present collages one and two, as this would have a bearing on three. When doing abstract work, I usually work from different directions so that, to me, it is balanced from all sides. This enables me, or a client, to decide which way to hang the piece, or simply present the opportunity to ring the changes!
3 Thinking about the design
4 Auditioning the fabrics
Once I’d decided on the final hanging direction of collages one and two, the next hurdle was the actual design layout. Again, the priority for me, was to unify and compliment the previous finished pieces, for which my various sketches proved very useful.
I’ve been asked many times ‘where do you get your layout ideas from?’ Zimples…I look through my vast collection of images that I find interesting (landscape, architectural, food etc), then finding one I like, I either trace or freehand copy the main shapes. These then become the kicking off point. I’m repeating myself I know, as I’ve mentioned all this before….I just want to get the message over that this method is available to everyone – whether they are ‘arty’ or say they can’t draw for toffee!
5 Layout of fabrics finalised – including some paper birch bark (the yellow underside was more interesting than the white top).
With my final decisions made on the design layout and the fabrics to use, it was time to start adding some embellishing stitches.
Although not immediately obvious each work also has some golden elements (paper or foil) included with the dried peeled cherry & birch bark (from felled trees), twigs, or dried bark chips (these were a beach combing find!). All from my ‘that’s too good to throw away/it might come in useful’ stash!
Then it was back to the entire same auditioning process re the placement of Mother Nature’s treasures with the added complication of now having to balance these elements with those of the other two completed works, which in turn, might decide in which order the three collages should be displayed (1,2,3 or 1,3,2 or, 3,1,2 etc).
In terms of design, balance, or colour – if I saw a glaring ‘gap’, yet more embellishing stitches were added, particularly to subtly enhance the circles.
5a Just to show the gold elements. Notice the copper thread too on the bark
These collages are all about being nature inspired, so the following photographs show some close-up details which I have paired with various of my (oh so many!!!) images of Mother Nature’s spontaneous creations that surround us, even in the tiniest of corners.
6 Detail 1 – A variety of stitches on the original collage
7 Detail 2 – Stitched cherry bark overlaid with a sheer with crocheted lichen and copper wrapped twig
9 Detail 4 – Embroidery stitches to evoke lichen and moss
10 Detail 5 – Reminiscent of cracks in rocks and aged cut tree trunks
11 Detail 6 – Copper wrapped bark, ‘cracks’ or maybe twigs and yarn moss
Framing the three collages….
I used my favourite method – by stitching each to card cut to fit the frame. I was so lucky that on one car boot sojourn, I found 3 IKEA frames, just perfect for my wall space. Each collage is 22 x 22cm (8½x 8½ins). At some point, I might present them in larger square frames with a wide 10cm (4in) mount (mat) to provide a counterfoil….before that….I’ll need to move house to have more wall space!!!
And herewith the final pieces, enough collage work for now I think….
12 The original work – I blame this one for setting me off down this path….I enjoyed it so much!
13 Collage 2
14 Collage 3 – Giving birth to this baby was not quite so easy as it had to share it’s parents’ features!
But maybe something beckons….
15 Mother Nature’s circles – Mmmm food for thought perhaps!
Did I forget to mention that I also love the rocks and stones on which the lichen grow!!!
We’d love to hear about any dip or triptychs you’ve created.
The last time I showed you my May page, I just had a little to go. Once I finished the stitching I cut away most of the stabilizer so I wouldn’t have to rinse it as much to get it all out of the felt.
And this is it all done. It’s a bit sparse but I like it well enough.
The tulips are for the tulip festival we have every year. Many are sent as a gift of thanks from the Netherlands. The Dutch Royal family was in exile in Canada during WWII. We designated part of our hospital as part of the Netherlands so Princess Margriet would be born on home soil.
The maple leaf and crown are for Queen Victoria’s Birthday. She gave us self-governance so we have a holiday.
And of course Mother’s Day, at least here in North America.
I picked out a new piece of felt for my June page. I have some ideas for June. I was thinking I may do some more needle felting this month along with the stitching but I am not sure yet. I like the way the fiber goes across leaving lots of the white background showing. I did this a long time ago but I am pretty sure the fibres are silk. The other thing I am not sure of is which way is up. the difference is more pronounced in person
The other thing I did was add some yarn to the antlers of my moose bag. I think it is all I will do. I like him the way he is. Not very ambitious but there you go. I may add something to the other side of the bag. The yarn is handspun silk. I am not sure how well it will stand up to being on the bag.
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.
The guild I belong to is 75 years old this year. One thing we are doing to celebrate is a group tapestry. We have a picture of our Parlement Buildings in the autumn, divided it into 24 pieces and 24 members are doing one square each, in whatever technique they would like. The picture is heavily pixelated to blur it and make it easy for people to use different techniques.
They are due March 4 2024. I thought I better get started. I am the one organising it so I shouldn’t be late with my piece. I should credit Jan Scott here, it was her idea. I also have to credit her with great cunning as I am not sure how I ended up being the organiser.
Anyway, this is the square I have. It is off to the side of the picture. Because I have put off doing it, I was wondering why I didn’t pick just sky or trees for myself.
I had to go look to figure out what the dark piece sticking up was. I thought it might be a statue but seemed too tall. It is a pointed crenelation on the west block of the parliament. The building is hidden by trees and the angle of the shot. The pixelation and then enlarging added a white pixel where there shouldn’t be one.
I wanted to wet felt and nuno felt a piece so I started with some prefelt. A thicker piece of white with orange-yellow for the sky and green for the trees to start, then added some fibres
I realised this was going to end up too big so I moved everything in, then added the silk for foliage. I want them to have texture. I had to root through 3 large bins and a small bin to get all the colours I wanted. I do not know why no matter how much fabric you have it’s never the colour you need. I wet the background first and I wet the silk before putting it down. Wet silk stays where and how you put it.
This is what it looked like when I quit for dinner and the next morning dry. Everything looks so much darker when it’s wet.
The next morning I rinsed the soap out with hot water and started some hard fulling to get it shrunk to the right size.
ready for cutting
And finally the cutting. You can sort of see how much it shrank. The whole piece started out the same size as the red mat. the cut pic is 6.6 inches (16.75 cm) long and 6 inches (15.24 cm) high.
and the picture and the piece side by side. You can see one section of double layer silk didn’t stick down so I will fix that with a needle. I need to add in the crenellation as well with a needle.
With any luck by my next post, I should have it done.
And to lift everyone’s spirits and as proof spring will come here are early (sneaky ram) lambs born just a few days ago on a lovely warm and sunny day. they are not great pictures but the moms were sure I was a secret axe murderer or perhaps a wolf in people clothing and the lambs pick up on that and no one will give you a decent pose. and then add a very scary phone camera and there really is no hope. Good thing they are cute anyway.
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.
