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
The deadline is getting close and I need to get done. As Jan will tell you soon it was Fiberfest weekend in Almonte. a small town close to where we live. I was on the demo team for Sunday. So I planned to work on the shepherdess and sheep as my demo project. First I had to get the shepherdess some clothes. Not too hard you think or at least I thought.
I forgot to take starting pictures but here is the shirt and skirt ready for final fulling.
And this is the shrinkage after fulling
The skirt was fine but the shirt was way too stiff. so I made another using a lot less wool and felted it along with the cloak.
For the cloak, I decided to use some prefelt I had. I cut the first side a little bigger than the resist then folded it around and basted it into place. This seemed like the best idea to keep everything in place.
And here it is shrunk
I liked it and it fit well except for the hood. I didn’t like it at all. I thought for the hood I wanted, it would be best to do it separately. do more cutting and sewing. and shirt number 4. I don’t remember what was wrong with shirt 2 but shirt 3 would have been good if I hadn’t cut the neck too big.
And finally, all the parts of the clothing are dry and ready to move on to the next steps.
For the next post, I hope to have the shepherdess all done and a colourful flock of sheep for her to tend.
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 am making some progress. I refelted the cut diamonds
They are now in a bag waiting for me to work on the diamond project.
I did more work on sheep and shepherdess.
Jan made me a wire shape or the shepherdess for me. Then I wrapped it in some waste wool and used a felt ball for the head. than wrapped that in Corriedale.
Once I added wool it was not stable enough to stand. So I asked Jan about adding a piece of wire front and back to stabilizers. so she took it and started working on it. We added a ball in the bottom but then I decided she was too tall for the sheep I was making, and she cut the ball in half and squashed her down. Jan added a snail tail that stabilises her well. It will be covered by her cloak.
I have been putting sheep together. I make the parts separately. Long snake to cut into leggings and ovals for heads. I made some flat pieces in the 3 colours for the ears. I cut them out but I want to felt them some more.
After I add the ears to the sheep I will add the curls like the orange sheep on the right. I also need to make some clothes for the shepherdess. I think she will be a brunette but I don’t think she will get a face.
Lastly for today, is why felting small things and holding them with your fingers and talking to people is not a good combination.
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.
I am making progress with my ‘found’ blanket, and I have decorated another corner of it with some needle felted flowers. Again, I have used some more of the plants from my garden as inspiration.
The flowers I used last time were from spring – tulips and primulas – and Spring seems such a long time ago now. This is a photo of the first corner I wrote about for that post.
The plants that I have chosen for this corner of the blanket are from the summer flowering groups. I have chosen alliums and some ‘red hot pokers’, as they are commonly known – the proper name is kniphofia, but I think red hot pokers sounds so much better! This photo is of some of my alliums, and pokers, but I have cropped the photo too much I think – but I hope that you get the idea.
I love purple and orange in the garden, I think they go together really well as a plant group.
I have needle felted my picture, and then wetted with water and the use of some soap to encourage better adhesion to the corner of the blanket. Some yarn is added to give the impression of stalks. I used some little scraps of orange felt for the pokers.
These orange scraps did not show up very well in the photo, so I have used a little orange acrylic paint to enhance the colour.
Now to decide what stitching to add, and hopefully add some definition. I used some french knots in a lighter colour of floss, on the alliums, in an attempt to highlight the little individual tiny flowers, that form each allium. These little individual flowers on the alliums provide food for bees, and make a lovely dried seed head to add interest later on in the season.
I used a fly stitch on the pokers, and I have couched the yarn ‘stalks’, both done for added security in the event of inquisitive little fingers in the future.
I am pleased with my progress on the blanket, it is really nice to take time to think about plants and seasons when doing something like this, instead of the constant rushing and wishing for the next lot of plants in the garden to show themselves.
I have two more corners to decorate, and I am making plans for that – well thinking about it anyway!
So, this photo shows both corners together, leaving me an impression of spring and summer in my garden.
My aim for the final two corners is to have an autumn and winter feel, perhaps with some seed heads and leaves.
I have a teapot I really like, it has good balance and is easy to pour from. I like it, except that it has a metal handle that gets hot resting on the teapot.
I made 4 thin layers. 2 thicker ones would have been good for this small project but I can’t layout thicker without really working on it. I got a nice firm felt at 50% shrinkage.
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Once it was the right size, I rolled it into a tube to dry. The silk pops so nicely once it is dry
Rolled up to dry
Dry tube ready to go
The only thing left is to sew it onto the teapot. I used some thick, black cotton thread and whip stitched it on
And here it is.
The funny thing in the lid handle is part of the original messy background I couldn’t get rid of. I made a cup of tea right after finishing and it worked perfectly, no more burnt fingers.
The other thing I finished today is my July Page of slow stitch on felt. No hidden meanings this month, just some random designs.
For various reasons, I’ve not done much felt-making recently and I’m now in the very fortunate position of finding myself on holiday / vacation in California when this post is due. So, I’m going to talk about some of the creatively-inspiring things I’ve seen while I’ve been here, and then show you a little felting I’ve done as a result.
As I’ve been on holiday I’ve been looking at and mulling over some of the things around me that I find inspiring when I’m deciding what to felt. Visiting California, these have fallen broadly into three categories: coastal, botanical & textile.
COASTAL
For the first week, I was staying in Redono Beach, just south of Los Angeles, so there was an obvious coastal connection. As I walked along the beach each morning I looked at the ocean and things that were washed up at the water’s edge.
I found two “sand dollars” (actually skeletons of flat, burrowing sea urchins) which were beautifully patterned so popped them in my pocket for further consideration.
Left & bottom the 2 sand dollars I found
There was lots of interesting sea weed – I quite fancy wet felting some sea weed – though you’ll be glad to hear I didn’t pocket that.
Seaweed that looks like a small tree with roots
A pile of seaweed
And I found the usual bits of shell, pebble & sea creatures. Plus a nice view of a little egret
A piece of a shellfish or crab
A little egret at Redondo beach
BOTANICALS
Around LA there were some lovely plants & trees. I found the bark of some trees and stems of cacti or succulents in Huntington Botanical Gardens especially intriguing.
These could inspire some really interesting 3D felt pieces.
I also loved these bougainvillea at the Getty Center.Metal rods support or encourage the plant to grow up inside their structure, then the stems, with their bright pink bracts & tiny white flowers, cascade out of the top looking like giant bunches of flowers. I think there’s a felted vase idea in there somewhere.
Bougainvillea at the Getty Center, LA
I gathered these in the garden of the next house we rented in the country near Solvang. I’ve wet felted seed pods, including eucalyptus, before. It was interesting to see the remains of the flowers on the tree on little green pods, then (I assume) the dried version, followed by the matured pods.
Flowers & seed pods, eucalyptus
Maybe I’ll do some more eucalyptus pods some time.
TEXTILES
Also at the Getty Centre was this bust of a Sudanese man by Charles Cordier. This is a bit of a cheat in that it’s a representation of textiles but I marvelled at the way the artist had managed to make the hard marble-onyx look so much like softly draping fabric.
At The Broad modern art museum I found this enormous draped piece, “Red Block”, both extremely beautiful and very poignant. Created by Ghanaian-born, Nigeria-based artist El Anatsui, you can read the gallery’s text (below). Made primarily from reused gin bottle caps it is lovely in itself. As the text describes it, it also references traditional kente cloth, cultural appropriation and the damage caused by alcohol, colonialism & global markets, among other things. I also liked that the decision on exactly how to hang it is up to the exhibition’s curators. Presumably it would be different in every place it’s shown, reflecting the curators’ interpretation.
By artist El Anatsui
The Broad also had two textile pieces I found interesting. A large fibre-based work by Channing Hansen…..
Photos
8-Manifold, 2017, by Channing Hansen
….and a huge felt piece by Robert Morris
On to the Museum of Contemporary Art, I found this work, “African-American Flag” thought-provoking.
African American Flag, 1990 by David Hammons
As was this huge wool tapestry by Goshka Macuga.
Goshka Macuga Death of Marxism, Women of All Lands Unite, 2013
Visitors to The Broad were encouraged to stand quite close to these giant canvases by Rothko, which positively vibrated with colour.
I thought these could provide a good stepping-off point for wet felting, given how layered the colours are. Though it would take a lot of wool, space and elbow grease to achieve anything like the experience of standing in front of the Rothkos.
I had hoped to find some unspun wool while I was out and about and maybe get in a little recreational felt-making but it wasn’t easy to find.Lots of yarn but no unspun wool.Then, visiting La Purisima Mission in Lompoc, I found some small samples of Navajo Churro wool available in their gift shop, taken from their own flock. There wasn’t much of it & the colours were limited (3 shades of grey) but I bought a little, thinking back to those grey sand dollars.
Navajo Churro wool, carded slivers
I gathered together some very basic equipment and cut out a sand dollar shape from scrap bubble wrap to act as a resist.
I’m always happy to remember that you really don’t need any fancy equipment to make wet felt. Just these bits & pieces, some dish soap, warm water & my beach towel.
Felting tools
Here’s the wool laid out and wetted down ready for felting.
Top
Bottom
And here is the result.
Top
The wool is fairly course and felted well though the floor looked like I owned a very shaggy dog afterwards. There was quite a lot of shedding. The patterns aren’t as distinct as I’d have liked because I couldn’t get quite enough colour differentiation but that’s OK. I might do a little needle felting on it when I get home, or I might just leave it as it is.
I hope you enjoy my trip around California.I certainly am!
I hope you enjoy my trip around California.I certainly am!
F
