Felting and Fiber Studio

Stash-It! in Kempville On, Canada, 2025

September 25, 2025 Jan Comments 13 comments

From August into early September we had 3 local fiber festivals to help top up our felting and other fiber needs. You just saw Twist, the large fiber festival in Quebec, but it is now leaning more heavily towards knitters. I had no luck with long 12-14 inch locks this year, maybe I just missed them, it was very busy on Friday!

Poster of Stash-It sheep in a cloth bag with head sticking out cute image.

1.1) Poster for Stash-It!

The next one after Twist is a much smaller festival in Kempville, “Stash-It Fibre And Textile Event”! Don’t let the smaller size detour you. There was a good selection from fiber to finished goods and multiple groups demoing diverse fiber arts, including knitting, weaving, spinning and Needle felting. yes I did a bit more shopping and I picked up another full Shetland fleece and a few part fleeces.

2.11 ) I think I may need to get a bigger walker or one with an attached cart for shopping. Now I have to take everything off so I can sit down!

the first section of the big “White” fleece in the plastic bag, has just come out of the soap wash and will be going back in to soak, probably multiple times….. What was that ram doing? Was he rolling in the mud and dust daily? As you can see, the inside cut end of the fleece is glorious, if only I can get it clean. He is a lovely (Creamy?) Shetland and I hope the weather holds long enough to get him washed. (Tonight we had the first call for frost, and we have put tarps and sheets over the herbs and pulled under the overhang the hanging baskets.) I am still washing in ambient outdoor temperature water, so I have lengthened the soap soak to make up for the lack of heat from the sun, who is not working as hard as it was just weeks ago.

clear plastic bag holding about half of a shetland ram fleece, which is vary dirty. the bag is sitting on a wire drying rack

4 strainer baskets full of less dirty fleece sitting inside the stock tank soaking in water

close up of fleece in stainer baskets soaking in water

Sunlight dish soap saved for washing fleeces in yelow plastic bottle with sunlight lable on it. sitting beside the RV hand washer spin dryer.

2.12-2.14) I have about half the fleece in the strainer buckets and this is what remains. The water is a lot cleaner than the soap soak it came out of! I am using sunlight dish soap I can’t seem to find this anymore, so what I have left is saved for fleeces.

I have already washed the little paper bags of part fleeces and they are all draped over one of my Ikea fleece drying racks. (Ikea should add that use to their description!) They were all relatively clean and only took one soap soak and a single rinse soak to be ready for the spin dryer. The brown is, as listed, a bit short in staple length, but very soft, and will make a lovely bat to spin or felt from. I will have to find time to use the drum carder at the guild. it has a finer cloth than my drum carders have.

2.21- Shetland – 2.22 – Icelandic – 2.23 Gotland/Fin

2.3 one of my hanging baskets this year, Fussia

Oh no, today I was going to tell you about the Needle Monika of The Olive Sparrow had. Drat, I got distracted by that dirty ram and now feel like I will leave you dyeing of suspense if I don’t give you a quick tour of the event and a link to the list of vendors. (https://stash-itfibreevent.ca/)

Ok a quick travelogue (I promise not as long as Twist and there will be felting!!)

Early Saturday August 23rd 2025 Glenn and I headed south of Ottawa to Kempville. When we got there we realized i had forgotten the camera (I thought Glenn had grabbed it, he thought I had) he left me waiting first in line and drove back to Ottawa to get it. He stopped to get Cookies from Ann on the way back. So, a very exciting morning, and I have less photos to inflict upon you!

Lets have a quick roll around the event.

3.1) the event fills a gym, and has Equipment, yarn, project bags, knitted items, fiber and demos.

3.21-3.22) Judy Kavanagh’s Spindles and bandweaving loom, she also had the cool mitten pattern (if only I could knit and follow a pattern)

3.3) Alpaca tracks thread lightly silk hankies hand died

3.4) Wind Weft, Mohair and Mohair/wool blends

3.5)Luna (wood turning and weaving)

3.61-3.62)Janet Whittam handwoven cloths, blankets and baskets

3.7) Karberry Farm hand dyed combed top and fiber (its where the dirty ram came from she always has lovely Shetland fleeces)

3.8) Croocked fence farm

Occasionally I spot something I think one of my friends or family may truly like. This time it was the exquisitely fine needle work making this thimble into a necklace. I think I was told it was 24 count(?) cloth, with single strand floss. It required an illuminated magnifying glass to do the embroidery. Did you see the subtle shifts of blue from one square to the next? The recipient makes teddy bears, all hand sewn so I was sure she would enjoy and appreciate the delicate work.

4.1) Charm N Stitches, Butterfly embroidery in incredibly fine detail (those are miniature pins in the thimble)

4.2) Top of the whorl

4.3) Les Moutons de Richard, they are new vendors and had batts as well as spun and hand died yarn.

4.4) Originals by Lynne, Knitwear

4.51-4.53) Yvieknits Yarns

4.61 – 4.62) Cactus Yarn Studio

4.7) Les Belles Bouchlettes, Mohair yarn For knitting and weaving as well as combed top.

Demos:

Demos were along one end of the gym. I was looking at the display from the Kingston guild when I got distracted by the demo table at the end of the row, so i wandered over there next.

5.1) Kingston weaving and spinners guild had a nice display of weaving

The Kingston guild will be having their sale Nov. 6^th-9^th(www.khws.ca), the weekend after the Ottawa Guilds sale Nov 1-2^nd 2025 (www.ovwsg.com/sale/). (in case you are somewhere near eastern Ontario and would like to drop by!)

I promised there was felting in this blog!!

This demo was by Farmer Brown’s of Spencerville. Shannon and I had a lovely chat. (well, I was having a lovely time, I hope she was too!) This was her first demo and she did fabulously. She was making play mats using wet and dry felting. We chatted about needles and felting with naps and sneaky way to persuade them to stay stuck.

6.16.2 6.3-6.4) Farmer Brown’s Felted play mats.

I was so pleased when I found out Shannon has been reading the Felting and fiber studio and has been enjoying my odd distraction about needles and their origins. I did warn her there were a couple more chats about needles coming up soon.

As has become a tradition with fiber festivals, we should check in with the husbandly viewpoint of how the event went. Was this fiber-festival up to Glenn reading and napping standards?

7.1-7.2) I would say that was a yes.

Were you curious to see what followed me home? I took my purchases into the guild so I could spread them out and get a good shot of them for you. I seem to be on a fiber acquisition theme this festival I have defiantly increased my stash!

8.1 8.2 8.3) jan’s shopping

I am not sure how I got distracted into another Fiberfestival travelogue, when I was sure I was going to chat about felting needles but I promise I will get back to the felting needles soon. I have got my hands on a needle I didn’t think I would be able to find. Monika from The Olive Sparrow was able to get her hands on some and I am looking forward to chatting about them in the near future. I also have the post mostly finished about odd comments from over the summer again about needle, I am not sure which will appear first.

I hope you have had fun virtually shopping again and have found local fiber venders to top up your own fiber supply in preparation for winter. Have fun and keep felting!!

Felted Flower Workshop

September 23, 2025 Shepherdessann Comments 12 comments

You may remember I did a post about dyeing silk hankies for a workshop at Pinhey’s Point. https://wp.me/p1WEqk-j91 Sunday was the class.

I was set up in what was originally the dining room of the house. It was a bit tight with 10 people around 2 tables,

But everyone did fine. Everyone kept thier elbows down and we had a great time.

First, we did a petunia/morning glory. More in general shape than reality. This is a nice, simple flower for people who have never felted anything before. Not a great picture, but it was the only one I could find that I had uploaded before. I used to be terrible at naming my pictures. I am much better now. Makes it much easier to find what you’re looking for.

Once everyone had their flower done, we had a break. The museum provided a great snack table for our break. We all felt very spoiled.

Then we moved on to the silk hanky flower. I explained about what they were and how they were made, and everyone had to pick a colour. It was so hard to choose.

They learned how to make the stems and the stamens for a more complete flower. Here they are doing the dry rolling to compact it before wetting.

Then it got busy, and I was running around the tables helping people. It is always tricky getting the stem and stamen centred on opposite sides. But everyone managed. The biggest problem was with stems not sticking. We had 3 with stems totally detached and one partial detachment. I think it was a combination of felting the base of the stem too hard at first and pulling it away when moving the stem to a different position to rub the flower. All but one had felting needles at home with instructions on reattaching the stem after it’s dry. I gave a needle to the last person and explained how to use it to fix the small area that was not attached properly.

No more pictures until the end. All in all, a great day. Everyone seemed happy, and there are definitely some new addicts in the making.

I have no idea what the white spot is. It is on the original in my phone.

Ann

Altered Books – A Glimpse Inside

September 21, 2025 ruthlane Comments 6 comments

In my last post, I showed you how we finished up the binding on our altered books. I didn’t manage to get photos of Louise’s book as she was still working on adding to her inner pages. Sorry, Louise. Here are the inside photos of the rest of the books.

This first book is Paula’s and this is the back cover. This is her bird’s nest; part of her theme was birds. She had picked several words to base her pages on when she was creating the book.

Here’s a page inside Paula’s book with a painting of a magpie.

Paula has a bunch of antique photos that she used throughout the book. She also has some wonderful antique papers which you will see in all of our books as she is so generous.

These are some of the mini landscapes that Paula painted.

And another of Paula’s photos with stitched leaves.

Now on to Sally’s book. This is her cover and Sally is planning on adding to her inside pages but hasn’t completed that yet.

Here’s Sally’s end paper on the left. Perhaps you can see the dark brown fabric where she stitched her signatures? The first page is from some old music sheets that Paula gave us.

Sally has a mix of different kind of papers in her signatures just waiting for her addition of eco printed paper and fabric.

Altered book with handmade paper including raw fibers and stained paper.

Altered book with music sheet and stained paper.

Here are a couple of other examples of the type of paper that Sally used in her book signatures.

This is the inside cover of my book. I didn’t want to take out this lovely map from the original end papers. So I left it the way it was. I then glued my end paper to cover where the signature had been glued in on the back side of the right page shown here. The map is what is stopping me from putting holes in the front cover to stitch some embroidery.

Here is the end paper on the left that covers the glued binding. This piece of paper was screen printed with the deconstructed screening technique. It was my original inspiration for the color scheme for the book. You will have seen the fabric on the right if you read my prior post about how we printed the “backwards” writing.

Here’s another one of my pages. The addition of extra paper in the signatures splits up some of the page spreads that I made but to me it adds some interest. I am thinking about adding some poems and quotes about trees on some of the blank pages.

This page spread in my book shows the back side of one of the book pages that I didn’t change and an old ledger paper from Paula. If you didn’t see all my page spreads that I created for this book, you can see them here and here. Most of them made the cut for the final book layout.

I really enjoyed creating this book and I’m looking forward to the project that we will work on in the coming year with my art group. We don’t have a plan as of yet but I’m sure we will come up with something!

Open Studios event insights

September 19, 2025 kikistextileart Comments 9 comments

Hello everybody!

I have recently participated in a big Open Studios event and Art Trail in my area, and, since it was my first one ever as a stall holder/participant artist, I learned a lot from it and I would like to share my experience with you.

Just a short introduction about the event itself: it is the BEAT (Borough of Ealing Art Trail), an event in its 9th edition and growing more each year. It started as a smaller affair involving only a few artists opening their own studios and homes in one day during a September weekend, but today it is both of the first two weekends of September (4 days in total) and involving 66 different venues and about 200+ artists and crafters that live and/or work in the Borough: it is such an amazing celebration of the creativity of all the diverse people living in our area! In past years I loved to go around and explore some of the venues that were closest to me, and this year I was very excited to be part of it.

Some of the studios and houses are quite frankly something to drown yourself in pure envy and you may get offered high class refreshments (champagne and what not!), but there are quite a few ordinary homes and more common types of enticements (maybe a cookie for the kids if you are lucky?). A lot of the creative people also form groups or are already part of one, and band together to rent a space in public venues like church halls, our local theatre, local libraries or community centres, in an Art and Craft Fair kind of spirit that is embraced by us locals with gusto. Demonstrations may happen, and most people just go around it for the fun and vibe of it, and to say hello to friends and acquaintances taking part.

The whole thing runs with the moral support of the local Council, but through the actual work of a small group of volunteers who are also artists themselves, so all the stall holders need to arrange their own venue and get limited practical support, basically getting a packet of advertising prints and booklets, and a few reusable posters and balloons to use as signs (Plus of course the advertising benefits all of the artists involved, because it is done in the whole Borough).

This year the organisers also managed to set up a lovely charity exhibition running on the side, to raise funds for a homelessness charity, Crisis: we were asked to donate a small artwork 20×20 cm on the theme ‘Home’ that they could sell for a fixed price of 50£, completely given to charity. Check it here: I think it will run for a few more days online to see if they can sell a few more of the 70+ artworks that were donated by us artists, in different mediums.

Here is my piece, donated for this charity exhibition and sale:

The small artwork is on a square white canvas. the artwork a wet felted irregular square in light blue, grey, violet and some hints of green. On the background a lace yarn in the same colors winds itself into a maze like shape, and at the center of the piece there is a small basic house shape outlined in stitching in blue-grey yarn that helds in place a white fraying piece of silk fabric. — My piece about ‘Home’.

Sadly, it has not been sold yet. (veiled hint, isn’t it?)

First of all, I need to say that I was not on my own, but I choose to participate with my local art group, the Ealing Art Group, for a few reasons: one was to have support from fellow stall holders, because it was my first time, and to get a venue to use together, as I do not have a studio or space in my small flat, that is also not easily accessible for people with mobility issues. Secondarily, to cut costs, as you can share the participation fee and also the cost of renting the venue: this means that you do not have an individual entry in the advertising booklet, just one with your group, but still you will have your individual name in the list of participating artists, good enough for me for starters.

I was quite happy with how this decision of participating with my group instead of alone has come out: yes, sure, I had to find different ways to put my business name out there, but the support and connection that I got from participating with others were what really made a difference to me, and I will be very glad to do it again with the group next year, instead of looking at ways to do it by myself.

Here is how my little corner was looking after set up on the first day:

A corner in an ancient brick outhouse. In it there is a small table and behind it a white kitchen counter. On them there are various small framed artworks and craft things by Kiki Peruzzi — My lot was supposed to be only a small table, but, because I went there early on set up day and helped with the set up, I could get me the place in front of the kitchen counter, and use the counter as additional display space!

Our venue was a listed outhouse building attached to an ancient mansion , Boston Manor House, in one of the parks in our area, very good for footfall if the weather stays nice and people can go around to walk dogs and kiddies! As the building is listed, we were not allowed to put up nails or alter the building walls in any way: I had been told that already by the person in our group who was taking care of organising the venue for us, so I went there prepared with frame holders and small frames that already had their table stand. Plus, talking with some other artist from our group at a previous exhibition, I understood that smaller (and cheaper) items were going to be a better fit for this event than the bigger artworks that I had had in mind to bring, and a selection of craft items in different ranges of prices would be also quite good for this: thus, I decided to bring a variety of smaller things along with one bigger work, and I think that it worked fine for this.

We were 10 from our group, in 2 rooms that were close but not conjoined: 6 in our room and 4 in the other, sharing a small courtyard. My fellow stall holders were all working with different mediums and each one of us has a completely different style: I am the only felter and I was also the only one working in textiles among the 10 exhibiting together (there is another artist who is a weaver in our art group, but she was exhibiting in another venue by herself). That meant that we had very different target audience, so we worked very well all together to cater to different tastes.

Here is a video showing our room and our different styles:

We also decided that we needed to make our venue and ourselves more visible by setting up some tables outside and doing demos on a rolling rota, so that the person outside could invite people to come on in and have a look. Having different mediums was very useful for that, so as to engage different people and send them our collective way. Plus, sketching and felting can withstand different weather conditions: and I can tell you that in London this is a good point, as the weather was very voluble for 3 out of the 4 days, so we had to rush in and out depending on wind and rain presence!

Here is me trying to produce an Instagram friendly video of my second day demo on wet felting, with my daughter’s help:

It was super challenging to wet felt outside, as all the days were particularly windy, so the fiber was flying and I periodically had to run after 100gr bags of wool rolling off the table! I was keeping the bags on the table to attract people by showing bold bright colours, and on the second day I also brought some felted things that I was not selling but just to show what you could do by wet felting, as plenty of people were asking about it the first day. (also, we were not allowed to sell anything outside our venue, so I could only sell the stuff that was inside the building) I partially solved the flying away issue by weighing down all the wool bags and felted objects with stones picked up from the park, and by frequently sprinkling water on the fibers that I was working with in the demo, and getting to the soaping phase as soon as possible!

I must have made an impression for my determined effort, though, because I sold the first little bowl that I wet felted for the demo before it was totally dry, so I can not show it to you (no photos, I am afraid!), but this is my second day produce, in Merino wool with silk rods and eri silk fiber embellishments:

There is a small green bowl on a light brown wooden table. the bowl has embellishments all around in vertical irregular bands, in rust eri silk, natural white eri silk and silk pod rods. — I liked how it came, though some of the visitors were suggesting different combinations of colours!

On the second weekend, I decided to demonstrate needle felting, instead, as it was still very windy and there was a rain forecast for the afternoon, so I needed something where I could control my flying fiber better and pack it up quickly if needed. I decided on a simple Christmas bauble with a core wool inner part, in red merino wool with a sprinkle of Angelina fiber and spiral of violet merino. I think that it came out fine, considering that I was constantly distracted (stabbed myself quite badly at one point, because I was calling out at a potential visitor to encourage him to go in and not paying attention at my hands):

On a blurred background with a wooden table and many small things, there is a hand holding up a red and violet felt Christmas bauble by its violet gauze lace. — Starting early for Christmas!

I noticed and encouraged interest from small kids: I would talk to them, waive bright red wool, entice them to touch it and give a wisp of wool or silk fiber for them to take home, asking them how it felt and if it was soft as a pet’s fur or shiny and smooth. I noticed that more adults were interested when I had my wet felting set up out than with the needle felting: I wonder if it was just random or if it is something about the needle felting that is less appealing or more intimidating. Maybe you also can share your experiences on that.

I think that taking a few small amounts of wool and fiber to this kind of event is very useful (note to self), as people are asking you a lot of curious questions about what you are using to make felt: I heard mentions to yarn, fabric and there were all sorts of puzzled blank stares when I was saying wool fiber and silk fiber, until I would take out a WoW bag and give them a small amount of wool to hold and touch..then more confused questions about how you go from there to that bowl. I mean, that was a proper effort in spreading the word about felting as I could. I am pretty convinced felters would do well to bring wool to show at their events, as most people are far from clear on what wool looks like before becoming yarn and what you can do with it.

Having a group to back me up also meant that I could try to focus on my demos and the persons in front of me, in the sure knowledge that if anyone wanted to buy from my little stall inside someone would come and fetch me, as I would do for them. While plying my wares inside, I knew that someone outside was doing their best to send people our way, so that we all could sell more. We would also pass on favourable comments from visitors and encourage each other during the lulls.

And, of course, chat about our medium, art, families, life and so on. I got to know my fellow group mates a bit more, in a way that just is not possible when you are stewarding for one or two hours maximum at a more sedate exhibition: I had also the chance to see some of them in action working with their chosen medium, and it was very stimulating both learning some of their techniques and explaining them some of mines!

Another good thing coming from sharing a venue with members of your same group was that I had my kids with me (long story) and I was worried about them getting bored, but my fellow stall holders managed to entice my kids into helping with the setting up, putting up balloons and they generally kept them entertained while not playing at the park playground. My daughter also got to try out watercolour painting techniques with one of the watercolour painters, so it is like as if she had a short art course activity for free! My kids were practically begging me to take them to the exhibition again, until we had a spot of heavy rain and their running around was restricted for a while and the place was, to be honest, a bit damp and coldish, so they had to cool down for a bit inside. That was on the afternoon of the last day, and we packed up early because of that (not many people going out and about in a park under heavy rain, not even in London, although we spotted some brave or silly souls still trying to play tennis in the courts…they probably had paid a bucket for the booking? who knows), so all in all it was a success also for my kids.

I managed to sell enough to get back my fee costs, and a bit more, and I felt that it was pretty encouraging as a first time stall holder. I also distributed more than one hundred of my new bookmarks: I had them printed to advertise my business with something different from a business card, and many said that it was a very clever idea and all were very keen to accept them. I guess that I am not the only one having several different books on hold with bookmarks on their bedside table!

Here it is what they look like, front and back:

There are two bookmarks placed horizontally one close to the other. On the first there is a detail image of a wet felted artwork by K Peruzzi in yellow, white and blue. On the other bookmark there are another image of a different artwork by K Peruzzi, written details on how to find other works by her, and a QR code to visit her website — People liked them: one always need a FREE bookmark!

I have had some new accesses to my website straight afterwards, so I guess that they are working in advertising it.

Here are my fellow art trail mates from my room on the last day (missing Bijan who was home with a cold the second weekend):

A group of 5 people is posing together in a room with tables showing their artworks. There is a wooden slanting roof in the background and brick walls — Tired and happy just before packing up. From left to right: me, Peter Filbey, Nava Letchimanan @nava_ml_art , Zara Salazar @zsartillustrations , and Susie Mawani. Missing here Bijan.

Hoping to do it again, maybe with different group members or the same, next year!

If you happen to be close to us in West London, also come and see us of the Ealing Art Group in October at Open Ealing in Dicken’s Yard.

I hope you enjoyed my post, and please leave your comment on your own experiences with this kind of events and being a stall holder.

http://www.kikistextileart.com

Instagram

kiki.textile.art

Eleanor Shadow with someone who had more colourful hair than she did

I did two yarn festivals in a month

September 17, 2025 Leonor Comments 8 comments

Are you familiar with that feeling of agreeing to do something far away in time because you’re sure Future You will deal with it with grace and organisation? Since you’re sure Future You is much better at things than Present You, it’ll be a breeze when time comes. No? Just me?

As you can tell, I fell into this trap. I had already said yes to doing The Scottish Yarn Festival at the end of August, and when an invitation showed up in my inbox for Summer School mid-August, I thought, “easy breezy, I’ll be prepping for one show already, what’s the problem with another?” Famous last words.
(By the way, I wasn’t the only one flying by the seat of my pants, the Summer School roster doesn’t even include me in the website!)

For those who don’t know me, I am an indie dyer of yarns and fibres going by Eleanor Shadow. I run everything on my own, from admin to web design, to aaaall the hand dyeing of gorgeous fluff for the pleasure of the spinner and knitter. I do love what I do, but it’s hard work.

Top view of a hand dyed sock blank in rainbow colours, with sprinkles — An example of a rainbow I love to create, but that comes in multiple steps and takes longer than I ever remember

The passion I have for hand dyeing often makes me underestimate how much work something is; pair that with a neurospicy brain and there might be trouble!

The months of July and August were spent in a frenzy of planning, dyeing, sewing and art-batting (I know, not a word, but it represents the nervous energy spent at the drum carder extremely well). I never had enough time.

Multiple rainbow yarns drying on a rack, with a cheeky hand spun rainbow yarn in the middle — Rainbow hand dyeing and hand spinning drying. Behind the camera there’s one seriously dishevelled human trying her best to Do All The Things.

Top view of yarn in a dye bath, this is Apocalyptic Tweed in the sprinkles phase — Adding sprinkles to my colourway Apocalyptic Tweed

The end results, however, were wonderful. I had the most stock I ever had for any show, and consequently sold the most I ever had in a month.

Another fun thing about yarn festivals is meeting lots of different people. I was out-coloured by a lovely yarn-loving truck driver! Behold.

Close-up of a glorious rainbow dyed short hair that took 4h to create

I didn’t have much time to peruse other people’s stalls, but I was sorely tempted by this prize-winning black fleece by BeautifulFleece.

A glimpse of BeautifulFleece's stall, with a luscious black fleece on display with the winner ribbon on top — Look how shiny those locks look! That prize ribbon gives me grabby-hands feels.

Finally, click here if you’d like to watch a video of my stall (which I’m not uploading directly here because it would be a chunky file!)

All in all, it was a blur of activity and also fun, and I wish I’d taken more photos… neurospicy brain, remember? I’m just glad I got all the yarn dyed and could put two sentences together during the events.

Tell me all about your own festival experiences, whether as a seller or buyer. Got suggestions? Leave them in the comments section, I’d love to know. Thanks for reading!

TWIST 2025, PART 3 NEW BOOTHS OF INTERESTS

September 15, 2025 Jan Comments 5 comments

PART 3 Twist 2025 new booths of interests

Part 1 (https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2025/08/24/twist-2025-part-1-new-booths-of-interests/)

Part 2 (https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2025/09/05/twist-2025-part-2-new-booths-of-interests/)

14.1) hat and mitts on table

As we left off last week, I had just come to a screeching halt in front of the most exquisite pair of mitts. Then left you at the cliff hanger of what else was in this booth, and its adjacent neighbour.

14.2) the booth with the fabulous mitts was Cercle d’envol

I stopped to chat and find out about the mitts and found out this was a program to mentor indigenous youth into fashion design and other programs. They had a box of yellow squares of fabric and lots of colours of sharpie pens. I was asked to draw something that the students would sew together, making a wall hangings. Hummmmmm…… something Canadian would be good. I have been felting a lot of partly 3-D moose, why not try and draw one. I haven’t sat down and drawn anything in ages…. but my latest phone screen saver is a picture of one of the felted moose bags, I can use that for reference.

14.3) drawing on squares to be use to make quilt hangings.

14.4 – 14.5) moose seem to be a theme lately

This is what I came up with, I should have kept going with this drawing, added water and pond plants hanging out his mouth but I didn’t want Glenn to get too bored or get too much of a nap (he might start snoring!).

I had a very nice chat with the gentleman at the booth. He was talking about blending native knowledge with non-indigenous knowledge. I asked if that was like what had happened with the very old missing arctic explorers ship problem, that had been lost until someone asked the local Inuit if they knew anything about it and they knew where it was.(no one had thot to ask them earlier?)

I have been curious about the arctic for quite a while. It probably started with snow bank tunneling and the frustration we did not have the correct snow to make igloos. We used oral history as we learned the safety rules about snow tunneling, from the older kids and told the ones younger as they started to play in the snow banks. (I also made snow dinosaurs with the other local kids, i was already a bad influence). At university, I was excited to find out that we had kimberlite pipes (they make diamonds) in the arctic and a beach made of garnets. Then I found out about the wonders of Muskox fur (well the undercoat, Qiviut). There are also Norse / Dorset archeological sites to further investigate in northern Quebec and Baffin. I was very lucky to visit Iqaluit, briefly, while my brother was working there. I would love to go back with a much better camera than I had then. Maybe I can get a good shot of arctic cotton! (the tricky little plants kept moving in and out of my focal depth!!)

Sorry I got distracted back to the booths.

The description of this group from Twist was; “Cercle d’envol is a pan-Canadian organization based in Plaisance that empowers Indigenous youth by increasing access to career and entrepreneurship opportunities. With nearly 25 skill-building labs focused on fashion and sewing, we are training a new generation of creators. We are supported by globally recognized brands, including Janome.”

The next booth was quite different from all the fiber related booths.

15.1-15.2) Kidjīmāninān booth looked like a log cabin!

Twists information said that Kidjīmāninān is “Led by the Kitigan Zibi Anishinàbeg community, Kidjīmāninān brings together the MRC, citizens, community groups, and researchers to restore and protect biodiversity in the Outaouais region. Inspired by the Algonquin term meaning “our canoe,” we move forward together, sharing knowledge and respect for the Earth to create lasting impact.”

I again stopped and he was talking about biodiversity and endangered spices. I told him of my absolute joy and amazement while hunting by hand from the family row boat, I employed the standard cray fish hunting technique (distract with one hand while the other come in from behind to grab the crayfish) on mysterious bubbles coming up through the muddy silt. I was pretty sure I knew where the turtles nose was, directly below the bubbles, but the rest of the body could be in any direction under the mud from there. I guessed correctly and lifted up a soft shelled mud turtle the size of a luncheon plate! I gently put it in the bottom of the boat and rowed quickly back to the dock, (staying safely about 6 feet from the shore line). Unfortunately, Mom was not amused or impressed when I showed her my most amazing catch and told me to “take it out side now! it is an outside creature”. I released it and it swam back to its swampy bay.

The gentleman at the booth, asked if I could identify the lower part of a leg on the counter in front of him. I admired it, then told him I hoped it was a moose. He seemed surprised and pleased. He said it was an adolescent moose leg.

15.3) leg to be identified (adolescent moose) and cool pin (landscape with a canou and 3 little circles representing heads in it).

He said he was getting signatures for a petition to protect biodiversity in the Outaouais region. We both signed it. Other kids should have the opportunity to experience catching (and releasing), many kinds of frogs, turtles, snakes and other local wildlife. We have seen a decline of plants and wild life since I was a child at the family cottage. I hope his petition will help. As we were about to leave he gave me a bag with the logo from the pin on it. There were a few goodies inside. I thanked him profusely! (and will show you at the end)

There will be an online petition coming soon to their website, but if you are interested in finding out more about this group, check here: https://kidjimaninan.com/en/ .

15.4) Kidjimaninan bag and pin

There are still spots we have not yet visited so let’s leave the gym and head past the group demos in the hallway and go look outside. (I know it’s very hot today so we will not linger too long outside and try to stay in the shade)

Outside:

16.1) the full map of the event we are at the back of the building at the top of the map.

The fist tent just right of the building doors was the kids tent (some of those kids looked quite tall and older than I had expected, but they are having fun). From the left; rare breads tent, vender tent, tent for ball winding, the talks and demonstration tent, Beer tent, and food tent. There is also a misting station (its water misting so I’m going to avoid it, but if you are feeling hot you may want to check that out too.

16.2) kids tent

16.3) just barley in view to the far left is the rare breeds tent, the large tent on the Left/middle held more vendors, the smaller tent to the right had swifts and ball winders. Off camera further to the right were three more tents. The smaller two had lectures or demonstrations and the other small tent sold beer. The large tent, held the food vendors. Off camera behind me are the kid’s activity tent and the scary misting station.

Let’s take a look at the guest sheep that was visiting at the rare breeds tent fist. You have seen this booth in previous years. They are interested in more than just sheep but they know who we want to see today! The sheep even in this heat wave was in shade, had water and seemed to de demonstrating the thermal insulation properties of wool. She seemed quite mellow and relaxed. (I wonder if she tried the mister?)

17.1) Heritage livestock Canada had a friendly sheep!

17.2) sheep in the heat! She was in the shade and seemed very relaxed.

17.3) She did seem to enjoy all the attention

18.1) On to the vendor tent!

I know it’s getting late and your feet may be getting tired, so let’s just look at a couple of the venders in the large tent and then we can think about a very late lunch.

There was a vendor with felt but this time the felt was sewn to create her sculptures. They were very cute

18.2) Felt figures

18.3) dragon sewn felt

Did you see the Ferme Tajga booth? They had yarn, sheep skins, batts, and raw fiber. I was too tempted and bought a bit of the raw Icelandic. It was in the mettle tub on her table.

18.4)Ferme Taiga booth

18.5) Ferme Taiga booth close up of some of the very nice fiber

The sheep was not the only gest fiber producer at Twist. There were these two bunnies. The little bunny kept shifting form curious to shy.

18.6) Angora production team

18.7) Big Blue Mama’s booth had more fabulous baskets

18.8) there was a lot of knitting yarn at twist, this time it was alpaca blends

18.9) there was also yarn meant for weaving, and in this booth, there was yarn meant for crochet

Glenn spotted this package and bought one to try. It was freeze-dried hole strawberries, coated in chocolate. If you spot a package you may want to try it too. It was extremely tasty.

19.1) a treat of Chocolate coated strawberry’s (we will have to look for these closer to home!)

Just to prove that Sunday was just as relaxing as Friday was.

19.2) Proof that Fiber festivals are the perfect spot for husbands to nap.

Yes I was a horrible wife and woke him, so he could carry the last of my purchases to the car. Since it will be a year until we return next, we took the opportunity to again head to our favorite comfy duck sandwich purveyor.

I hope you have enjoyed Twist, even though there was a lot of yarn, and very little long locks, there was some fiber, and new booths that were educational and interesting. If you are driving between Montreal and Ottawa and are passing St Andray du Avalon, you may want to take a brake and see if there are any Comfy ducks sandwiches available for lunch…. I will be thinking about that sandwich until the next trip to Twist.

19.3) duck, bacon, apple, celery, onion, mayo and apricot-raisin bread, salad with raspberry dressing and fries with mayo dipping sauce! Twice in one year!!!

Oh did you want to see what I purchased?

We can compare and see if you picked the same things!

20.1) Glenn gave me the twist bag which the Mer-Boy-Friend seems to have taken over. I was given a gift of green curly locks, and purchased the linen tea towel.

20.2) I seem to have a theme of mostly Felt and fiber this year.

20.3) the Kidjimaninan bag had wonderful things inside it; Butterfly seed bombs, Kayo-Tea, Maple Syrup, playing cards, cloth bag and enamel pin

20.4) Horticultural felt 100% wool

20.5) silk hankies

20.6) top row tags (L to R);Top row: Solstice 2023(Grey; Cormo/Angora/Merino/Poleworth/Lama/ Tussah silk), Masham (green red black), Masham (green red black), Cheviot (White aqua and cream). Bottom row: Shropshire (Greay gold), Exmoor Horn (Brown Blue), Faroese (Blues), Masham (Greens orange), Eclipse (Greys), Cheviot (White aqua and cream).

20.7)Urso wool batts, golden tones and cream tones

20.8) 2 braids Cheviot/Peridale

20.9) Raw Icelandic fiber

Thank you for joining me, it was a very big show! I hope you had fun virtual shopping if you were unable to attend in person. The dates of next year, August 7-8-9 2026, are already on their website. if you are going to be in the area there may be a comfy duck sandwich calling your name too! Have fun and keep felting!

This and That.

September 13, 2025 Shepherdessann Comments 15 comments

It is almost Fall. You can feel it in the air, and a few trees are starting to change. Usually, we like to hang on to summer as long as possible, but I am happy the dry, searing heat of this summer is finally gone. Yes, I am touching some wood as I say that. It’s been a busy 2 weeks with school starting and the market picking up. Suddenly, we were out of meat pies, and I had to get baking. That doesn’t leave much time to felt. I did manage to get to the Almont Fibre Festival to help with the demonstration.

I put all my sheep key chains together

I am wondering about putting some wax or something on their ears to make them a little flatter and protect them. My thread wax is too hard. I wondered about some of the solid lip balms. It’s mostly wax. I think that might be too soft. I’m not sure what to do. I don’t want to use glue because it will make them too hard, or the PVA (school) glue can take up water and get tacky. Any suggestions?

I am packaging them so they stay neat. I had to get bigger bags for them. The ones that came with the card were not big enough. I have a shrink wrap machine that has a hot wire cutter, so I will cut the bags down so they fit properly.

While searching for some lost samples, the book resist thing I did about 10 years ago surfaced. The idea I had was to weave the ropes into a basket. But not thinking it through, I made 6 lobes and strings. You need an uneven number for the weaving to work. I took it to a social, thinking I had a good idea of a way to weave it. It didn’t work. Partly, it was not cooperative and partly (mostly?) I was impatient. Anyway, everybody had fun looking at it and playing with it. The general consensus was that it wants to be a jellyfish. So, I need to create some long, wavy, ribbony pieces, and possibly some long curls for the middle to hang down inside the long tentacles. I wonder if it will take me another 10 years. LOL

We would love to hear from you. If you would like to leave a comment, the comment button is at the top of this post, just below the title.

Stack of signatures with holes made for binding.

Annual Art Retreat 2025

September 11, 2025 ruthlane Comments 13 comments

My local art group had our annual retreat and enjoyed a wonderful weekend. One of our members that had moved to Wisconsin over three years ago came this year so it made the retreat extra special. Mainly, we worked on our altered book journals.

Luckily, we have a beautiful place to go each year, the Kiwanis Lodge at Little Bitterroot Lake in Marion, Montana.

We had gorgeous weather this year and it wasn’t smoky yet. The following week was really smoky from wildfires in the northwest US and Canada.

We worked on our altered books and Paula (left) showed us how to do a traditional book binding. There were a lot of steps and I had never done a book binding like this. It wasn’t particularly difficult, just a bit fiddly. For anyone who is an expert at this process, please ignore the fact that I don’t know all the correct terms for each of the processes/parts of the binding.

Book cover beside beginning of binding for signatures.

Working on marking signatures for book binding.

Making holes in binding readying for stitching signatures.

We used the cover of our books and took all the “guts” out. We had to make signatures to fit the size of the book out of the pages that we had already made. You mark the signatures and put holes to stitch through. You also need a piece of fabric with a marked piece of cardstock matching the signature holes. The cardstock is glued to the fabric with PVA glue.

Signatures and supplies for book binding.

Card stock glued to fabric with holes measured and punched for book binding.

This is my book, the photo on the left is that stack of five signatures (groups of pages) that have their holes punched. The middle photo shows the signatures and the top header thingee (forgotten the name but it’s at the top left of the signature pile) and my tools. The right photo shows my marked cardstock glued to the fabric where the signatures will be attached.

I got so involved with the process that I forgot to take photos of all the steps. This is Paula’s book after she has her signatures stitched in place and one side is glued down to the cover. The striped pieces are her headers.

Here’s a photo of Louise’s book in progress.

Smoothing down fabric applied as end paper

Once you have the signatures glued down to the covers, you need to use “end papers” to cover the inside of the book cover. Paula used different pieces of fabric and then used a portrait she had drawn/painted as the end cover on the front inside cover.

Here’s Paula’s front cover after she got it all together. I am not sure if she is adding more to the cover or not.

This is Sally’s book, she hasn’t glued down the cover piece yet but thinks she will be using various eco printed pieces to fill her book. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo of Louise’s book as she was still working on the inner pages.

And here’s my book. I was thinking about doing some surface embroidery on the leaves and pine cones but I would have to put holes through the cover. This would detract from my inside end paper. So I haven’t quite decided yet. Because this post would be a bit long, I will show you the insides of the books on my next post. It was really satisfying to get this book put together after working on various aspects of it for a year.

And my annual sunset photo.

Nuno Felt in Art Work

September 9, 2025 rosiepink Comments 20 comments

Nuno felt is often associated with wearables such as scarves, vests, hats etc., but if you like to make wet-felted pictures, then do consider what nuno can add – fabric can make detailing in a picture so much easier and can add interest and texture.

In a nutshell, nuno felting is the combination of fine wool fibres (we usually use merino as it seems to work well) gently felted together with open-weave fabric. Patience is necessary when felting to allow time for the wool fibres to migrate through the open weave fabric. If you’ve never tried nuno felting before, it’s quite simple and there are many free tutorials on the internet.

Before you commit to using a fabric, it can save time and frustration by making a sample so that you can see if the fabric is suitable. Shown below is a sample layout, pre-felting, and underneath shows how the fabrics look post- felting.

In the pineapple picture below you can see how fabrics, cut into rough squares, were applied to a background of pink, mauve and yellow merino wool fibres.

The colourful effect would have been difficult to achieve with wool fibres alone especially where the thin fabrics overlap and show through.

Shown below is the layout, then underneath is the felted picture.

The small section shown below is part of a large cityscape (currently unframed and pinned to a wall as the blue thumb-tack shows 😊). All the buildings were formed from open-weave fabric. For added interest a little paint was applied to the fabric in places.

In the next example, strings of bunting were needed to fly in the sky on the background of a wet-felted picture.

The shapes could have been cut from pre-felt, but using fabric was quicker and the effect of the multi-coloured fabric worked well.

Bunting shapes were cut from very loose-weave fabric then placed on top of merino wool fibres that had already been wetted and soaped down – in this case it was easier to accurately place the fabric on a wet rather than on a dry layout.

The wool fibres and fabric were very slowly felted together until they formed one piece.

This apple has ‘painterly marks’ formed by scraps of open-weave fabric.

The jug in the picture of flowers below, was made with open-weave fabric for pattern, solidness / weight and texture.

This is a small section of a woodland picture. Open-weave fabric was used for tree trunks as the fabric adds texture and interest and the white adds light for dappled sunlight.

As well as using bits of fabric, a picture can be constructed using all nuno felt. The final two examples show two different methods.

Full details of how ‘the pigeon and rubber duck in a birdbath’ picture was constructed are in this blog post:

https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2022/05/30/second-quarter-challenge-the-bird-bath/

Full details of how the ‘early bird’ picture was constructed are in this blog post:

https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2018/04/17/guest-blog-post-the-bird-and-his-breakfast/

We hope that this post will show how easy and how very effective the application of nuno felt can be in wet-felted art work!

Playing with prefelt

September 7, 2025 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 16 comments

In May this year, I wrote about about a vessel I’d made for an exhibition called ‘Edge’. Although this hadn’t been the intention, the vessel gave me a sort of Japanese minimalism vibe, which was something I wanted to revisit.

The vessel fit the Edge brief in that I’d used a circular resist to create the shape but rather than cut the hole in the centre of the circle, I’d stood it on one edge, with the hole on the opposite edge. I like this shape and want to explore it further.

The fibre I’d used was something I also want to come back to. A beautiful fine carded merino and silk mix from World of Wool, it was time-consuming to lay out because of the short staple-length, but produced a lovely, light and velvety soft felt.

Before leaping into making something with so many variables of shape, surface design and fibre, I knew I needed to make some samples and decided to think first about the surface design.

I have no real knowledge of Japanese minimalist art and am not trying to replicate it, just play around with some of the simplicity of design and colours as inspiration. I love problem-solving (or perhaps that’s problem-investigating) so was setting myself a bit of a challenge.

I’ve seen various images of beautiful Japanese brush work using black ink brush strokes and red circles on a white background and I wondered if I could create something like that in felt. The biggest challenge seemed to be how to wet felt black, red and white together while keeping the colours separate. Prefelt seemed to be one way to go so I made three different black prefelts to see which might look like black ink brush strokes.

Using commercial black merino prefelt, I cut a strip and felted it a little. I didn’t think this would work well as it’s the cut ends that move most into the surrounding fibres and this strip is basically all cut edges. Next, I tried lightly prefelting two other types of black merino wool: carded and tops, as if I was starting to make felt rope.

The tops and carded wool produced very similar-looking results and I confess, when I got to the making bit, I lost track of which was which. The advantage of these was that the fibres are mainly running along the length of the line rather than sticking out of the sides so there should be less migration into the white. I decided I’d use these rather than the commercial prefelt strip.

I then turned my attention to red circles. I suspect carded wool might be best but I only have tops in red so that was what I used. First, I just tried making a circle freehand. I got about 2/3 of a circle and a raggedy bit. On the plus side, there weren’t cut edges, so that should help minimise side-to-side fibre migration. On the minus side, the shape left a lot to be desired! Needs further work.

Next, I made some red prefelt and cut a couple of circles out of it. I thought this would work less well but I was interested to see how they compared with the freehand idea.

I was aiming for a very simple design, so played around arranging black strands and red circles in different combinations.

Now to actually make a sample.

I used a rectangle of white silk and merino commercial prefelt for speed, and felted it together with three black strips and a red circle to see what happened.

As you can see, the black didn’t migrate much on the long sides, though it did where I’d cut the shorter pieces (on the ends on the left side). The lines did, however, crimp and move a bit – maybe I need to prefelt these a bit less on the length and definitely more on any cut ends. Also, I must keep a better check on any movement as I felt.

The red, on the other hand, probably needed prefelting more as there was quite a lot of migration there. Basically, far too many loose cut ends, so either felt the edges harder or go back to a different layout.

At this point, I wonder why the heck I’m doing this: the layout looks so much better than the felted piece. Nevertheless, I decide to make a quick second sample before I finish for the day.

This time I used the freehand red circle with the raggedy edge. Somewhere in the dusty corners of my brain, I’d started to think about using resists to reveal the colours rather than just laying them on the surface. I hadn’t actually developed this thought but just plonked a resist on top of the red felt and laid a second layer of the white over the whole of the piece. I had some vague thoughts about the red incomplete circle looking a bit like a setting sun so placed it near the bottom and thought I could perhaps print some flying bird silhouettes on the upper part afterwards.

OK, I’m sort of freewheeling by this stage.

The useful learning from my experiments thus far was that the freehand circle (which has fibres running around the circumference of the circle, therefore avoiding lots of ends sticking out) works much better. You can see this very clearly from the under side. The cut ends clearly also migrate much more up and down as well as side to side. The freehand shape was probably also felted a bit harder than the red prefelt sheet.

Sample 1 underside: lots of migration round the edges

For my final two test pieces, I lightly needle-felted some red circles then wet-felted the edges to make them as neat as possible. I went back to using the original white carded 70:30 merino:silk mix and decided to concentrate on getting the red circle right. I laid out two layers of fibre at right-angles to each other and put a needle felted circle top right.

The needle-felted circle felted in well and when it was dry I printed a tree onto it. It’s a bit big but I’m going to make this into a birthday card for my Mum.

For my final test piece I continued with the carded merino & silk batt. I laid four layers of fibre round a circular resist and added one needle-felted red circle on each side.

As with my earlier Edge vessel, I cut it on one of the edges (rather than in the centre of the circle) and designed it to sit on the opposite edge.

Part-way through fulling, I worried that one of the red circles hadn’t felted in very well so did a little judicious needle felting around its edges before finishing the vessel.

This is a lot smaller than my original ‘edge’ vessel and much sturdier.

Conclusions?

The needle-felted and freehand wet-felted circles work better than cutting the circles from prefelt. I like the effect though could maybe make the need-felted circles a bit thinner: they do look as if they’re partially sitting on top of the surface. I’m happy that I’ve more or less cracked that bit of my challenge. As for the black lines, I’m leaving them for now but may come back to them at a later stage. The carded merino / silk batt was lovely to work with and I will definitely be making more things using this fibre. I might make a series of vessels using different colours and / or numbers of circles. I may also develop combining a circle and a printed tree. As usual, each experiment opens up lots of new possibilities. So much felt to make and too little time…..

Felting and Fiber Studio

An International Collective of Felt and Fiber Artists

Stash-It! in Kempville On, Canada, 2025

September 25, 2025 Jan Comments 13 comments

Like this:

Felted Flower Workshop

September 23, 2025 Shepherdessann Comments 12 comments

Like this:

Altered Books – A Glimpse Inside

September 21, 2025 ruthlane Comments 6 comments

Like this:

Open Studios event insights

September 19, 2025 kikistextileart Comments 9 comments

Like this:

I did two yarn festivals in a month

September 17, 2025 Leonor Comments 8 comments

Like this:

TWIST 2025, PART 3 NEW BOOTHS OF INTERESTS

September 15, 2025 Jan Comments 5 comments

Like this:

This and That.

September 13, 2025 Shepherdessann Comments 15 comments

Like this:

Annual Art Retreat 2025

September 11, 2025 ruthlane Comments 13 comments

Like this:

Nuno Felt in Art Work

September 9, 2025 rosiepink Comments 20 comments

Like this:

Playing with prefelt

September 7, 2025 Lindsay Wilkinson Artwork Comments 16 comments

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: