Felting and Fiber Studio

It has been a while since I had regular time to felt, because of different reasons. In my mind, that is almost as if my whole artistic life was on hold, because I believe that it is that regular time that nourishes you, it allows you to both go on with what you usually do and also try out new stuff: both of those two things are important, because I want to be better at what I already do, but also to learn new things and explore without pressures. It often happens that a new idea leads to another when you are exploring, and sometimes this leads to great pieces and you advance towards new landscapes.

Unfortunately, as I was saying, I do not seem to be able to carve out a regular time each week for art at the moment, but I still think about it. Sometimes, my thoughts seem to go in circles without the outlet of the actual making: I do not know if this happens to you as well? It is the making that frees me to go on to a different idea, and may open up the circles, so to speak.

This time, I wanted to make something that would visually express the complexity of our thoughts, sometimes revolving around an idea again and again. Sometimes an idea may have to go through that complex mulling about it until some part of it grows and develops enough to bring a solution that kind of springs out of all that thinking.

So, I started with an idea of circle: to be honest a practical consideration also came into it, because I bought a couple of square frames at a bargain price a few years ago, and I wanted to make something that could fit in that square frame. In the end, the finished work is too big for that frame, because I did not measure beforehand, so never mind, but the idea was there.

Anyway, I set up my background a bit unusually for me as a circular shape with three layers of natural white mysterious wool that I got as part of a World of Wool offer on lap waste. It is definitely wool and not synthetic, a bit coarser than Merino, but very easily wet felted (so no core wool or any of the coarser wools for needle felting). (I sure wish that they put a name on the different stuff that is in their lap waste bags, because I am having to puzzle it out if I want to make a good use of it all! oh, well). I liked the fact that I could finally use that and loved the idea of a natural white background to start with.

Fine, up to this moment it was easy, but that was only the background: I had to chose what to do next, ha ha, that was the hard part!

I kept thinking about circular ideas, circular thoughts, thinking in circles, convolutions: I decided to go for a raised effect that could make apparent this movement in circles. I thought about folds, but then I discarded the idea, as I did not have enough time that day and it takes ages to work on felting folds jutting out of a flat surface! I mean, you must have seen quite a few artworks with that kind of well felted folds: the effect is amazing, but how many work hours are we talking about there? A lot of the big and better artworks of that kind are not even made by one person, they are felted by a team! Obviously, I am not in that league at the moment.

Even though I had made not a big background shape, I needed to keep it easier and quicker than folds..or maybe I needed an easier and quicker way to make folds! That is when I thought about using ready-made folds, so to speak: maybe I could skip the part about making the folds if I had strips of prefelt or felt from previous projects to add! Great, and I could lower my ‘in-case’ stash a bit: all those bits and bobs that I keep from other projects because maybe they will come handy in something else, you know.

The only problem was that I wanted to make something that would match well with the natural colour of my circular background, and I could not see in my prefelted anything that would go well with it, apart from a recent left-over prefelt in various greens (from my Christams card exchange!): too many colours, almost nothing in natural white or close. I debated with myself if I wanted to start making some prefelt for this work, but I decided against a two-day effort: I just could not know if I could find enough time to finish it, once I had to leave it incomplete.

Then, I remembered about the decoration on the wetfelted Merino shawl that I made years ago for my daughter’s First Holy Communion: it is one of the first works that I have made, and I had recently took it out and thought about how I had not used much that idea in other works. Basically, you make lightly felted ropes that you then attach to your background base: in that shawl I attached them by needle felting on the wetfelted shawl and used them to make a decorative abstract lotus flower shape. As I planned to make the ropes only lightly felted, I felt quite confident that I could wet felt them to the background instead of needle felting them.

I decided that I would put strips taken from my green left-over pre-felts as accent of colour in the composition, and catching visual point of interest where the eye would be drawn to. The rest should be muted in colour, so as not to distract too much from the green.

I took a big breath before starting to make the cords, as I had made ropes to use as straps and stuff for other projects, so I have a good idea of how much time it takes to make one: I mean, for lightly felted cords not as long as you would put into well felted folds, but still quite a bit!

I also needed more than one muted colour, to have some kind of play, otherwise that would be too flat, even using the 3-D effect, and I am quite out of natural white wools at the moment: I was supposed to replenish my stash but I never got around to do it! But I had the perfect solution right there: I could use the same lap waste mysterious natural white wool of the background, mixing it with some other colour as needed, and it would also felt in that much better being the same as the one on the background.

I used three main neutral coloured additions, plus the basic natural white:

I wanted the ropes to look a bit like brain convolutions, because we are talking about thoughts here, but to also hint to movement and paths. I wanted them to have a rhythm and I tried to give them rhythm both by their colour and by their position and the shape I made with them on the background.

I am afraid that I did not take many more photos while making the ropes, as I realised that I was very late in my schedule and I had to get on with it if I wanted to finish not too late. Anyway, I can tell you that it took me ages, and I was soon scratching my head about why I had thought that could be a quick job! I also found it soooo boring, apart from the short time that I was actually putting the cords in place (that was fun). Making cords is a pretty repetitive task, especially if you have only 4 colour options.

I wanted the circular movement to be resolved and maybe broken by the green strips, in the same way a plant can grow out of a seed or of soil, forced out by all the life of the soil and part of it at the same time. The green parts feel very positive, and they are reaching out from the closed circles to make a movement that is fluid but not circular, or not only circular, extending from the inside towards the outside of the circle, and from in to up.

That thought made me think about plants growing, and our own growing: it felt very fitting at this time in my life and in my family life to be thinking about growing, in relation to myself, to my family and to any individual, and as an abstract concept relating to all life on earth both in a physical and spiritual sense. Here, I found the right title for this finished piece: ‘Growing’.

That gave me the idea for adding a small lime tree seed pod that I had picked and kept for a while in my drawer of bits and bobs: I particularly like that tree, and I felt that it fits very well in this work. It also helped filling the upper white bit with a meaning and a small point of colour.

I used my Makita sander to rub everything horizontally, vertically and diagonally: I thought that it was going to take a lot of time to felt the cords and the strips in, but it was actually quite easy, possibly because I used the same type of wool for the cords as for the background?

Then I rolled the work a few times in all directions, being careful not to be too rough with it: I was very worried about the seed pod, but all went well and it withstood the rinsing as well.

You will maybe notice that there are a few cords not well attached in the right upper part: I will need to needle felt them a bit, to make sure that they stay put, but I have not gone around to do that yet!

As to the green bits that I used, I liked how they felted in. They were left-overs from the Christmas card exchange 2024: I am glad that I prepared more pre felt than I actually needed, you never know. I have a lot more ready to use in other projects.

I hope that you like ‘Growing’ as is, because, though I had thought about making a second work to pair with it, I do not think that I will want to make many more cords, at least not right now!