Felting and Fiber Studio

Christmas card for Antje

January 28, 2025 carleneruns Comments 6 comments

Our group did a Christmas card exchange again this year and I was partnered with Antje. (You can see Antje’s post with the card she made for me here.) My first card attempt turned into a disappointing failure. After casting about for more inspiration I decided to try using some of my handspun to make a card.

I cut out some felt the size of a blank card, and sketched out a design using chalk. Then I decided that would be challenging to sew. So I loaded a larger piece of felt into a frame and started over.

Supplies on the table including yarn, felt, beads, scissors — Gathering my supplies

Next I did a chalk sketch. I outlined the size of my working area and the tree element I wanted on the card.

Chalk sketch of tree and size of card — Chalk sketch of my tree

The handspun I wanted to use was a very pretty singles. It was quite bulky and not really suitable for traditional sewing as it would fray if tried to sew through the felt with it. As a result I used a needle and thread to tack down the handspun at each edge of the tree. (I actually had 2 working needles going, one for each side of the tree.) The handspun was thick and thin which made the tree somewhat textured. I dug around in my stash and found this very crazy gold fizz yarn that I used to make a bold star.

At this point I decided my card was a bit too plain. So I bought some beads and then started playing with laying them on the felt. I took my project to one of our guild socials and got some feedback from the ladies there about what beads to use. Once the beads were selected, I started sewing them on. There are dark beads as shimmery snowflakes and some white snow below the tree. When adding the snow at the base of the tree I purposely changed the direction of the beads instead of doing plain rows.

Next I cut out the panel and made sure it was the correct size for my card.

Ann suggested that I sew the panel onto the card. That way if Antje wanted to repurpose the panel it could be easily removed from the card. (Unlike gluing which would be more permanent and possibly not good for the felt.) I used some clips to hold the panel to the card and sewed it down at each corner. I then decided to add a couple more stitches along the long sides. Sewing the panel to the card was easy to do and the threads don’t show very much on the front of the card against the dark felt. (Thanks Ann for the terrific suggestion.) Success!

My next job was to send the card. Unfortunately Canada Post went on strike and so mailing my card was delayed. I did attempt to send the card via courier. After waiting in a long line I was quoted a price of $117, which is crazy. So the card went back home with me to wait till the strike was over.

I was nervous about sending the card since the beads could be damaged by some of the post machines. So I padded out the envelope with a few hand knit dish cloths and hoped for the best. Antje let me know that my packet finally arrived at her place on December 31st. I am resharing the photo Antje took of the card and dish cloths once they arrived in the UK.

3 My surprise exchange collection from Carlene.

double faced tablet weaving Workshop, January 2025

January 26, 2025 Jan Comments 10 comments

In the very early part of the 1980’s I was able to take a short workshop on tablet weaving. my original goal was to figure out how to make a starting border for a warp-weighted loom. after a bit more research I realized I could make an Icelandic variant of the loom and skip the tablet woven starting border.

In the meantime, I had figured out the basics well enough to teach some of my friends how to set up and weave a band. One of those friends got very inspired by the technique and ran with it, quickly surpassed my level of skill!

Tablet weaving creates a strong band or strap by using cards to manipulate the warp threads. most often the cards have 4 holes one in each corner. Although other shapes and number of holes are available to weave with too.

When I learned to use them, each card was threaded one at a time to create the pattern you wanted to weave. there is a second way to set them up for a particular type of pickup that is much faster.

Today I was lucky to get a spot in the first running of a workshop on double-faced tablet weaving. The description: Learn the basics of double-faced tablet weaving which allows you complete freedom to weave letters or icons on your handwoven bands for leashes, bag handles, bookmarks, luggage tags, etc. In this course you will learn:

(1) how to make a circular warp with your tablets to get you started weaving super fast

(2) how to manipulate tablets to make your designs, and

(3) how to create your own designs on paper or using tablet weaving computer software.

I had watched YouTube and read instructions on speed warping all your tablets at the same time (this does not work for all tablet woven patterns, but when it does it is worth it). Instead of the slow process of threading each card separately, in this case, we used an inkle loom to crate the warping pathway. This particular pick-up pattern requires 2 colours in adjacent holes. Holding the entire pack of cards in one hand and keeping the tension consistent, the warp is wound, dropping one (and only one) card each time you pass the front peg. It would be a bit easier if you had just one more hand but, with a little practice, you can do this on your own. In the workshop, we worked in pairs to wind the warp. It took about 15 minutes to wind 24 cards.

1.1) Holding the tablets in one hand while keeping the tension and winding the warp.

1.2) Dropping a card and continuing to wind the warp

1.3) This type of weaving requires 4 cones of yarn, 2 of each of the 2 colours. the warp is wound directly from the cones, through the tablets then onto the loom

Threading requires one bobbin or spool per hole, so in this picture 2 white spools and 2 black spools, since all are being wound at the same time.

2.1 the threads from the first tablet are tied to the threads from the last tablet

Just like an inkle loom the warp from the first card is tied to the warp from the last card, making a fixed-length warp. The tension bar will allow the tension to be adjusted as the weaving proceeds and the warp shortens.

Once we had the cards and warp wound, it was time to adjust the cards. There are two options or card orientation called S and Z depending on whether the threads are going through the holes front to back or back to front. Looking down on the card one looks like an S shape the other looks like a Z. This is not the easiest for me since the dyslexia makes both look very similar. We were to alternate S/Z/S/Z… once that was accomplished we rotated the cards so one colour was in the 2 holes closest to us and the other colour was in the two holes farther from us.

3.1 organizing the thread direction and colour positions

Now was the tricky part. Tablets can turn in 2 directions to get the colour you want to turn up on the top, either forward (away from you) or backwards (towards you). Depending on the pattern you may be turning some in one direction and some in another. Oh and if you are not yet confused enough, the border cards always turn forward (away from you!!!)

Just to add a bit more confusion, each line of the diagram requires 2 quarter turns with a weft thread at each quarter turn. Now I’m sure that’s is as clear as mud!

We practised having one colour on top and then switched to having the other colour on the top surface.

4) Practice weaving, changing which colour is on top.

Ok, this is very brain-taxing and not quite the same as what I vaguely remember from the mid-1980s. Good thing it’s time for lunch!

We had Haggis in filo pastry, very Yummy! (it was Robbie Burns Day!) and there were 2 birthdays so we also had black forest cake for dessert!

5) the Birthday Girls!

After Lunch she had us try to make a stripe in the background colour, well that didn’t quite go as I expected.

6)the vertical stipe did not quite go as planned. But it was interesting.

I restarted the weaving and prepared to try to weave my first letter. It seemed to have started ok…. but quickly went downhill in a couple of blocks! The lower part of my J did not meet the vertical part….. ok I miss counted the boxes!!! I think my brain is done for the day. I have left my inkle loom at the studio, and hope to work on it again Monday. I actually have a few floor inkle looms, this is just the latest one I have acquired (it’s missing a few pegs but worked well for tablet weaving).

I won’t show you the mess I made of the J but here is a helpful tip, the giant pin holds my tablets from shifting and getting out of order. It lets you stop weaving or move the loom around.

7) The giant pin holds the tables so they won’t turn or get out of order

Each student had a chart with the letters of their name.

So why would a felter possibly like to try this? How about straps for a bag, or purse with your name, or maybe what the bag should be holding?

8.1-8.2) Joslyn’s band went very well! (her J looks like a letter!!!)

This was a fun workshop but I think I need a nap before I try to conquer the letter J a second time. Joslyn did a fabulous job, I will try to emulate her band.

felting techniques class

January 24, 2025 Shepherdessann Comments 12 comments

Sorry For the late post, I thought today was tomorrow.

Last weekend I had four ladies for a techniques class. This is not an advanced class, but it is also not a beginner class. People had to already know how to make felt.

First, we did inclusions. They used a piece of thicker prefelt and elastics to enclose some large glass beads (the kind they are used in the bottom of vases for decoration) and a felt ball. Then laying out a base and top they enclosed some glass beads, a felt ball, a circular resist with a hole and a squashed tasimo pod with a resist over it. Sorry, I forgot to grab the camera until they were at the rubbing stage. Part way through they cut some holes on top of the beads and pod.

When they were laying out I had them cover a pebble with 2 layers in different colours. I had them put a resist on top of the first layer and wrap it with the second colour. They popped them into a piece of nylon stocking to contain it all and make it easier to felt. You can see the first sample on the table in the picture below. They mostly felted the pebbles during lunch while eating and chatting. Once it was mostly done they cut a hole in the top and after healing the cut edge removed the resist and cut a smaller hole to reveal the pebble. Similar to the one below that I made a few years ago.

Next was cracked mud. I had them layout two 10×10 pieces( top and bottom) they added painter’s tape in 2 widths and then added the top

Naturally, because it was a wet felting class, they had to do some rolling.

I had them cut the mud sections at different stages of felting, prefelt, mostly done and done. so they could see how that affects it. I think they could have used more felting before the fulling but we had limited time and had to move on to book resists. I had them make a four-page book resist using half circles. they managed to get it laid out and wet down but then we were out of time so they had to take them home to finish.

3 students sent me pictures of the finished pieces. The first one she manipulated to look like origami.

And this one, She says it needs more fulling but wanted to get me the picture.

The third student got creative and combined her samples into a tea cozy.

All in all a good class. I just wish I could squeeze more techniques in. But no matter how fast you want to be felting takes time.

Nuno felted landscape background with fabrics added for background horizon and tree shapes.

Grove of Trees – Part Two

January 22, 2025 ruthlane Comments 12 comments

I’m working on my grove of trees nuno landscape slowly. I think that some of you may think that this is a “find the difference” in the photos as they look pretty similar. But this is how I work, I add something, take a photo, look at the photo to see if it works, then add something else etc. That means there may be only one small difference from photo to photo, maybe I took something off, maybe I added something.

I had the background “horizon” and the large dark tree on the left when I left off. Now to add more trees. There are three little lines added on. These are the folded edges/hems of the nylon scarves I use to add layers of color. I usually just cut them off and don’t use them but I thought they might work for background trees. I tried maroon, yellow and orange. Not exactly what I wanted.

Then I added a mid tone grey one. I liked that better as it pushed the line further into the distance.

I added more mid tone grey trunks and moved the orange one closer to the “sun”. That looked better.

The I added a few more orange ones keeping them on the right hand side where the light is coming in.

I wanted to use more of the silk organza for a few more bigger trunks in the mid ground to foreground.

And a couple more smaller ones in the same deep red color. I was happy with how it was coming along.

Here I have added a few white “branches” to see what that would look like. I am inspired by Wolf Kahn’s tree paintings and was looking at several that showed white marks to denote branches like in this painting. I would need a lot more of the white lines to give the same effect. I will be pondering on that idea a while yet.

I decided I didn’t want to add too many layers without starting to stitch down the under layers. So I stitched the darker “horizon” background down to the nuno felt. Now I need to stitch the skinny trees down. I still need to figure out the foreground and there will be more layers of fabric on the larger trees. Still a long way to go. But I’m happy with my progress.

A work in progress. Felted collar in Merino wool and mulberry silk.

My last part of 2024: what I have been up to

January 20, 2025 kikistextileart Comments 11 comments

This will be a kind of hold-all post, a jumble bag of works completed and not, none of them good for a full post but maybe all together they can make a good photo of my Autumn 2024.

I will start with an abstract that I had felted earlier on, but that I have completed only this Autumn: this will be a bit of a leit-motif of my Autumn, as I tended to try and finish a few projects started months ago.

I had it there waiting fro inspiration for a while, because I was not happy with it. I asked for suggestion to the fabulous FFS group of friends, and they suggested that I tried my ideas on a transparent paper superimposing it on the felt, to gauge the effect before committing to stitching or changing things. I just had a clear florist plasticky sheet from a bunch of flowers that I had received and I could use it for that: it worked a treat to help me think about additions that I liked.

A rectangular wet felted abstract work by Kiki Peruzzi. Its background is brilliant white and the organic shapes and lines on it are bright yellow, orange, royal blue, grey and black. — Finished! A good sized (70×37 cm or 27,5 x 14,5 inches) wet felted work in bright colours. I used a silk handkerchief for the yellow organic shape in the upper left part, orange locks, white undyed eri silk and bits of blue left-over prefelt with mulberry silk. All the rest is Merino wool.

A hand is holding a wet felted work where there are some straight black stitches and a threaded needle. — Hand-stitching the work without a frame: I do not like using embroidery frames!

Detail of the abstract felt work by Kiki Peruzzi, upper left part, with a yellow organic shape on the left, a bright blue circle on the bottom right, a bright orange shape in the upper center and a bright orange irregular line on the center right. Bright blue diagonal line and black diagonal line in the lower center, and silk white irregular lines marked by black stitching in the lower left and upper right parts. Some lines and a semicircle in black thread on the yellow organic shape. — Details of the stitching in the upper left part of the work. I also used black thread to underline and make the shiny white eri silk pop-out.

Upper left corner of a wet felted work by Kiki Peruzzi. There are organic shapes in yellow and grey on a white background, a light blue and a grey smudgy shapes in the yellow one, black orange and white lines intersect the shapes and space. There are black thread stitches underlining white silk slim rectangles. — Detail of the upper left part of the work.

Details of the right side of the rectangular artwork in felt by Kiki Peruzzi. There is a royal blue circle in the upper central part, close to a small black smudged circle and a small yellow organic shape. There are grey smudges on the left side, an orange lock on the left bottom part, and three white eri silk and black stitches vertical lines in the lower central and right side. There are a small black and white circle between the second and third white vertical lines and a small orange organic shape. — Detail of the right side of the work.

I also felted a few new artworks, sometimes just for the fun of it and trying to use colours and lines/shapes that are unusual to me and make me go out of my comfort zone.

Work in progress of a wet felted artwork by Kiki Peruzzi. There is wool laid out in a rectangular shape on bubble wrap and white towel on a table, and a wooden chair and a vase of red flowers are in the background. — This is the only photo that I have taken of the process for this artwork, as I did not want to bother about social media right then, but I wanted to just make some felt for myself. You can spot the natural red eri silk bag from World of Wool: I love that colour!

Wet felted artwork 'Power' by Kiki Peruzzi on a white wall. It is a rectangle in grey as background, with circular lines in purple, violet, plum and reddish brown and yellow creating a vortex and straight lines in reddish orange eri silk seemingly originating from the center and expanding out of it. — This is the finished result. I called it ‘Power’ because I was thinking about the power that is within us and our creative power, but also about how lack of control/power can make us feel, and I had pretty ambivalent feelings about it all.

I was pretty satisfied with that one, but not as much with this, that also uses unusual colours and silk handkerchiefs:

A wet felted abstract artwork by Kiki Peruzzi on a white wall. Its background is grey. There are lines in different pinks, blue, white rose fiber, purple and a few wisps of black. Light plum silk hankies make semitransparent organic shapes on the lines, in the bottom,and in the central right side of the work. — Merino wool, silk hankies, rose fiber and tussah silk. Well, I do not know, what can I say, it was just for exploring different things, but I did not feel confident enough to go out of my comfort zone that much.

Detail of Kiki Peruzzi's felted artwork. A white rose fiber wisp in the center, among pinks and blues, with a few black accents. — A detail with rose fiber prominent: I find rose fiber very similar to eri silk for shininess and very easy to felt in. It is still too expensive, though.

Detail of Kiki Peruzzi's artwork, with light pink and blue lines on a grey background. — A different detail, with lighter pinks and blues.

Detail of Kiki Peruzzi's felted artwork, with purple pink and purple lines and a pink hankie layered over them. — Another detail with more purple and the silk hankie visible.

For some of the works that I felted in this time, I do not have photos, as I felted them for me and sometimes I do not think that they are finished yet.

I also started working very early on ideas for the FFS Christmas card exchange: I wanted to have plenty of time to think about it. I sketched some ideas with felt tip pens for bright colours and bold lines, looking for making traditional themes a bit more abstract.

I started with a Christmas tree, because it is maybe easier!

A drawing in felt tip pens of an abstract Christmas tree made with rectangular green shapes piled up, circular red shapes as baubles, and a yellow triangle as point. — First design of an abstract Christmas tree. I really liked it.

A drawing of an abstract Christmas tree made with red circles on a background made of lines in different greens. — Second design: mh, maybe all those circles are a bit too chaotic?

A drawing of an abstract Christmas tree made of green horizontal lines, with different colored circles all over it to represent the baubles. The background is grey and light blue horizontal lines. — The third idea: mh, it is more colourful, but definitely more confused. My friend liked the colours, but I was not convinced by it.

In the end, I preferred the first option, with a few adjustments, and set up to make prefelt in different greens, with different fabrics, threads, yarns, and fibers in them, for variety.

I tried out the position of the prefelt strips that I had cut against the drawing.

On white paper with a drawing in felt tip pens there are strips of pre felt in different greens. — Trying out the position of the prefelt rectangles on the drawing.

I also prepared the white Merino prefelt for my card, that I wanted made of two sides. I already had the red prefelt for the baubles, a left-over from another project, that very conveniently had a blue silk side that provided a little bit of shading in the finished stage. I decided to make the tree point with a bit of yellow silk fabric from a scarf, so I could shape it a bit like a star: very traditional.

So, I felted the different bits all together on the white background:

An abstract Christmas tree shape in felt on a white background. — My tree looks good but is lacking for some bling! It is a bit on the right side, because I originally was thinking about writing or hand stitching something on the left side, but then decided against it.

At the same time I got to work on ideas for the second side. It was a bit harder to come up with a simple enough Christmassy idea, but I finally decided on a traditional robin, mainly because I was itching to use some bright orange locks that I really love and can’t find a place to use in.

A felt tip pens drawing on white paper. There is an abstract robin in white, grey, orange and brown on a green branch with leaves. — First design for the robin. Trying to keep it to very basic shapes and lines.

An abstract drawing of a robin on a green branch with felt tip pens. — Second drawing: mh, simplifying the shapes a bit too much now? But I like the red berries and a bit more leaves.

A third drawing of an abstract robin on a green branch with red berries. — Third try: mh, no, I do not like it. Sure, the head is less abstract so you can see the bird more, but no, I do not think so.

It was a bit discouraging, because some of the people that I was consulting on which one was best were not even able to recognize the robin as such, meh! Anyway, I liked the idea of the robin and decided to go on with the actual felting.

On bubble wrap and white towel, there is a white felt background with strips and shapes in felt and wool and fabric to make an abstract robin on a branch. — Composing all the bits on the white prefelt background: I loved the fact that I could use small bits of fabric and prefelt left overs from other projects to make the snow of the background more interesting and for the branch and leaves and berries. I also included a repurposed vegetable net that was compostable on the bottom part. For the robin’s body, I used a scrap of fabric from a scarf, and of course the orange BFL locks that I was dying to use.

A wet felted small work with a white background. There is an abstract robin on a green branch with red berries. — The robin after felting and after adding some stitches for its beak, its eye, the round body shape, and the leaves and branch.

I wanted to give some more bling to it, so I added some stitching with a white shiny DMC thread. On the tree side I stitched some diagonal lines in shiny white over the tree, adding crossed stars as additional decoration at the end of the branches. I also added French knots with the same shiny thread as falling snow on the white background.

I decided that I wanted to make a small pouch of them: one could use it as decoration or something, and I added a small bag of Christmassy pot-pourry in it, so it could be used as aroma diffuser as well, in a sense. So I stitched a pressure button in it and a small red velvet handle to hold it.

A small felt pouch is being held by a hand. The image on it is a stylized robin on a branch. — This is the finished robin side.

A small felt pouch is held by a hand. There is an abstract Christmas tree depicted on it. — The finished tree side with the hand stitching.

Another small project that I tried is to make myself a small decorative collar. I was not totally satisfied by the results.

I used black Merino as background and mulberry silk in bright colours as accents: the silk was actually eaten by the wool much more than what I thought (maybe because I used my sander to speed up the job), so the final effect was less colourful that I wanted.

A work in progress. Black Merino wool and bright wisps of silk in green red and purple on bubble wrap and a white towel. — Before the wetting: all the colours are very bright.

A finished felt collar in black Merino wool and green red and purple silk on a wooden table. — The much muted end result.

I also happened to needle felt some small things, such as this small pumpkin while I was waiting somewhere: you can tell that we were close to Halloween!

A work in progress of a small needle felted orange pumpkin on a small foam mat on a table. — Adding a stalk and finishing touches to my pumpkin.

A needle felted orange pumpkin is resting on a windowsill close to two plant vases. — And here it is finished.

One thing that I am doing is stitching a few things, and I have some more stitching waiting for me when I will be finished with the ones that I am doing at the moment.

I am stitching a bowl that was born as a failed hat (!) and that I am using now as a slow stitching sample: first I stitched the side with the yellowish eri silk using a simple design in synthetic yellow thread found at a charity shop.

This is the felted bowl that I am stitching inside and outside

Side of a felt bowl in blue and with yellowish natural eri silk vertical wisps. — This is the side, with natural off-white eri silk vertical irregular vertical lines.

I seem not to have any photo of the bowl stitched with the yellow thread, so I will just explain it here: at the center there is a circle that is partially doubled. Then, a bit further out from it there are vertical lines starting and going up to the edge: they alternate with the eri silk vertical lines and they do not start all from the same height, but all go up to the edge, where there is a double line going all around. All done with chain stitch and grass stitch.

On the other side of the bowl, the one that is lighter blue at the center, darker blue and then grey towards the edges, I am couching a red cotton yarn with a blue/indigo Anchor stranded thread: the effect is totally mesmerising and a bit unexpected for me. It takes ages, but I am keeping up because I like the result, although it will probably not pair well with the other side of the bowl: they are surely very different!

A blue felted bowl with a red yarn couched on it in a spiral shape — Hypnotising spiral!

I have also felted another very circular artwork, but I will talk about it in my next post.

Well, not too bad considering the fact that I did not have much time during this last part of 2024!

Surgical Interventions on a Nudibranch

January 18, 2025 teriberry Comments 17 comments

It’s hard to believe but I started making this felted mailbox cover nearly 2 years ago. This is what it looked like in March 2023 before I started adding the gills and rhinophores (horns at the front) were added.

I took it to the Fun Felters retreat that March where we collectively stretched it over the commercial mailbox (I had fulled it too far so it took a LOT of pulling and stretching to get onto the box). It took 5 of us, all pulling on a different section to get it all the way on.

Sadly I was too busy fighting the damp nudi to take any photos but I am sure we must have looked sight 🙂

After working and shaping it I wasn’t happy with the rhinophores so I wrapped some garden wire around them and then Mr TB pointed out that they looked a lot like the red flag. Urgh, I hated to admit it but he was right, even with them pointed down they could still be mistaken for a flag by a short-sighted postie 🙁

I already knew some surgery would be needed to make the flag accessible (it was trapped under the felt) so the rhinophores were amputated at the same time – ouch!

After the rhinophores were carefully removed (leaving nasty purple wounds) an incision was made over the flag. I love how you can clearly see the layers of wool and fabric across the cut edge.

The flag was extracted and the wound closed with sutures…

Before massaging to heal the wound and minimise scarring.

Here she is, fully recovered and drying in the Auckland sunshine 🙂 Waiting for a new post to be installed that she can perch on.

No animals, not even humans, were harmed in the making of this mail box 🙂

Cover banner, has 2 moose bags, one is as it comes the other has part of a landscape behind the moose.

January 2025 a review of the Moose bag landscape.

January 16, 2025 Jan Comments 7 comments

January is full of appointment this year. The first of the doctor visits was no fun, but I did get more done on my present moose bag.

You have seen my various moose(’s) in their partly 3-dishness. The project bag I started with is made of the same medium weight canvas for each bag. When I was working just on the moose I used a 14” quilters hoop, (It’s like an embroidery hoop but much stronger). Since I was not working on the whole surface of the bag, the hoop encircled the moose and kept that part of the canvas tot to work on.

1.1) the bag with no embellishments

1.2) two of the previous moose only augmented bags (Glenn’s on Left, Mine on Right)

I could not use the round hoop and have the full working area available while I am working on the background. Instead I selected one of my foam (like a pool noodle) garden kneeling pads. This is what I have been giving my picture felting students to work on. I also remind them to keep the plastic covering on to reduce wool pick up on the work surface. Once the plastic starts to detach, its time to put it in a large Zip-lock bag and possibly start on the other side of the foam pad.

2) Close up of bag with toggle holding the working surface (foam garden kneeling pad and bags of wool behind it)

If you are working on a larger bag or an oddly shaped bag, you might consider the pink ridged foam basement insolation. It is very loud in its ah…., ok it sound like it screams in displeasure at being stabled but this helps anyone who is overenthusiastic about impaling the wool into your backing fabric.

This project also emphasizes the rule of the vector the needle goes in is the same vector the needle comes out or you are buying more needle! no changing your directions from insertion to extraction!

Last rule, which is just an obvious tip. don’t leave needles in the front face of the bag. Inevitably the fabric will shift or you will knock your needle into something and it will again brake.

Its also important to look at the needle you are using, how many and how far up the needle are the barbs paced. This determines the working depth. Particularly with picture felting, you only need to engage the fiber with the barb and move it into your ground, in this case the canvas. So the barb has to move past the canvas but does not need to keep going after that. The extra stabbing distance is unnecessary to embed the fiber and the extra work will fatigue you so you can’t keep having fun. <Pouty face> we want more fun and less work!

In this case I want the wool to be securely attached to the canvas without damaging the canvas. I found the T38-333 (medium barb spacing) needles worked well at not being too fragile, while still small enough to not damage the canvas. Make a test patch on a piece of your ground fabric you may find you don’t like the T-38 and would prefer a T-36? Watch for breaking of the woven fabric you don’t want to weaken your project bag. There are committal needles designed to work on ground fabrics but are not commonly available to us at the moment. Maybe in the future.

3.1) the Doer brand Needle, I have been using to felt the bags.

3.2) I have been storing them in the kneeling pad, but should remove the needles from the aria I am about to work on. you can also see the puncture marks of the needle in the working surface.

This is a project that will help you slow down. Speed stabbing, and deep stabbing will often lead to having to get a new needles. with needles getting more expensive this could be a good incentive to slow down and consider where you are going to stab next. Think of this more like a silver (mettle) point drawing rather than a quick gesture drawing. If you have not tried silver point drawing, you use a mettle stylus on a prepared (gessoed) ground. The line made by the stylist looks like a 2H pencil. When you tip the picture on its side to catch the light, then it has a hint of gold silver or coper to the line, depending on your stylus. It was use to teach drawing in the renaissance, no messy ink spills. Lines cannot be erased,. Misplaced a line and the ground must be redone and you start again. so each line is considered carefully before being adding. It make for a slow carefully considered drawing. Working with canvas is a bit similar, but with needle brakeage rather than having to re-gesso!

The waiting room at the last doctor was not really conducive to having my photo reference out to consider as I worked, so I guessed. I was laying in what I remembered, generally, and will correct with wisps of fiber like transparent water colour washes later. I didn’t take any pictures while working there, since there were no photos signs in other parts of the hospital. Normally I do take photos to check my progress. You often see something in your photo that you didn’t see looking directly at you picture.

4) Moose bag landscape in progress working on trees with light coming through them.

I have been working in the upper right corner of the landscape adding tree in between the bits of light peeking through them. I started by adding the light backgrounds and then have been adding the trees. I still have a lot of the deep shadow to work on. you can see the blank areas.

The size of the project bag allows me to have the working surface (holding extra needles) and multiple bags of fiber I had been using. I have one larger baggie of the green dark to light shades and a sandwich bag of yellow/peach shades and tints.

5.1) Various bits of green blends in one large baggie, and a smaller baggie of blends of yellows, to peaches.

5.2) I am mainly working from these two bags, but have the base colours in bags underneath them, in case I need to make more.

The majority of the fiber is coridale, but there is some unknown wool, and I am sure a bit of white was blue faced leister.

I get a lot of curiosity about what the inside of the bag looks like with the wool attached. If the short fuzziness bothers you, or you are afraid it will catch on things in the bag, I would suggest a cotton or if you want something more posh, maybe silk would be the lining for you? I think I will likely leave it and see how it wares.

6) The inside of the needle felted bag, still in progress.

I still have to do a bit more felting on the front. It is not a flat as I would like. I was given the suggestion of gently wash it mild soap and adjitasion. I am leery to try that in case I shrink the bag and ripple the image.

My next doctor visit is chatting with an anestatist, I think I may be his first patent for the day, so I may not get to do much felting there. I will bring it just in case, it will reduce my stress levels I hope. If I don’t finish it before the 31^st I will work on it during my recovery.

Have fun and keep felting, wet, dry, or damp!

Nuno felt scarf class

January 14, 2025 Shepherdessann Comments 16 comments

Hi all, although I haven’t been doing much felting myself I have been teaching others to do it. I ran my Nunofelt scarf class again this last weekend. I had five lovely ladies at the Ottawa Valley Weavers’ and Spinners’ Guild classroom.

The first part of the class is talking about all the fibres. Students are amazed at all the kinds of silk. I usually bring hankies, tops, throwsters waste and recycled sari silk along will wool BFL locks and sparkly nylon. They get to pick their hand dyed scarf blanks and then spend at least 15 min trying to decide what embellishments they want to use. It’s lots of fun watching and helping with colour and texture choices.

Silk hankies

Silk Tops

Dyed Silk Throwsster’s waste

sari waste

Sparkly nylon

It is so hard to pick.

Then it is on to lay out the wool. Once this starts I put the silk blanks away so no one is tempted to change their mind halfway through the layout. I keep all the wool and embellishments out until they wet everything.

Everyone enjoys using the ball browser sprayers to get everything wet.

In this group, they all stayed together during the different stages of felting. Often they become staggered; someone wants to be first done and another will be very relaxed and go slower. In the end, they always finish and it’s interesting to see the different styles of learning and doing the same thing.

I didn’t get any pictures of the gently squishing and tossing to full but here they are finished.

nuno scarf

nuo scarf

nuno scarf

nuno scarf group

All in all a great class with happy students.

The only odd thing that happened was one lady had brought her own wool, marked merino and she was sure it wasn’t superwash. She added my embellishments. One of her colours did not stick to the scarf anywhere. My first thought was it was superwash. However, it did seem to felt and grab the silk embellishments on top of it. Nowhere she had used the copper coloured wool stuck to the silk backing. It was attached by other colours surrounding it so it’s all one piece but I have no idea what was/is going on with the wool, any ideas?

Nuno felt background with distant "shrubbery" and added tree trunk on left with silk organza.

Grove of Trees Nuno Felt Landscape Part 1

January 12, 2025 ruthlane Comments 26 comments

It’s the new year so it seems appropriate that I am starting a new “grove of trees” nuno felt landscape. I am trying to be a bit more abstract so I thought I would start with strips of silk instead of one piece of silk and see what happened.

I had a lovely dyed piece of silk in my stash from my friend Paula. So I tore it into strips and laid it out horizontally. I wanted to emphasize the lighter area at the top as sky.

I laid out some short fiber merino batts with more yellow at the top.

Then I put my strips in place, ready to felt.

Here is the felted result. The ends of the strips didn’t felt in well although the middle portions felted fine. I worked on the ends as much as the middle so I’m not sure of the difference. Oh well. Then I started trying to ‘see’ my landscape. I didn’t take photos but laid some fabrics on top to get started. I didn’t like it. I trimmed the visible wool edges and started looking from different directions.

After reorienting the piece, I “found” my landscape. This direction gave a feel of trees in the background and the sun shining from the right. This was much more exciting to me. Here comes that vertical landscape again.

Here’s a piece of sheer nylon scarf (dark blue) over the bottom portion to show the horizon. Yes, this should work.

I cut and frayed four pieces of the nylon scarf to give a feeling of ground in the tree grove. I will work more on the foreground as I get there. But I need to get some trees defined.

I used the strip of nuno felted fabric on the left as a guide and placed blue violet silk organza into a tree shape. I have loads more to do as I want to put a lot of applique texture and hand stitching into this piece. But I have the idea going which sometimes is the hardest part. What are you working on in the new year? We would love to see, submit a photo of your work here.

A Felted Winter Trees Table Centre

January 10, 2025 rosiepink Comments 30 comments

Annie (rosiepink)

I made this felted snowy winter trees table centre as my idea for the Q4 challenge which was to create a textile item inspired by the work of Eric Ravilious. It is approx 60cm / 24″ across.

This turned out to be a double challenge for me as I chose his woodcut work for my inspiration, with a monochrome palette, and as you may know, I usually love love love to use lots of colours.

I just really liked the subject and the way he stylised it. The over sized snow flakes really appealed to me!

I had started off thinking I was going to make a bowl but once I’d felted it I decided I liked it as it was for now. I may well change that later though. I did make the centre thicker when laying out the base as I thought it might need the reinforcement if stitched into a bowl due to its size.

The base is made from white Merino wool tops (laid out over a wire ring for wreath making to attempt a decent circle shape!)

Then for the majority of the trees I used some very fragile t-shirt material that I’m really pleased didn’t disintegrate since I couldn’t be bothered to make a sample this time. I also used some other reclaimed fabrics from other garments and some yarns.

I found it hard to keep the design simple and took it apart a few times after over complicating it (and adding then removing colour!) but got there in the end. I’m surprised how much I like it as I would not normally have made something in one colour (it’s all shades of blue but does look black in places in the photos).

I noticed I made the branches a bit short since it was more pattern based to make the circle, but in reality they would have been longer and overlapped a bit but I like the way it turned out, and might even go on to make a picture in the same way.

Felting and Fiber Studio

An International Collective of Felt and Fiber Artists

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