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.
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.
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.Hand-stitching the work without a frame: I do not like using embroidery frames!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.Detail of the upper left part of the work.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.
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!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:
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.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.A different detail, with lighter pinks and blues.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!
First design of an abstract Christmas tree. I really liked it.Second design: mh, maybe all those circles are a bit too chaotic?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.
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:
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.
First design for the robin. Trying to keep it to very basic shapes and lines.Second drawing: mh, simplifying the shapes a bit too much now? But I like the red berries and a bit more leaves.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.
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.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.
This is the finished robin side.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.
Before the wetting: all the colours are very bright.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!
Adding a stalk and finishing touches to my pumpkin.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
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!
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!
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 🙁
Nudibranch mail box pre-surgery
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 🙂
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 31st I will work on it during my recovery.
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.
rubbing
rubbing
rolling
rolling
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
nuno scarf group
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?
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.
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.
Around mid-November I was rummaging in a chest of drawers trying to create space for visitors to store their clothes, while also thinking about making some felt Christmas cards to sell at various events. I came across a scarf I’d felted more than 10 years ago and never done anything with.
Scarf I made more than 10 years agoView of scarf from the other end
‘Hmmm…..’ I thought. ‘This is taking up space and I’ll never wear it.’
Why not? Firstly, I can’t wear wool next to my skin. I find it way too prickly/itchy. And secondly, I didn’t like how it had felted. You could almost see the little thought bubble appear above my head: “I wonder if I could make some Christmas cards out of this?”
The scarf didn’t fit the bill for a traditional Christmassy look, but that’s one of the things that appealed to me about it.
Let’s first go back to the scarf-making, in April / March 2014. No, I’m not an exceptional record-keeper, I just have a lot of photos on my phone and happily they’re all automatically dated.
I started off with a bright orange silk scarf I’d found in a charity shop. It was what I think of as raw silk: soft and loosely woven. I wasn’t even sure it would felt well but, foolish as I was in those days, it didn’t occur to me to make a sample, I just ploughed on optimistically.
I decided to add shapes in bright rainbow colours so made a big sheet of multi-coloured merino wool light prefelt, broadly following the colours of the rainbow.
Light ‘rainbow’ prefelt
I cut circular shapes out of it and laid them along the scarf, still following the rainbow sequence. I laid orange merino round the edges and set about felting it.
Original scarf layout
When it was finished, I wasn’t very pleased with it. The silk was unstructured and flimsy and it seemed to hang wrongly. I don’t think that type of raw silk works well as a base for felting, certainly not on its own. I didn’t take a photo of it.
I left it for a while and came back to it about a year later. I thought maybe felting a solid wool layer on the reverse might improve the hang and structure. I felted 2 layers of white merino onto the back. Now it was firmer but a bit too stiff and still didn’t hang well, but in a different way. I just wasn’t happy with it.
That’s the point at which I gave up on it and popped it into a drawer. Since then it’s been shunted around but I’ve never decided what to do with it…..until now.
On to the card making. I decided simple triangular tree shapes might be nice for festive cards so I made myself a little tree template and set about the scarf with my rotary cutter.
Cutting up the scarf to make triangle tree shapes
For the first few cards I refelted all the cut edges of each triangle. This was nice, but took quite a long time both to do and to dry, so I decided to go with raw edges: it didn’t make a lot of difference to the appearance and it certainly speeded up the making. I cut out some different card and paper backgrounds, glued them onto cards, stuck the trees to the backgrounds and drew a stem and decorative dot on top of each tree. Mostly I used acrylic pens but where I didn’t have a suitable colour I used other permanent markers. Here’s the first batch.
Some of the triangles were a little plain and, as I had my acrylic pens out, I decided to do a bit of doodling. I admit, I was rather enjoying myself by this stage. Perhaps I got a bit carried away (some of the trees started to look like pizza slices)!
I grouped the trees into threes, choosing ones that had three different colours on them wherever possible. I found some bright pre-cut papers and chose the nearest colours to the trees in each group. Then I swapped them around so that each tree was on a background that matched one of the others in its group. I finished off by swapping the colours again for the dots and stems.
Here’s a close up. The trees have green, purple and turquoise on them. I picked out the matching papers, put the lime green tree on the purple paper, the turquoise tree on the green paper and purple tree on the turquoise paper. Then I finished off with the dot and stem in the third colour that wasn’t on the tree or background paper.
It’s hard to describe just how much I was enjoying myself, though some of that may be because I was almost certainly supposed to be doing something boring like cleaning or tidying up.
I did sell some of the cards and sent a few too. They’re not the best cards I’ve ever made but I did enjoy making them and was happy to have repurposed a scarf that didn’t really work. I still have plenty of felt scarf left so I may do something else with it in the future.
A little later, I made some other cards that I liked better and that sold really well.
In my charity shop moochings I recently found a really beautiful, large hand-marbled silk scarf. It was way more expensive than anything I normally buy. I’m normally in the £2 – £4 range for a silk scarf and this was £8.50. However, it really was big and interesting and I was intrigued as to how well it would felt. So, I splashed the cash. The marbled dyes sit on the surface of the fabric so I wondered how well the wool fibres would penetrate the silk. Age and experience do have their advantages: this time I made a small sample to make sure it felted well, which it did.
I cut out a long rectangle of merino and silk prefelt and laid a section of the scarf full length along it, flush with the edge of one long side and covering half of the width. Sorry, I forgot to take a photo so I here’s a quick sketch, literally on the back of an envelope.
Once it was felted and dry, I cut it into thin strips ready for printing. I’d found a royalty-free image of a plain green fir tree and, using photoshop elements, dotted it with robins to look like baubles. I printed the images on heat transfer paper, then, using my heat press, printed a tree on some of the strips. I stuck the strips to long cards and this was the result. Not as much fun to make as the other cards but I do like the result better.
8 ‘Robins’ cards above and a close up of one of them, below
On the remaining strips, I printed an image of a friend’s cat, to which I’d added (in photoshop) a Santa hat. I had six felt strips for the cat but one didn’t print properly which left me with five. I thought I’d better save one to send to the cat owner and was going to offer the other four for sale but my cat-owning friend decided he’d like to send the cards, so bought all four. There are lots of cat and dog lovers around so maybe I’ll make some of those next year. What do you think?
Four ‘Layla’ cards above and a close up below
While I was on a roll, I repeated the process using an animal print scarf and a blue patterned scarf to make some cards that are not season-specific. People do seem to like this type of design and quite a few say they or the recipients will cut them out to make a bookmark or just put the card in a frame. The horse chestnut is from a painting my Mum did, the honesty was composed from some photos I’d taken, the ferns were from a royalty-free image I found online and the birds are all from photos of my previous large felt pictures.
I know I’ve said it more than once before but I do love a bit of fabric re-purposing, whether second-hand or from a failed project.
As 2024 slips into memories, and the hopes of a better new year abound, I reflected on what I was working on last year so I may make plans for this one. A few of my plans for early 2024 were rearranged, with an unexpected hospital trip followed by lots of rehab. So I was left with an army of chickadee armatures, and a rearranged workshop I still should sit down and tell you about.
1) Chickadee armature in progress
During Glenn’s time in the hospital, I worked on Moose project bags. They wound up being a great distraction and carried all the fibre I needed in the bag too!
2) Glenn’s and my moose bags
Next was the tapestry project of the back of the parliament buildings. I had square 16, which also travelled well to the continuing doctors’ visits.
3.1) Under drawing underway for the back of parliamentary library square #16
3.2) My finished square, ready to be assembled with the other squares.
I also created a chickadee picture with a limited pallet. This is a very well-fed winter chickadee!
4) 2-D Winter Chickadee I made while Glenn did rehab.
Next was off to one of the 2 local gaming conventions, this time at a curling club downtown. I worked on another 3-D chickadee and then moved on to a 3-D moose head.
5.1-5.2) Chickadee on felting mat wings poisoned to be attached. Finished Chickadee with Bat on a stick supervising library work at the guild studio.
5.3) starting to finalise the moose head noose shape.
I had come to the conclusion that I wanted to know more of the new Guild members but was having a terrible time with remembering names. So I started a series of Name tags in the hope of inspiring others to consider making their own too. I started with a train themed one for Glenn, which he could use at the guild or while he was gaming. I even wove a kumihimo lanyard for him.
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6.1-6.3) Glenn’s Name tag, adding a kumihimo lanyard, Trying it out at a guild social.
I was inspired by a photo of one of our guild members Summer holidays, so promptly felted her! I started on a name tag base but the size got away from me and it was a bit big for a name tag!
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7.1-7.3) Vicarious Vacation enjoyment! It was a much better picture than a name tag.
About this time, Ann mentioned she had misplaced the name tag she had made for herself. So I made her a new one, not mentioning I was making it for her, I kept asking her design questions. She even donated a bit of her handspun so I could add a name.
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8.1-8.3) Ann’s New name tag. She did find her old one as soon as I made this.
Ann asked me to join her in a project for the exhibition at the guild sale. She needed a dragon hand. With some consultation, I think I made a hand she was pleased with.
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9.1-9.2) The requested Dragon hand. Dragons obviously like sheep!
The second exhibition was at the Textile Museum in Almonte. I had been asked if the Mer’s might be available to participate. So I got busy finishing all but Miss Mer, who is still hiding somewhere in the house. She is going to be so disappointed she missed all the fun. Mrs. Mer got her red spots and hair. Shark Boy finally got his mohawk, and Mr. Mer got his pike spots! Miss Manta and Sharkette were both already complete. I hope they didn’t cause too much havoc at the Museum!
10.1) the Mer’s at the Textile Museum in Almonte
10.2) Mr Mer trying to get someone to play tennis with him, and Mrs Mer still admiring her hair.
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10.3-10.7) Most of the Mers and pets
I returned to the Moose bag theme, but this time I was working on the background and not the moose ground as it were.
11) Moose landscape in progress
My last project started in 2024 was my card exchange with Leonor, a Solstice Raven. I hope it has found a good spot in her felt collection. It must have used its wings to help move the package since it escaped just before the postal strike, and was particularly quick crossing the ocean! I really was planning for a smaller picture but kept getting distracted by creating the background!
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12.1-12.2) Solstice raven in progress and completed
Looking back on 2024, I have created a mix of both 2-ishD and 3-D projects. I can see I am avoiding getting wet. I am still having trouble keeping picture felting flat!!
For 2025 I hope to continue with name tags, another moose themed bag and find and finish Miss Mer….. I know you are good a hiding but I will find you!!!! I hope that maybe I can take my own vacation photos and felt them too.
Unfortunately, it’s my turn for Doctors’ appointments in January. Hopefully, they will not be too bad or as long as Glenn’s. Maybe I can do some felting as I recover! Better order more Wool!!!
I know you’re thinking, fish for Christmas? Don’t you raise turkeys? Why are you having fish? Well, we did have turkey and the traditional fixings. In this case, the fish was a present. When I asked my husband what he wanted for Christmas, he said fish.
In the last few years, he has taken to cooking, particularly new things. I appreciate this so much. I have been cooking dinner since I was 15, and I just do not want to do it any more. Anyway, his idea was he does not know how to cook fish and would like to figure it out. He thought if he got them as a present he would get on with doing that. My thinking was, if I buy fish before Christmas, it will be in the fridge too long before he has a chance to cook it, what to do? I could just make a card, I owe you some fish fillets of your choice. How boring is that?
A couple of days before Christmas I decided to make him a fish.
I drew an image of a fish and traced it onto some fulled wool from an old wool coat.
Then fixed the nose. I didn’t want to needle that close to the edge. Having done that before I know it can distort things.
Then onto the felting. I did well with following the lines not remembering until after that the easy way to do it is to lay the wool across the line, felt the line and then fold it over to the correct side.
Fish Head
Tail
I decided the front was a bit plain. I thought of adding gull lines but I didn’t want them to show on the skeliton side. Instead, I made a fin separately and added it, completely forgetting to take a picture. You can see the line from it in the first picture below. It was covered by a piece of the skeleton. I didn’t want the bone lines to show on the front so I used “invisible” thread to sew the skeleton down. the felt Snakes are from scraps. when I cut open a reaist I always roll the cut of bit into a snake and then store them in a bag for later use. Then I carefully cut it out of the background.
And this is the finished fish.
He was thrilled with the fish. He loves hand/homemade gifts. So next week we will go pick out some fish.
This is my first post of 2025 so I will wish you all a Happy New Year! I hope you have a happy and healthy year.
1.1) the bag with no embellishments
1.2) two of the previous moose only augmented bags (Glenn’s on Left, Mine on Right)
2) Close up of bag with toggle holding the working surface (foam garden kneeling pad and bags of wool behind it)
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.
4) Moose bag landscape in progress working on trees with light coming through them.
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.
6) The inside of the needle felted bag, still in progress.
1) Chickadee armature in progress
2) Glenn’s and my moose bags
3.1) Under drawing underway for the back of parliamentary library square #16
3.2) My finished square, ready to be assembled with the other squares.
4) 2-D Winter Chickadee I made while Glenn did rehab.
5.3) starting to finalise the moose head noose shape.
10.1) the Mer’s at the Textile Museum in Almonte
11) Moose landscape in progress
