Felting and Fiber Studio

I swapped with Ruth today. She will be posting in a couple of days.

I was supposed to have a workshop a few weeks ago and Mother nature interfered. We had freezing rain and lots of Ice so we had to cancel. We have rescheduled Felted Vessel on a Ball to January. We hope that will work out. But I have a feeling that Omecon will delay it again. Two steps forward and one back. I suppose we will get there eventually.

This is the sample pot I made for the class. It has lots of different things going on just to show how different things look. Everyone will create a small flat sample to do some practice cutting.

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It looks much cooler with a light in it.

 

 

 

Meanwhile, I have an online zoom study group starting on Jan 12 and that should go ahead, Covid or not. It’s a wet felt breed sampling study group and it should be lots of fun. It runs every 2 weeks until March. If you’re interested there are still a few places left. The times listed are for North American eastern standard time. I think the time makes it the late morning the next day in Australia.

 

 

Hopefully, by spring I will have a new studio space. I started boxing things and moving things into storage space. Why do you have to make a bigger mess to sort things out in an orderly fashion? Don’t get me wrong, I am a naturally messy person and it wasn’t neat before. But this was bad even for me.  I had been shoving and piling to make room for baking this summer. And things that do not belong there had also been added. We had already removed several boxes from the right side at this point.

We are making progress and I have thrown out a few things and sold a polt of silk I won’t use so that was good. We are making progress. The green chair below and the stuff on it ( and more I added ) are next out the door. I think I need a few more clear bins.

Do have a go at this challenge no matter what materials you prefer and no matter how new or how experienced you are.

The first challenge for this year is to make one, or more, experimental textile samples using repurposed items such as old clothing or furnishings.

For example, you could deconstruct an old shirt and use specific pieces or just rough cut pieces or even shred the fabric down to threads.  You could unravel an old sweater or scarf to reuse the yarn, or make ‘yarn’ by cutting lengths from an old t-shirt.

So why only make a sample?

Well, it’s quick, fun and there’s no pressure to get something right. It’s a great risk-free way to get creativity flowing and can lead to further experimentation or perhaps a new project. Sampling gives you a chance to test an idea before embarking on a project and it can inspire future work.

Look around at what you have and ask ‘what if?’  Then make a sample to see what happens.

Here are some of our samples of ‘textile deconstruction and reconstruction’:

This large scarf had a few holes in it and wasn’t fit for purpose.

Some of it was cut into strips then knitted to see how it would look and feel.

Old scarves and blouses can be used to make nuno felt.  If you’re unsure whether the fabric will work or not, make a sample!

Small pieces from three different garments were cut into rough shapes then placed onto a few layers of merino wool before felting.  The sample shows how each piece of fabric looked after felting.

This experimental sample is a scrap of fabric cut from an old garment then embellished with stitching.

This is a slice of the sleeve of an old sweater splayed out and stitched down.

Old t-shirts can be cut into strips to make ‘yarn’.  Seamless t-shirts are best as you can just cut round and round – with a seamed t-shirt you have to make joins in the ‘yarn’.

This red t-shirt yarn …

… and some of this recycled sari silk …

… were knitted together, as an I-Cord, on giant needles to make interesting ‘rope’.

Some fulled felt that was left over from a very colourful project was cut into small pieces, laid on top of loose white merino fibres then felted …

… the result was a colourful, textured piece of felt.

These shoelaces were rescued from discarded trainers.  They were handstitched to a piece of velvet and the sample was an experiment to try to ‘abstract’ rhubarb.

You may already have a stash of deconstructed stuff e.g. ribbons saved from gift wrappings, short lengths of yarn from old sweaters/scarves, lace from old blouses etc.

This weaving sample was made from such a stash.

So, look around at what you have to hand and ask ‘what if?’  Then make a sample to see what happens.

Please post a photo of your experimental sample onto the Felting and Fiber Forum under ‘Studio Challenges’ in the thread ‘2022 First Quarter Challenge’.

 

Like many people have been doing since the pandemic started, I have appreciated the availability of online courses to help keep my creative juices flowing. I now own enough online courses to review at my leisure for longer than I will be on this planet! Do I have a problem? LOL, it’s like having enough fabric or paint or whatever medium you work with. We can never have enough or exactly what we are looking for.

My latest online course called Squiggle, Line and Dot was with Susan Purney Mark. She’s a West Coast Canadian living on Pender Island, BC. She has a nice blog (https://susanpm.blogspot.com/) and website (https://www.susanpm.com/). I’ve been interested in learning techniques to make collage fodder (I had to google the word fodder to make sure it was applicable  in this context and did find this definition amongst the “feed for livestock” definitions…Raw material, as for artistic creation.)

Susan’s class uses mostly black paint on white fabric so far.

This was my most favorite exercise. Taping a paint brush to a long stick and painting. I was listening to music and got some creative tingles doing this.

This was using a wider brush. I am attracted to the marks where there is not much paint on the brush.

I got a little bored with the black and white although I see potential in the pieces I have made so far. I appreciate how Susan incorporates this fodder into her quilts and want to try it myself. I’ll be getting back to her online class soon.

But I decided to go back to a color class from Jane Dunnewold that I had begun earlier in 2021. Time to work on complimentary color scales.  https://www.janedunnewold.com/

Oooohhhh that was fun and so magical. I had done some of these studies while taking my design course from Gail Harker, but it was fun to do them again.  https://gailcreativestudies.com/

Jane has her own set of ProChem paints that are “pure” colors so she likes you to mix your own secondary and tertiary colors and she has color cards so you can match your mixtures to them. It’s challenging to know how much paint to put out and I threw away the leftovers from my first two color runs and felt kind of guilty about doing that. That’s when I decided to use the leftovers on fabric and use those pieces for future collage work using some of the mark making techniques learned in Susan Purney Mark’s class as well as other teachers I’ve taken classes from.

These are the tools I used to make my marks. I really like the marks made with the green squeegee type device.

Most of the color combinations are vastly different from what I normally work with in my art quilts. But they are going to be fun to use as collage fodder. Most importantly I had FUN playing with paints. Life is good!

Now to get down to quilt making versus painting and use some of this stuff up!

Best wishes to all for a wonderful, creative 2022!!

Tesi Vaara

 

Now it is a long time since any of my offspring expressed an interest in soft toys.  That said, I still enjoy making them every now and then.

Back in 2013, I was very fortunate to be awarded a trip to Finland.  It was under the European Union’s Lifelong Learning Programme.  The project brought together European citizens from throughout the Union and the aim of the project centred around new skills’ acquisition and learning/appreciating other countries’ cultures.  Subjects covered included spinning, weaving, sewing and crochet and the focus was on reuse and recycling.  It was a fantastic week.  I got hooked on crochet and when I returned home I enjoyed myself crocheting with and without patterns.

I started crocheting owls, they were great fun to make, I made tiny ones and huge ones – One ended up being used as a cushion by its young recipient.  Here are some of the owl family:

 

These led to a collaboration with a Maths teacher and these three ended up at an international maths conference:

Then came my interpretations of the famous Minions.  These ended up being gifted to various households:

When my friend became a grandmother, baby added this bunny to her soft toy collection (made with pattern):

 

This little guy had to stay here with me as I used teddy eyes (choking hazard).  He stands in a corner overseeing my work:

Most recently, I made this little hare for another friend’s little girl (again made with a pattern).  He hasn’t left the house yet and our off-spring (age range 25 to 31)  reposition him regularly – I am liable to find him in various parts of the house – it is possibly best if I hand him over before he gets lost.

 

Here’s a few of the toys I have sewed in recent years.  The patterns came from a website Bustle and Sew (https://bustleandsew.com/free-patterns/) and are worth checking out.

I made a number of the elephants.  Here are a couple of them.  The brown material was sourced from the inherited stash – the floral (orange/green base)  material came from the days when Debenhams used to sell dress fabric (the name was printed on the selvedge:

 

I also made a few of the little dogs.  The pattern came from the same website:

I made this little teddy (again, the pattern was free from https://www.lovecrafts.com/en-gb/c/article/teddy-bear-sewing-pattern .  I found the fabric while rummaging through my husband’s aunt’s stash which she had bequeathed me.  It was an unfinished dress and the fabric is cord.  Again this little toy was to keep due to its sentimental origins (and its teddy bear eyes):

 

A more cuddly version made from fleece suitable for an older child (again the eyes and nose were the issue):

Another friend recently asked me to make her little one a Christmas stocking.  Both she and her hubby are visually impaired (she has around 5% sight and he was born without sight).  So I thought it would be good to add a very definite colour to the stocking so that she could see it more easily. The stocking was pretty straightforward and measures 16.5 inches (42cm) by 12.5 inches (32cm).  I appliquéd the little one’s name unto the front of the stocking.  It really was a fun make.

 

So this is my last post for 2021.  I hope some content within my posts got your creative juices flowing in perhaps a different direction.  I hope you all get a chance for some R & R over the festive season and I wish each and every one of you good health and much happiness in 2022.