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Tag: autumn landscape in felt

Multi colored nuno felt background with trees and autumn foliage
Transitions

Transitions

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I had a wonderful sales month at the 4 Ravens Gallery in Missoula and sold four pieces in the space of 30 days! Yay, happy dance and then… I suddenly realized that the gallery only had 2 small pieces left. I needed more work and it’s summertime and I don’t want to miss the tourist season.

Multi colored nuno felt background with tree shapes placed.

I found I had a multicolored piece of nuno felt big enough to split into two pieces. You can see the edge of the second piece on the right. My trees always seem to sell quickly so of course, more trees it is. I found a piece of handdyed fabric that I had used as “matte” fabric and it was perfect for making tree trunks. I worked out a configuration of trunks that I liked.

Multi colored nuno felt background with tree shapes stitched and auditioning different leaf types with cheesecloth.

Then I hand stitched the trunks in place and tried out some cheesecloth as foliage. I had created a piece before with cheesecloth and tried that idea on the left. It looked too Dr. Seuss in these colors. So I chopped up smaller pieces and thought that would work better.

Multi colored nuno felt background with trees and beginning of placement of leaves and undergrowth.

So I added more, spread the pieces out a bit and added some cheesecloth to the foreground for undergrowth.

Multi colored nuno felt background with trees and foliage.

Here it is before I stitched it all down. The cheesecloth moves around easily so it changes as I stitch but hopefully, that makes it more organic and less regular.

Multi colored nuno felt background with trees and autumn foliage

Here is the piece after all the stitching is complete. The funny thing I noticed is that there are several areas that look like shadows in the foreground from the tree trunks. They weren’t planned but I guess I must have noticed them subconsciously, as they seem to work perfectly. I’m calling this one Transitions.

I dyed a piece of muslin in dark burnt orange for the “matte” fabric, laced it to a backing and took it to the framers.

Framed nuno felted landscape with autumn forest

Here’s the piece framed. I have worked on two other pieces and traded around some pieces that I had at a gallery in Kalispell, so I will have 5 pieces to take to Missoula in a week or so.

Cover Page for Nuno Felting Online Class

In other exciting news, I have a new online class that will be starting on August 21st. Click here to learn more about the class.

Tamarack Trio Landscape

Tamarack Trio Landscape

Comments 16 comments

In my last post, I showed you this nuno felted background and asked for suggestions. Everyone’s ideas were so interesting and different than what I see in this randomly dyed piece. I loved hearing your suggestions but to me, this was definitely an autumn forest scene. I wanted to try and make it more abstract and less “real”.  So I started off just adding some lines in free motion embroidery that were to symbolize tree trunks. I forgot to take any in process photos. Once I get started on the machine, I get engrossed in the process. Then I got to the stage of “really ugly”. Do you find when you’re working that you go through that stage of “this is awful and I should just toss it”? But I kept going and ended up going more realistic than planned but that was the only way forward that I could see that would work.

I added tamarack trees, a fallen trunk and some foreground leaves in the upper right corner. The small trunks in the back left were too white so I took a gray colored pencil to them so they wouldn’t stand out too much. I then hung the piece up on the wall so I could look at it from a distance and to see what else it needed.  I decided to add more foreground leaves so they came down into the distant aspens in the lower right.

Here it is with more leaves added. That pushed the aspens back further into the distance and made the piece feel a bit more cohesive.

 

Here’s a couple of close ups of the free motion stitching. I don’t usually use the zigzag stitch when doing free motion but I liked the more abstract effect on the tamarack trees. If you don’t have tamaracks (also called larch) trees in your area, they look like pines/evergreens but their needles turn a bright yellow orange in the fall and then they shed all their needles. So they are a deciduous conifer. They are a gorgeous addition to the landscape in the fall.

I continued my new “habit” of finishing the piece at the time I made it. Here it is stitched down to a tan matting fabric and laced over matte board, another piece ready to frame. It does have some abstract qualities to it and I like the end result. Sometimes, you just have to keep pushing through and ignore that inner critic.