Browsed by
Tag: cityscape

3rd Quarter Challenge Finally Finished (well… close enough)

3rd Quarter Challenge Finally Finished (well… close enough)

Comments 10 comments

I finally finished my 3rd quarter challenge. As you recall it was a cityscape. It was much harder then most of us thought it would be. I wanted to do something different. I thought about doing a scifi city on another world but no matter what I tried adding to it I wasn’t happy. So think again. I did think about doing an insect city. I even looked up some pictures of termite towers. That still wasn’t it. then I saw a picture of a city at night from space picture. I liked that so tried to find my city. No, it seems the capital of Canada is just to small to both taking a picture of as you whiz by in space. so I decided to make a map. I scaled it so I could see all of the city in a 5×7 inch frame.

The last time you saw it it was at this stage.

I have slowly been stitching in the smaller roads with thin crochet cotton. The lines were too small to try needling them in. At this magnification, there are may roads missing.

It was almost done so I took it with me to work on at the show. It was very busy and it took me all of Saturday to do the two left-hand, top parts. I did the red outline of the city on Sunday morning. Sunday morning is always slower. Why is stitching a straight line so hard?

Next, I trimmed it up ready for its bath.

It is quite a lightweight stabiliser. I picked it so I could trace the picture through it for the outline rivers and main roads. I thought I might have to wait time for it to dissolve but it was gone as soon as it got wet.

Although many people recognized it as Ottawa I think I will label it. I might try doing some other cities I really enjoyed doing this one. So where to put the name.

I like the right hand one best. I think partly because I know the north side of the river is a city too. The north side of the river is the province of Quebec. Ottawa is in the province of Ontario. I will needlefelt the name using some yarn.

 

 

 

Third Quarter Challenge – Part 2

Third Quarter Challenge – Part 2

Comments 12 comments

I showed you my ideas, concepts and sketches for my cityscape last week. Now on to the felting.

First I needed to make some prefelt for the buildings. I had a mixed brown batt already in my stash so I decided to use that as the buildings in my inspiration photos were variegated brown.

Once I got the brown wool to prefelt stage, I let it dry and then used my sketch to make pattern shapes for the buildings. I used tracing paper to trace the shapes and then cut them out of the prefelt. This is when my perspective began to go wonky.

I found a piece of hand dyed silk in my stash that looked like night sky. I put that over a piece of commercial white prefelt and then laid down the black base, trees and prefelt building shapes. I thought they were well positioned for the perspective I needed but with felting they must have shifted slightly.

Here it is after felting. The buildings are getting wonkier. There is a reason that I don’t usually felt man made designs. I have difficulty keeping the perspective correct and as I progressed in this process, they just seemed to get more and more off as I went. But I had hopes that with the addition of windows and doors, this would improve.

I did fold the extra silk fabric to the back and hand stitch it in place. This gives the edge a more finished look.

I eyeballed where the windows and doors should go and tried to get the perspective correct with them. But that didn’t really work out so well. In hindsight, it might have worked better to stitch my lines for the wooden siding first and then added the windows and doors afterward.

Next week, I will show you the machine stitching and the finishing technique I used to get a starry sky. If you have created a cityscape, please go over to the forum and post it here. 

Third Quarter Challenge – Part 1

Third Quarter Challenge – Part 1

Comments 8 comments

When Lyn and Annie announced the Third Quarter Challenge, I definitely felt challenged. The challenge is to create a Cityscape. I tend toward natural inspirations instead of man made inspiration.

It’s not that I don’t have photos of cities, I do. We have been to New York City three times and I do have photos of the city. But the skyline just doesn’t excite me much, especially attempting it in felt.

I then thought about doing something with graffiti. That might be interesting but again, I wasn’t very inspired.

I even considered using a photo like this with rusty bits and natural stone that was taken in NYC but this really doesn’t say cityscape.

Then I started thinking about how I could relate a cityscape to Montana and my surroundings. Perhaps I could do a cityscape of Whitefish, where my store is located? But that seemed too touristy and overdone to me. Then I thought about old west and what constituted a city in the old west. Perhaps I could use a ghost town as an inspiration. I know I’m stretching it a bit but…

Since I have visited Garnet, Montana, a ghost town, I decided to use it for inspiration. You can read about it’s history here.  You can also see some photos of the buildings on that site as well.

I googled Garnet Ghost Town for images and found quite a few of the buildings. But the ones that intrigued me were the night sky photos. And this was my favorite. I ended up printing out several night sky photos as well as some of the daylight photos that showed the main buildings better.

Using the inspiration photos, I drew a sketch of where the buildings would be placed. I also needed the approximate scale of the buildings so I could create prefelt building shapes. The plan was to make the buildings in prefelt. All of the details would be added later with machine stitching. So I had my basic design for my “cityscape”. Not really much of a city but it would have to do! Next week I will show you the felting portion of the “cityscape”.

Have you tried one of our challenges? We’d love to see what you create. Show us over on the forum or if you’d like to write a guest post, just let me know.

 

 

Tidying up Treasure.

Tidying up Treasure.

Comments 15 comments

In an attempt to find more storage I had to clear out some junk that should never been stored in the first place. I am sure everyone has some of this. While I was rummaging I found my old tiny needle felting machine. Its a small converted sewing machine. I had forgotten I even had it.

I used to have a larger one but I sold it when I moved more into wet felting hats and scarves.   Instead of having a sponge pad for the needles to poke down into it had a plate with a hole for each needle. I really didn’t enjoy using it. You could hear the needles hitting the edges of the holes as you tried to move the fabric around.  You need to move the fibers and base around slowly while needling to cover an area. I was always sure the needles were going to break and either jam the machine or fly. I didn’t want to have to wear safety glasses as I worked.

I have the big cityscape I made with the little machine framed and for sale.  It has almost sold several times.  With someone trying to decide between it and another piece and the other always went instead. One day it will find the right home. Today I would do more wet felting and less needle felting but all the little machine would probably still be the easiest way to place with the little windows. Not the best shot of it  but I have no place to hang it or even lean it properly to take its picture. framed it is about 36 inches by 24 inches.

 

Anyway I am glad I found it . I think it will be useful for tacking things down and adding smaller pieces that tend to move around to much in the wet felting process. Of course part of that problem is me being impatient. I think I am going to see if I can make a better guard.  I wonder if anyone I know works with clear plastic and I could maybe commission a clear guard attachment.

Pandagirl’s Year in Review 2016

Pandagirl’s Year in Review 2016

Comments 17 comments

I hope everyone had a nice holiday and are ready for the New Year.

It’s almost the end of 2016 and looking back on the things I’ve done, there seems to be a few themes.

I did a lot of natural dyeing.  Avocado skins, pits and the combo.

20160125_113312

Cochineal

20160701_155219

Alkanet/Logwood20160701_154915

logwood iron top wo bottom

Osagealkanet with iron

Madder

20160622_123212

Cutch, Rhubarb and Indigo

20160703_115005 20160701_155539 20160907_124311-1

 

Eco printing

img_7161

Resists

20150501_152541

20160301_164851

20160326_121301

20160322_113050

20160506_142241

Under the sea theme20160429_160634a_edited-1 20160526_155222

2nd Quarter challenge working with scraps – the former credit card case turned into an ear bud case.

20160506_122938

Then the cityscape with scraps.

20160523_142107

A scarflette with locks

20160125_111403

Ginkgo stitching

20160123_152812

Crochet piece felted and embellished with stitching

20160823_134235-1

Felting wit my grandsons

20160807_152216_001

Silk scraps into a free motion stitched vase

20160708_142758

3rd Quarter challenge adding dimension from Kristy Kun’s class

20160924_155325-1 20160924_155038-1

Ruth’s Paper Lamination class

20160614_153320 20160720_173749

20160609_122027

Teri’s hat class

20161012_152103 20161012_151800

Mini weaving wall hanging

20161113_151758

More work with scraps for a sewing machine case

20161204_142831

4th Quarter Challenge with embellishments for a coupon case.

20161107_164205

And blue booties for a shower

20161208_165948

Of course, there were also plenty of samples during the year including using the needle felting machine to felt some unfeltable fabrics.

A big thank you to Cathy Wycliff for her post on weaving and felting; my sister Carol Olson for sharing her new sheep with us;  Nada for sharing her workshop experience in Slovenia; Zara for her posts on Felting on a Trampoline and her Yak, Mongolian, Churro and Zwartables samples; Leonor for her soap tutorial and Terri Simon on sharing her projects from Kristy Kun’s class.

It was a great year for me in terms of learning new things and doing some recycling.  How was your 2016 year of fibers?

Happy New Year and Happy Felting in 2017!

 

 

 

%d bloggers like this: