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Weeping Birch Landscape Completed

Weeping Birch Landscape Completed

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Back in early December, I showed you the beginnings of weeping birch trees that I created out of nunofelt. At that point, I had just started stitching the smaller branches.

Here’s what it looked like at that point.

I added quite a few more branches with couching in a variety of colors to give the mottled appearance of these type of branches.

I decided not to procrastinate with the finishing work, so I chose a “matte” fabric of medium value gray, stitched the nuno felt to the fabric and laced the fabric around matte board. The piece without a frame is 11″ x 18″ approximately. It’s now ready to take to the framers when I have some other pieces completed to go with it.

Here’s a closer look at the hand stitching. You can click on any of the photos to enlarge them.

Next up are two more nuno felted pieces that need embellishing.

I think the one on the left will become free motion machine stitched with tree trunks and perhaps more orange leaves in the upper right corner. I am going to try and keep it fairly simple and not overdo the stitching. I want it to stay fairly abstract as landscapes go. The piece on the right may have cone flowers added to it with applique. I haven’t made any final decisions on that one yet. How would you finish these? I’d love to hear your ideas.

The Winners and a Start to a New Landscape

The Winners and a Start to a New Landscape

Comments 19 comments

We had quite a response to our recent tenth anniversary giveaway post with over 175 comments. We’d love to hear from you more often on our regular posts.

The winners were drawn by random number generator and the choice of prize was given on number generated first through last of the 178 comments.

#1 – Kristina wins an online class of her choice.

 Kristina says:

Thank you for the continuous inspiration and sharing so many skills! I’d love to take the Free Motion Machine Stitching on Felt course.

#2 – Linda Prine wins a sari silk pack.

 linda prine says:

If I win, I choose the sari silk. Thanks, Linda Prine

#3 – Cate Lake Thompson wins an online class of her choice. 

 Cate Lake-Thompson says:

Congrats are due for this 10 year anniversary! Wonderful posts!
I would love to learn free motion stichery on felt.
Cate

#4 – Debbie Loveland wins a sari silk pack.

 Debbie Loveland says:

Happy 10th, FFS! I have been enjoying your posts for the last few years. Thank all of you who share your talent. I wish FFS continued success! I would love to win one of the classes. Print, Stencil and Play with Thickened Dye on Felt looks particularly interesting.

#5 – Shoshana Avramovitz wins a sari silk pack.

 Shoshana Avramovitz says:

Congrats on ten years Ruth!!!
Your posts are always such I highlight for me I so appreciate you 💕
I would love the Sari silk as I have been inspired by your work, to try new things:)
Hope to be here with you for the next ten years
Hugs Shoshana 🤗

Congratulations to all of the winners. We will contact you directly by email to get your information and send your prize.

Now on to what I have been working on. The photo on the left shows one of the nuno backgrounds that I made a while ago that has been waiting for further embellishment. I decided I wanted to use the photo on the right of weeping birch as inspiration. Now to find some fabric that I could applique to the background. I went through my entire stash and found absolutely nothing that would work. What to do? Then I was looking through the silk that I use for nuno felting and realized that I still had a piece of the same fabric. The original background was felted on to black prefelt. What if I used the same fabric and felted it on to white prefelt? That should give me trees that would work with the background but still have enough difference that the trees would stand out. I considered covering a larger piece of prefelt with the silk and then cutting the trees out after felting. But what if I cut the prefelt into tree shapes and then covered with the silk fabric and felted? A new experiment in felting to try!

I cut out the trees free hand, hoping for the best. Isn’t the difference in the background to the original fabric astonishing? The black wool really migrates through and changes the colors and values. The photo on the right shows how I cut the silk to “fit” the tree shapes. I left a border of silk to wrap around to the back side of the prefelt.

I then began felting the silk into the prefelt trees. I did rough up the prefelt a bit with a brush to get good migration of wool through the silk. I did quite a bit of rubbing and minimal fulling. I had given myself a bit of extra room for shrinkage, but not enough for complete fulling. since this is a piece of wall art, I wasn’t worried about the trees not being completely fulled. They just needed to hold together enough for me to stitch them down once dry.

The photo on the left shows the felted trees laying on the background. They have been appliqued down in the right photo. I used a medium value tan thread and the tiny stitches are hardly visible. I have also started adding a couched branch on the right hand tree. This is as far as I have gotten so far.

Here’s a closer look at the stitched branches. There will be more of this type of branch added to the left hand tree as well. I used bullion stitch to make the little seed poddy things at the end of the branches. I will probably add a few more thread colors to the branch.

I haven’t decided yet whether the trees are too much of a contrast from the background. I am considering adding some shading with grey on one side of the tree trunks for shadows most likely done with paint. I am going to add more small branches before I decide. What do you think?

 

Ribbon Embroidery

Ribbon Embroidery

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I recently  bought a book on Silk Ribbon Embroidery.  I saw something on Pinterest and it caught my interest.

I thought I had some silk ribbon but couldn’t find it. If I did, I would have had to dye it anyways.  So, I decided to use regular satin ribbon just to see how well it worked.

I originally wanted to use a  cotton type doily that I had dyed with indigo several years ago.  But no matter what size needle I tried I couldn’t get the ribbon thru the tight weave.

I purchased some cotton/linen material and used that instead.

I was concentrating so much on the technique I forgot to take pics at each step.  It was a bit harder than it looked. No surprise I chose Irises.

I used the Daisy stitch to make the Iris flowers.  The trick is to use the needle to position and fluff out the flowers and leaves.  I used my own design, so I tried to make each flower unique.

The stems were next.  I used some green floss that I positioned pulling it thru at each end, then couched the stem with the same color floss to give a bit of texture.

After I added the leaves, I felt something was missing. Then I added a bit of a bulb under each flower. The final touch was to add a little acrylic yellow paint for the beard on the petals.

The next challenge was to frame it.  Since the ribbon was so brightly colored, I wanted a more subtle mat.  I tried several and settled on a pale green with light specks.  I had to wrap the cloth around a board and secure it with double sided tape before putting the backing on.  That proved to be tricky getting the flowers centered in the mat. The picture colors are not true, the wall is a pale yellow, the mat a pale green.

 

Here are some closeups:

Then I caught a little sunlight on the couch which gives a different perspective.

In the future, I may make a series of flower pics and try the silk ribbon which I think will be a bit easier to work with.  But I’m pleased with the result even though at times the ribbon was a bit unruly.

Have you tried any new techniques lately?

 

Pandagirl’s 1st Quarter Challenge 2017

Pandagirl’s 1st Quarter Challenge 2017

Comments 14 comments

Last month Ruth Lane announced the 1st Quarter Challenge focusing on Fauvism. If you missed it, you can read about it here:

https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2016/12/31/2017-quarterly-challenges/ 

I had a  hard time deciding what to do and looked through a lot of photos and pictures for inspiration.  Finally, I came across an old postcard from Hawaii of a ship on the sea under dark skies that intrigued me.

I decided I would concentrate on bold colors and simplified forms.   Here is my layout:

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I used prefelts I had previously made and batts I had on hand. Please ignore my messy work table.  It’s hard to tell from the monitor, but the sail next to the green one is a teal color.  Here it looks blue. Also the dark blue boom above the body of the boat got lost because of the blue water. I didn’t notice that when I laid it out.

After felting:

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I probably should have stopped fulling sooner.  I had used a Domestic 56 base so it needed shaving.  I couched some yarn for the masts and used yellow thread for the halyards (I believe that is the correct for the ropes connected.)

I decided to frame it.  I had an old frame I had used for papermaking and it fit perfectly.

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I’m not sure if this is in true Fauvist style, but I was pleased with the result.  Have you started the challenge yet?

 

Ginkgo Anyone?

Ginkgo Anyone?

Comments 30 comments

A while back I dyed some silk and wool experimenting with making browns with acid dyes.

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I wasn’t sure what I’d use it for, but I fell in love with the coppery silk habatoi.  I made batts with the wool.

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I had purchased some alpaca yarn this summer and wasn’t sure what I would do with it.  For some reason it called to me even though it’s not my typical color way. But putting it next to the cooper silk, I had to come up with something to do with it.

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I made felt base and placed the silk over it to nuno felt.  I still wasn’t sure how I would attach the yarn.  But then Ruth posted a blog about couching. Bingo!

 

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I decided to make gingko leaves using the couching method of attaching the yarn.

It was a long process. I first had to outline the shape with stitching ( I tried white pencil and other pens, but this worked best.)

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Then I pinned the yarn to the shape and began the couching process.  Because the yarn was variegated it created some interesting color contrasts along with the variegated nuno background.

20160109_161041Then used straight stitching for the veins.

20160113_122100The yarn was two ply and I thought that the veins for the secondary leaves should be less obvious so I separated them to make the veins  ( long process). Here is the progress –

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Why gingko?  I like the shape and also have a metal vase in my bedroom water closet that has the gingko leaves embossed on it.  I thought this would  tie the picture together with the vase.

20160124_125700The wall color is a purple haze which I thought would be a nice contrast.  while the leaves aren’t perfect, I’m pleased with the result.

What new fun projects are you working on?