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Maneki-Neko for 2017 3rd Quarter Challenge Part 2

Maneki-Neko for 2017 3rd Quarter Challenge Part 2

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I never dreamed this project would take me almost two weeks to complete.  But it is finished.

If you missed part one, you can read about it here:

https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2017/09/25/pandagirls-maneki-neko-for-2017-3rd-quarter-challenge-part-1/

It would seem adding the details to finish would be easy.  Not!

I needle felted blue roving around the eyes.  The gems underneath are actually blue, but because they were put over black it wasn’t obvious what color they were.

Then I spent time looking for a gold bell, but decided on using a wool ball instead.  When I added the ribbon I made a slit on both sides of the arm to pull it thru.

The nose and mouth are also needle felted.  But at one point, the nose fell off and had to be reattached.

I curled over the raised paw and secured it in order to show the paw and nails.

The nails proved to be a real challenge and after ripping them out at least a half dozen times, trying needle felting, then using floss and finally rayon thread.

I tried needle felting the arm in front and the tail in back to show the dimension, but it was negligible partly because of it being black. So, I stitched around them which helped.

Another challenge was the writing on the coin.  I made a gold prefelt and copied the characters I had translated from an app for Good Health and confirmed with my daughter in law, Mari. I transferred the characters to a stabilizer.

I thought using the satin stitch on my Pfaff machine would work, but its not a straight satin stitch, but the stitches varied.  So I decided to use a triple stitch which was fine until I reached curves.  I ended up finishing by hand. I’m hoping I haven’t butchered the characters too much.  After finishing the coin, I slip stitched it to the kitty.

The final addition were the whiskers.  They are a little funky and I had to use a little GAC to give them a little stiffness.

Now its time to find her place facing East in hopes of bringing Good Heath to my household.

What challenges have you had lately?

 

 

 

Finishing an Eco Piece

Finishing an Eco Piece

Comments 16 comments

Last year Cathy (Luvswool) and I did some eco dyeing.  https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2016/11/03/eco-printing/

They pieces have been hanging around and I was going through them again and decided I liked the heavy cotton one in particular.  It was time to finish it.  Of course, it wasn’t that easy to decide what to do.  At first I thought I’d stitch the flowers and leaves, but I’m not that great at embroidery. So it sat for awhile again.

I really liked the straggly edges. Besides, if I turned the edges over I’d lose some of the nice design. Here is part of the design.  You can see at the top the ragged edge.  The two long sides were not that way, but I spent some time in front of the TV pulling out strands so they would all look the same.

I chose some embroidery threads that reflected the colors of the imprints, but subtle enough not to fight the design.

I did three rows of stitching around the whole piece.

I had decided it would be a wall hanging so I attached a small dowel with loops on the back.

The next question is where would I hang it so it would really look good.  I have a lot of dark walls and some light gold.  It’s hard to see the gold here, but there was some contrast.

My kitchen is teal and generally sunny.

The living room is a deep bronze color.

The family room is deep moss.

We’ve had a lot of dark days here, so I know the photos aren’t the best.

What do you think?

 

Just a quick addition.  This past weekend I met with my siblings in Madison, WI for lunch.  My sister Car brought me a fleece from one of the twin boys born last year – Little Will.  Here’s a quick peek at the open bag which was quite heavy.

While we were having lunch Car’s Granddaughter Madison received pics of two new twins that were just born.  A little boy at 8lbs 12 oz and a girl at 9lbs 6 oz born to ewe Mary.

What a great way to celebrate the get together!

 

A Halloween Surprise

A Halloween Surprise

Comments 20 comments

Here in the United States October 31 is Halloween.  A big holiday for dressing up and collecting treats for kids and some adults.  I’m not sure if the rest of the world has this tradition, but it’s a favorite here.

Four years ago I made my grandsons very basic pumpkin wall hangings.

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Last year my granddaughter Lisa was too young although her parents took her out trick or treating around the neighborhood.  So this year I made Lisa her wall hanging.

I found some unknown orange fiber that was too bright, so I made some batts adding some white merino.  I wanted something  feminine and decided to add a button nose (wooden ball),  prefelt eyes, mouth, stem and bow for some dimension.

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After I wet it out, I felt it was too thin so I added some corriedale leftover batt that I did for the color challenge last year to the back.

Once it was felted and shaved, I thought it needed something else.  so, I began trying to stitch on eyelashes.  This turned out to be a nightmare.  I tried hand and machine stitching.  I did more ripping out and filling the swear jar.  I finally let it sit for a few days and found some thick cotton embroidery thread Cathy had brought me from Japan a few years ago.  Thanks Cathy!

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While the stitching isn’t the best, it worked.

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Here are some closeups.  The pumpkin was very hairy and bumpy (thanks unknown fiber) and had to be shaved a couple of times, but I doubt a 19 month old will care.

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Have you done anything special for Halloween?

 

Around the Web

Around the Web

Comments 12 comments

I’ve been a bit busy and haven’t had time to create much. So I thought you might enjoy a few things from around the web. Some of these have been created by or pointed out by forum members, so thanks to those of you who pointed me in the right direction!

fibres around the web

Jane Mercer posted about her recent visit to Woolfest 2016.

Fiber arts video from Peru. (in Spanish)

Felting around the web banner

Russian video about laying wool in specific directions. In Russian but drawings are very helpful.

Karen Lane’s new version of Yellow Poppies.

Shibori felting video with Rae Woolnough.

Teri Berry’s new ram hat and illuminated lion fish.

Nada’s nuno felted blouse.

Lyn and Annie’s (RosiePink) recent pineapple challenge and Lyn’s bird.

Pam de Groot’s Text and Texture exhibition pieces.

Vote for Kim Winter’s proposal to turn the bathroom into a grotto covered in felt shells. (She needs 5 stars!)

dyeing around the web

Cathy’s eco-printing in a pomegranate dye pot.

Terriea Kwong’s recent natural printing.

stitching around the web

Catherine Frere-Smith’s embroidered fabric birds.

mixed media around the web

Mary Beth Shaw of StencilGirl Products has been doing live streaming videos of a variety of stencil techniques on Facebook. Just scroll down to check out the different videos.

 

 

A Peek at the Knitting and Stitching Show in London 2015

A Peek at the Knitting and Stitching Show in London 2015

Comments 22 comments

Our guest artist/author/photographer today is Leonor Calaca from Felt Buddies.

If you’re in Europe and a fibre aficionado, you’ve probably heard of the Knitting & Stitching Show. It happens in a few different locations and dates in the UK, and is probably the largest fabric/fibre event in Europe when hosted in Alexandra Palace here in London.

As it happens, the Alexandra Palace (or Ally Pally as it’s also known) is only 45 minutes away, on foot, from my place; as it happens as well, I’ve been volunteering for the past two years as a member of the London Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers, to work a few hours a day at a booth that serves as a hub for all such UK guilds. Not because I’m such a wonderful and helpful person, mind you, but because this means I get a free pass to come and go anytime during those 5 days (and, at £16 for entry only, I think it’s well worth my time).

Last year I got all mesmerised by the fibres and materials I saw, and almost went bankrupt. This year I decided to be good,  more sensible and buy only the things I absolutely needed, which worked to an extent. I also decided to focus more on my energy on the really good exhibitions, and that’s what I’m going to write about.

Let’s start with an embroidery. How lovely and detailed is that?

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Art wasn’t just in 2D, the sculptures were very interesting as well.

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A glass and wool sculpture by Helen Pailing. She aims to use remnants from the glass and wool industry and incorporate them in a way that makes them not only art, but something you can keep instead of take to a landfill.

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The Wishing Tree by Eileen McNulty. Just look at those little details.

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I don’t know the author of this one, but here is ‘Palace,’ made with cocoon stripping paper and silk organza. The theme of this booth was vessels.

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Elena Thomson embroidered a sieve. Would you have thought of that? I think this would be wonderful to confuse old ladies.

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‘Stumpwork’ by Alana Chenevix-Trench.

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And a lovely sheep by Margarita O’Byrne.

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Then I went to Studio Art Quilt’s Associates (SAQA) booth that just blew my mind. I had no idea these detailed works of art could be made in that technique. The theme was Food For Thought and this is ‘Mushroom Frittata’ by Jean Sredi.

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‘Pepitas’ by Vicky Bahnhoff.

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‘Yum! Pineapple Upside Down Cake’ by Diane Powers-Harris. Yes, this is still a quilt.

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‘Il Mercato’ by Jeannie Moore

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‘Elegant Edibles’ by Jennifer Day.

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Who doesn’t love dolls?

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This one was my favourite: what a grumpy face.

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These two sculptures surprised me, as they’re made from a traditional paper folding technique native to the Philippines.

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And I saved the best for last: a fishmongers called Kate’s Plaice! Everything you see here is either knitted or sewn, and the details just make it extraordinary.

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The artist herself.

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Did you go to the K&S? What caught your eye? And am I going mad for taking more time to look at art instead of yummy yarn?

Thank you Leonor for taking us on this great fibre adventure!

Gone Fishing…

Gone Fishing…

Comments 21 comments

I don’t know if its spring or summer or something in the creative cosmic atmosphere, but it seems fish have become a theme for art lately.

Cathy (Luvswool) and I got together before she went to her Colorado residency and I went to Florida a few weeks back.  We wanted to do something different together.  We remembered the cool fish Galina ( Felicity) did a while back on  her blog and decided to try that. (Thanks for the inspiration Galina!)

We each made our resists beforehand.  Of course, we were busy chatting while deciding on colors.  It took a bit before we got started.

Cathy chose yellow and blue.  I went with my teal (I have sooo much) and purple.

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We each used three layers (one layer of domestic 56 batt in between) and tried to get the fish mouth like Galina had hers not too successfully.  I guess we need practice. We also used gems for eyes.

I made separate prefelt for fins and tail.

When I got to the prefelt stage on my fish, I cut out and attached the tail and fins. I couldn’t find the resists for my gills when it came time to take the resists out.

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We weren’t trying to make exact fish, but have fun coming up with our own fantasy fish.

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Cathy did get the gill resist out, but it ended up too wide, so she embroidered it to close it up.  She also added some roving around the eye and needlefelted it to get it to stay.

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I decided to work on another fish that week and ended up with two more just experimenting with colors and embellishments. I managed to get gills on the second one. I also added bottom fins by needlefelting them on. The eyes were hard to get even on each side. I got a little better at the eyes, but they’re still not perfect.

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I’m not sure how I’ll display them.  I originally thought I hang them in the bathroom, but I don’t think my husband would approve of flying fish.

Have you done any summer or fish themed projects?

 

 

Round and Round I Go

Round and Round I Go

Comments 26 comments

Happy New Year!

One of the things I wanted to do more of this past year was to stitch on felt.  I did one wool painting based on Moy Mackay’s “Anemones”  from her book Art Felt and Stitch that I used free motion embroidery for the first time.   http://feltingandfiberstudio.com/?s=moy+mackay

I was a bit intimidated, but Lyn from Rosiepink encouraged me to keep trying.  So, using Rosiepink’s ebook  I chose to try an embroidered bowl.  http://rosiepink.typepad.co.uk/rosiepink/handmade-felt-and-stitch-bowls.html

I gathered up a lot of my swatches and scraps and decided to use some batik fabric samples I cut up, silk scraps of habotai and chiffon, hand dyed locks, cotton scrim, throwsters waste, hand dyed kid mohair, mulberry silk — dyed and undyed .  One batik swatch that I liked had Oriental fish.  I used that idea for the center of the bowl with handmade prefelt and later in the process I embroidered the details.

Following the instructions, I layed put the circle base and carefully decorated it with my prefelts, scraps and other embellishments.  I used hand dyed mulberry silk on the back to give that some color and shine, but didn’t take a picture. Here is the inner side before felting.

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After felting I let it dry then put in the embroidery details before starting the free motion stitching.

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I purchased five different colors of rayon Gutterman thread — grape, cranberry, turquoise, light purple and silver.

After getting organized to sew, I held my breath, said a prayer and round and round I went stitching as instructed happily watching the bowl take shape right before my eyes!

However, my eyes were crossed by the time I finished trying to follow the rows of stitching needed.  But the result was worth it.  The stitching isn’t perfect especially in the center.  I found it challenging to do the tighter small circles.

2014-10-28 12.12 2014-10-28 12.16It was hard to get decent pictures of the sides between the angle and the lightning.  But you can see the colors underneath and the shiny rayon threads.

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Thanks again to Lyn and Annie for such great instructions and your encouragement.  I hope one of these days the free motion will be second hand, but I still need more practice.  Fortunately, there are many more projects in the book to try besides venturing out on my own.

So, one of my resolutions is to continue to challenge myself to try new free motion projects this year.  What fiber resolutions have you made for 2015?

 

 

Same Picture, Different Techniques and Outcomes

Same Picture, Different Techniques and Outcomes

Comments 28 comments

A while back, I purchased Moy Mackay’s book Art in Felt and Stitch.  I like her use of bold colors and particularly like her flower and bird pieces.  While chatting with Cathy (Luvswool), I learned she also had Moy’s book and we both liked one particular vase of flowers in the book called Anemones.  We decided to do our own interpretation of that picture below.  (The quality is not great because I took a picture of the picture in the book.)

Moy anemonesCathy —

Moy lays out her fibers from start to finish, with “brushstrokes” of fiber, much as a painter applies paint to the canvas.  When she is finished laying out her merino roving, she then felts the entire picture as one piece.  Later, she needle felts details and then embroiders with machine stitching.

My approach was a bit different, in that I prefer to layout my base first then wet felt it so that I end up with a pre-felted white base on which to paint my picture.  I had previously used this technique in creating other felt painting and so was comfortable with the approach.  After my white domestic 56’s base (2 layers) was completed and dry, I began the process of laying on merino fibers in various colors, not exactly the same as Moy.  I added tussah silk highlights and then wet-felted the entire piece.

After drying, I began to needle-felt details, such as shadowing for the vase, some detailing for the flowers.  I chose not to machine stitch or hand embroider, rather I allowed the needle felting to be my finishing.

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Newly armed with a stapler gun and some stretcher bars, I backed the 12″ x 12″ piece with blue commercial felt and framed it.

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Marilyn —

I chose to follow Moy’s method as mentioned above in Cathy’s description. For me there were a few firsts — I had never “cut” roving, had done free motion machine stitching or embroidered felt.

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I made the base from batts I had made using dark colors, then added the lighter accents, the vase, then built the picture from the background forward laying out the background leaves then cut the flowers and laid them out.  I added some silk embellishments, angelina and nepps, then I wet felted the piece.

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After it was dry, I needle felted around the vase and added needle felted shadows on and around the vase and some details in the flowers.  My challenge came when I started the machine embroidery.  The felt around the flowers was thick because of the layering of the background leaves. My machine wasn’t happy about that.  After a couple of broken needles and a lot of frustration, I finally finished.  I added a couple of hand embroidered flower details to finish it.  I enjoyed trying a new technique, but will keep in mind the potential thickness issue when doing anything similar again.

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After cleaning it up a bit, it is now sitting in the “to be framed pile.”

 

 

 

Book Review: Creating Felt Artwork

Book Review: Creating Felt Artwork

Comments 6 comments

Creating Felt Artwork: a step by step guide

This is an excellent, information packed, 60 page, full colour e-book by Rosiepink fibre artists Annie and Lyn. Using one of their own pieces, ‘The Meadow’ as a guide, they show you a step by step process and give you all the information you need to make your own beautiful, unique felt artwork. There are lots of nice, clear photos throughout, and simple but detailed instructions with lots of excellent tips and advice. Before the main part on how to create your felt wall hanging, there is a great section about finding inspiration, how to interpret your ideas into a design and planning your artwork.

The information in the main step by step guide is excellent. It starts with a detailed equipment list with lots of hints for using inexpensive items you’d find around the house, and advice about preparing your work area. The instructions for how to lay out the wool for your design are very clear and detailed, and there are lots of photographs to illustrate each stage. There’s a very detailed explanation of the whole felting process and valuable information about choosing other fabrics and fibres to add to your design.

The next section teaches you how to enhance and embellish your artwork with simple machine embroidery. This part is packed with information and advice too. There’s everything you need to know about stabilising your felt artwork and choosing the right colours and types of thread to work best with your design. There’s information about techniques to create the effect you want and how to add detail. This section also has advice about adding hand stitching and how to use machine and hand stitching to create effects and texture and also about using other fibres for adding extra texture and detail.

Once you’ve finished your felt art wall hanging, you’ll want to display it. There is a great section on how to back and hang your artwork simply and effectively, with clear instructions and photos. But if you’d like to display your artwork a different way, there is also a separate section on alternate ways to display your artwork and how to care for it.

There’s information and tips throughout the book for techniques to help you realise your own design and create your own unique artwork. This includes how to make and use prefelt for more control over your design; how to re-use spare felt in the same way; using yarn and small drafted sections of wool for design, and adding other fabrics and needlefelting to enhance your artwork.

So, what if you’ve followed all the instructions and you’re not happy with the way it turned out, or maybe you made a few sample pieces to try out your colour choices and don’t know what to do with them? There’s even a section for that, with some great ideas on what to do with spare pieces of felt.

And don’t worry if you’re an absolute beginner and have never tried felting before, or don’t really know what all the felting terms mean, there’s a glossary at the end with everything you need to know and an appendix with a complete step by step guide to making felt, with lots of clear photos.

This really is excellent value for money. It’s an invaluable source of information and advice about creating beautiful feltwork and enhancing it simply with easy tips and techniques. And the great advantages about being an e-book is you can have it instantly and zoom into the photos for even more detail 🙂

If you’d like to own a copy, visit Annie and Lyn’s website http://rosiepink.typepad.co.uk/rosiepink/creating-felt-artwork-ebook.html   It’s also available on Craftsy http://www.craftsy.com/project/view/Creating-Felt-Artwork/43696

Book Review

Book Review

Comments 8 comments

I thought it would be fun to go through my library of fiber art books and do a review of some of my favorites. I don’t have any other books by Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn but I have seen some of their other books. I have to say that I would recommend anything written by them. They are a great team and pack a lot of useful information in their books.

If you click on the photo above it will take you to Amazon. I think the book is out of print because the new copies are really pricey but you can buy them used for less. Or look in your local library, maybe you’ll be lucky enough to find this book. I love this book. I refer back to it frequently and have read it cover to cover at least three times.

The book has two sections the first is “Design to Embroider” and the second is “Stitched Images”.  The first section is about how to develop designs on paper and mixed media, where to look to find ideas and exploring those ideas. It is a good start to basic design and how to relate it to embroidery. The photos and examples are wonderful and inspiring. They show their own work as well as work of other artists.

Section two of the book is about taking your designs and making them into an embroidery. There is information about fabric paints and various methods of using them, working with applique’, stitch themes, machine embroidery and selecting a theme. This book is not a step by step instruction book. It does give basic information about how to use various fabric paint products but it doesn’t contain any projects to follow. The book is geared towards getting you to think about your own designs and how to develop backgrounds and then add stitch to make a complex experimental stitch piece.

The book talks a bit about using different stitches but it is not a stitch dictionary and limited directions for individual hand or machine stitches. What it does is give you lots of ideas about how to interpret designs and various approaches to use to achieve the desired effects. Every time I read the book, I find something new to consider. If you only do traditional embroidery from a kit and don’t want to learn how to design, this book isn’t for you. If you’d like to take a more experimental approach and learn how to design your work, you’ll love this book. All the reviews on Amazon are 5 stars!

If you have a favorite fiber art book, I’d love to hear about it. Hop on over to the forum and  tell us about your favorite book.