One of this year’s challenges is divided into the 4 seasons. A tree in each of the four seasons. Now I like evergreens so I could have cheated and made the same identical evergreen 4 times but thought that was a bit too easy. I had seen online someone say they had been shown how to do a tree by Andrea Hunter, Creating Felt Picturesblackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/ It’s a great little book.  What I saw was just a picture of the finished layout. I thought I can figure that out. That was months ago. On Monday I finally gave it a try.

Monday was a Holiday here, so I gathered up my supplies and headed into the guild to meet Jan. We were going to do our felting machine comparison so she could blog about it and I wanted to try making the tree.

I brought a new rolling mat I had just picked up because it had a nice little lip to help me keep things dry. I was not going to need a lot of water. I used some prefelt for the background and some black merino for the tree.

I decided to do the first one quickly and without any fiddling around. I just held the trunk portion firmly and fluffed out the rest. Part of what I wondered was: would the rolling cause movement that would make some thicker branches?

 

I think it would have been better if I had taken out the two blobs in the branches but I was quite pleased and if I would going to lay some green over it to make a summer tree it would have been fine.

Next, I tried wetting the prefelt and the black wool to see if it would spread out any better but it was so terrible I just pulled it off and tossed it before I even started. It would make a good start for a flower.

I squeezed most of the water out of the prefelt and got some new black. I also grabbed a knitting needle to manipulate the wool. the wool picked up moisture from the wet prefelt and that made it easier to have the wool stay where I wanted it.

This is much better I fiddled around with making bigger branches and trying to make it look less like a small child drew it. I was quite happy with it and decided to add a little mixed brown wool for some texture and Jan suggested adding a thin haze of green to give it a spring haze look like just before the trees get their leaves.

 

I am quite happy with how it turned out. I like the way the thicker trunk area kept some of its 3dness( I am sure that’s not a real word) You know, they stick up a bit. The trunk needs work but I think this will work well for the challenge. Now I need to go shopping for some brown wool or I need to get on with some dying. I have almost nothing in the way of brown wool.

Oh, and since Jan is always posting pictures of me I thought I would share one of her in her octopus hat at the Chesterville Spin-In a few weeks ago.