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1st quarter jewellery challenge

1st quarter jewellery challenge

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This is the last of my contributions to this quarter’s challenge. I am looking forward to finding out what the next quarter’s challenge is.

Last time I showed you my circles of silk and wool to be made into flowers.

First, I rubbed and rolled them until they were well felted.  Then I folded them into a cone and started rolling in my hands and pulling on the point. That resulted in this:

Next, I cut some leaves from the flat green piece and needled them onto the flowers.

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I thought they need some stamen. I used locks. These are Wensleydale cross locks I bought already dyed. The first few I made, I didn’t like. The stamens were too long and they looked more like some sort of horror movie flower monster that was sticking out their tongues.

I shortened them. I think I need to dye some locks yellow for the rest. I should have time as we are all staying home.

I will add pins, probably safety pins, to these. Then they can go on a hat or coat or anything really.

I haven’t found good broach pins yet. The ones in local stores all seem to fall apart after a few uses.  I had a link to a supplier but there was no way to tell which ones were good and which ones were not. I will have to order samples maybe.

I was surprised while editing the flowers on how hairy they look. You don’t really notice them in person. The camera really picks them up. The other interesting thing I discovered was that the lid of my new laptop is great for taking pictures. It is flat black and doesn’t reflect the light.

 

 

 

This and that.

This and that.

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I haven’t done much this week but I did decide to do some stitching on one of the circles I made earlier for the jewelry challenge. Seeing Antje’s post reminded me I had made a few stitching blanks. this one is just over 2.5 inches/7cm. I don’t think mine is quite as artistic but it was fun to do with the bright threads.

Next, I thought I would like to do something a little more 3D. I have a box of stretched silk hankies and bits of silk hankies left over from other felting.

I stretched out some circles from bits to make the flower bases.

And a bigger blog of pieces for leaves.

I added some wool.

And then some more silk hanky bits.

I rubbed them all and then I decided to roll them up and pop them in the dryer while I made a few small landscape blanks for stitching. I cut out some prefelt and added the sky and grass. They went into the dryer too and then it was time to feed the bottle lambs and head of to work.

Next week is our school break so I am hoping to get some felting time in.

Felted Flower Class

Felted Flower Class

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Wednesday I taught an evening class in flowers at the Ottawa Valley Weavers’ and Spinners’ Guild. It is a bit rushed for beginners to get both flowers finished but everyone got it done and we all had a good time.

As usual, I kept forgetting to take pictures but I did get some and Jan was in the class and got some but she was busy too.

First, we did a petunia/morning glory shaped flower this is me explaining how you layout the wool for the flower.

Jan remembered to take a picture of her layout. This is part way through.

Here everyone is diligently felting their flowers

Shaping

This is Jan’s flower after scrunching and throwing. People usually look skeptical that this will be a flower at this point.

But then Ta Da!

Then there was no time to waist and we were on to Flower 2. Stems and stamens and silk hankies.

 

There was rubbing and rolling and gentle fulling and no throwing for these.

And lastly Jan to a good picture of her 2 blue flowers.

I think I may make this into a full-length class with a few more flowers. and maybe add some leaves to the stems.

 

 

 

 

A Few New Things

A Few New Things

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We made felt flowers for brooches at the Well Being Centre last week. These are the three layers of one of mine:

I thought I’d found the perfect button when I tried it out:

But just before I sewed it on, I spotted an orange shisha mirror and sewed that on! I haven’t got a photo yet though. I was sorting some felt offcuts a few weeks ago, and thought I’d save some to use for greetings cards because turned sideways they looked like landscapes. I thought it’d be nice to make some new ones too, and was only reminded by someone on the forum (I’ve forgotten who, sorry!) and before I forgot again, I went and made some. I made them quite soft and thin since they’re for cards:

I thought they’d be nice for beginners workshops too. I put a few offcuts to one side while I was sorting, and made a new camera bag. I’ve been using my ‘prototype’ for at least 18 months to see how well it wore.  I suppose it’s two-sided/reversible, but I put the zip so that really this is the front:

I still like the back though, and can flip it if I feel like a change:

While the machine was out, I made a little coin pouch from an offcut:

How two small things can create such a mess though, is a mystery!

3rd Quarter Challenge

3rd Quarter Challenge

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This quarter has flashed by for me between traveling and taking classes. When I originally thought of the dimension theme, I had something different in mind to accomplish.  But as timing would have it, the Kristy Kun’s Texture Techniques with Heavy Needled Wool fell right into the quarter.  A few weeks ago Terri Simon aka Meterrilee shared her work with us from the class in this blog.  https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2016/09/16/guest-artist-terri-simon-on-dimensional-felt/

It took me a little longer to finalize my projects, but I would say they definitely qualify for dimensional felt.

For the first project the objective was to learn to add vertical prefelt to a square background. There were three different heights of the prefelt and I had no specific plan.  I just played with it to try to learn the technique which is much different than anything I’ve done before in wool.  I made some mistakes, but learned a lot in the process.

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Here is a side view to show the height.  This piece probably could have been worked a little longer to smooth it out more and I may try again.  But I had to move on to my other projects.

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The second project involved joining pieces to each other and being able to use colored batts.

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The last project was the flower.  This one took the most time and attention. Each petal had to be worked separately a number of times at different stages.  It was a very mindful and intense process, but well worth the effort.

20160924_155311 20160924_155325-1

For this project there were two sizes of prefelt and a number of different examples of flowers or the ability to create your own.  Since I was concentrating on learning the technique, I chose to follow an example.  But with all felt projects even though you may be following an example, the end result can be different.

I really enjoyed the class and learning such a different technique.  And of course, creating dimension in a unique way.  Thanks Kristy for a great class!

Have you finished your 3rd quarter challenge yet?  If not, there is still time.

Felted Flowers

Felted Flowers

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Along with the pink hat commission, ( https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2016/04/21/an-order-for-a-hat/)    a decorative flower was requested.

The flower is to be orange.  I did some dying to get some nice shades or orange. https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2016/04/30/i-did-some-dying-on-the-weekend/

I made several flowers so she will have a choice.

3 colour flower layout

This is the layout for 2 of the flowers I made. I wanted to try 2 different methods of making them. One is felted as separate pieces and finished like this:

3 colour flower fleted

The second set where started the same but then they were stacked with a resist between.

staked flower seperate staked flower together

I did put some plastic in as well . I was worried the felt would flatten out over the edges of the resist and stick together. My plan was to have the flower layers  all nicely felted together in the middle. It did not work that way. The floor underlay was to thick to let the middles  stick together properly. I should have gone with thin plastic wrap for the resist.

I needled them together part way through so in the end they look like this:

staked flower felted

I also made pieces for a bright sunny orange flower.

orange flower

And a different style of flower . I forgot to take a picture before felting. I made 6 petals that were shaped like a double pointed leaves. I did them separately so I could get them all the same size. I then put them together and made sure there was enough wool overlapping so that there would be no holes.  I added orange silk to make stripes on the petals and yellow in the middle to decorate it. I also added some green on the bottom.

pettled flower pettled flower botom

This shot shows you the depth of the flower.

pettled flower angle

I need to make the middles for the round layered flowers and I am gong to try to make some stamen for the petaled flower. That will be my daily dose of fiber tomorrow. I will take some pictures of them finished and show you  them and the hats the next time it”s my turn to Blog.

 

Felted Flower Class and Some Lambs

Felted Flower Class and Some Lambs

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I taught felted flowers this last week as a short evening class. We had a good time. This is proved by me not taking many pictures again.

First they did a morning glory style flower to get the idea of laying out. Some of the students had not ever used roving before. Here they are shaping their flowers.

shaping flowers morning glories

calenes morning gloryThis is Carlene’s flower

Next they made more delicate flowers using silk hankies and they learned to make stamen and stems.

Carlene’s again

carlenes silk flower

and everyone together

Flower class finnished

And be cause it’s spring her are some lamb pictures.

lamb on mom lambs and mom 2

when lambs are born we put them and their mom into a small pen to make sure mom has milk and  everything is going well. After a few days the lambs get their eartags and vaccinations. Then into a small group pen with other moms and lambs and then after a few more days out into the big group pen were they can get outside too. It is fun to run and jump with other lambs.

This is my house lamb, he is a preemie. He is very small with not much wool and no body fat. He was born late Tuesday night. And just because I like them here are the roosters roosting on some lambing pens for the night. They go to bed early as you see it is still daylight out.

preemie lamb roosters

2014 2nd Quarter Challenge

2014 2nd Quarter Challenge

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At the beginning of last month, Ann posted her 2nd Quarter Studio Challenge, the work of artist Stewart Stephenson. His work is very diverse, and I must admit I prefer his more abstract works, maybe because they are similar in style to my own oils and acrylics. I played it ‘safe’ with the first piece I made for this challenge, using one of his ‘sass’ flower paintings: Sassy Wildflowers:

sassy wildflowersI drew myself a little sketch, marked down which colours to use where, then laid out the wool. I did a similar thing for both pieces and the colours were quite a bit off! This is before felting:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd this is what it looked like after felting:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe other Stewart Stephenson pieces I quite like are his mixed media ‘line’ pieces. I’m not sure which mediums are used, some look to be just paint, some seem to be digital images or at least digitally altered. They all seem to be based on the idea of having a centre and working out from there. The one I mostly used for reference was ‘Line Up Now’.

lineup nowAgain, my colours were a bit off, and also his works don’t appear to be mirror images, but I liked the idea of that, so that’s how I did mine. This is a close up of one part before felting:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAMy girlfriend suggested I use some very dark blues and black on it, to give it more depth, so just before felting, I added those colours. This is what it looked like after felting.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI really like the way both pieces came out. I made them of a size big enough to make notebook covers, but I think they’ll stay as they are 🙂 We’ll be adding the entries to the Challenge Galleries, so if you’d like to be included just let us know. We also have a post on the forum where you can see other entries too.

Felted Flowers

Felted Flowers

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It has been busy around here as we are starting at a new Farmers’ market this weekend and we have been getting ready. This was difficult because they hadn’t sent us any thing about being accepted until a few days ago. There has not been much time for felting but I have managed to do a little. I made wet felted flower pins last year. They sold fairly well but the ones I had left seem tired looking so I am sprucing them up by needle felting some lines on them.
flowers

The other exiting thing is that a couple of weeks ago I wont the free give way from world of wool on face book. they sent me a grab bag of wool. The yellow and the purple seem to be silk but I am not sure because the didn’t label the different “balls”. It was a real surprise to win because I never will anything. the wools are great colours and will get put to good use.
wow prize

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