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Up the North Fork

Up the North Fork

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Here is the fifth in my series of nuno felted landscapes. It is called Up the North Fork after a portion of the Flathead River here in Montana.

Here is the layout and after wet down and felted slightly.

And here it is after felting. You’ll notice that the foreground has wool on top in browns and orange. I decided to remove that because I wanted it to look more like a river and I think the silk does that better than the wool.

I added fabric trees and fused those in place before machine stitching. This is before I decided to remove the foreground wool. The plan was to shave it off. I tried that but finally decided just to pull it off. Then I shaved the edges a bit at the edge of the “river”.

And here is the finished piece after much stitching of trees and a huge variety of green threads changed in and out of the sewing machine. The photo on the left shows the organic edges and the one on the right is cropped as if matted and framed.

I did talk to a framer about these 6 pieces and he thought I should keep the organic edges. His suggestion is to attach each piece to a matching background fabric, stitch the piece in place and then wrap the background fabric around foam core board. Then I could use a simple black frame and the background fabric will look like the matting. And you can still appreciate the organic edges. So I think I will try that and see how I like it. Only one more piece to finish and I’ll start choosing the background fabrics and get the pieces ready for framing.

Sunset at the Lake

Sunset at the Lake

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Here’s another one of the nuno felt pieces I made in April.

This one was originally supposed to go this way with the silk at the top being the sky.

But then I decided to turn it into a sunset and this orientation worked better for that. So the silk became the lake.

I added some tree shapes in hand dyed cheese cloth.

Then ironed those down with fusible. The fusible keeps them in place when free motion machine stitching and prevents the foot from catching on the loose pieces and moving them around.

I then added machine stitching to the trees, made shadows on to the lake and created the sunset. I also added a few lines to the water to make it look a bit more lake like. I used a variety of thread colors especially in the sunset.

Here is the result and better than I expected. About halfway through the sunset, I thought it was going to look terrible but I pushed on through and it worked. I wish the sun wasn’t so near the center of the piece but I do think it looks better when it is cropped and I can change the cropping if I really want to cut a little bit more off the right edge. I have two more of these to go and then I need to get them all framed. The set of 6 will be shown in an exhibition in September.

 

 

1st Quarter Challenge – Fauvism Interpretation

1st Quarter Challenge – Fauvism Interpretation

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I was attracted to the Fauvism movement due to its simplicity and bright, saturated colors. But when it got down to creating a felt piece, I was a bit stuck. I decided I would use prefelt to keep the simplicity of shapes. I used only the prefelt that I already had so I was a bit limited in my color choices. I decided to do a basic landscape and didn’t use an inspirational photo as I normally would. Sorry, but I forgot to take a photo of the layout.

Felted Fauvism ChallengeHere’s the piece after felting. I used a thick thin yarn for the detail in the foreground. I liked it but I decided it was a bit boring and needed further detail in the foreground.

Adding Tree Shapes

So I added a line of trees. This is felt that I had dyed and used Color Magnet on but it didn’t work out too well. So I cut out the tree shapes and hand appliqued them in place. But it still needed a bit more. I got out my hand dyed wool thread to see what I could add with hand stitching.

Fauvism Mountain Range

I outlined the mountains and added some orange for a nice contrast to the blue moon.

I then added some bright green to accentuate the trees. My husband thought they were leaves before I added the stitching so I wanted to make the stitching look like branches and not veins in leaves.

Completed Fauvism Challenge Piece

I added just a little bit of stitching in the foreground to complete the piece. And I’m happy with the result. It is certainly not something I would have created without this challenge as it definitely is out of “my style”. But it was fun. Have you tried something for the first quarter challenge? It was fun and the colors certainly cheered me up on a grey, snowy day here in Montana.