felt surface design – Felting and Fiber Studio

Registration Opens for Online Classes and a Question

April 2, 2019 ruthlane Comments 6 comments

Registration is now open for the four online classes Embellishing Felt with Surface Design Techniques – A Mixed Media Approach. These are all a fun, experimental approach to adding different types of surface design to felt. Any of these approaches will encourage you to create unique felt in your own style. I hope you will join me this spring in learning something new! (If you aren’t interested in a class, just skip to the end of this post for a question.)

All classes are online and last a total of 6 weeks with 4 weeks of instruction and 2 more extra weeks of tutor/instructor support. All classes are taught with PDF’s and videos. PDF’s are available for download for future use and videos are available for the 6 week time period. Classes will begin April 19th and cost $45 US each. I would recommend taking the classes one at a time. There will be another session of classes offered in the fall.

Nuno Felted Paper Fabric Lamination, Ruth Lane

Nuno Felting with Paper Fabric Lamination

Paper fabric lamination is a technique of essentially gluing paper to sheer fabric in a specific design. It is not a new technique and has been used by fiber artists for a long time. When I first learned the technique, I wondered how I would use the result. Many artists use paper fabric lamination and layer the results together with stitching and other methods. When I looked at my samples, I saw sheer fabric with a design and thought “Why not try nuno felting with it?” I tried it, it worked, and I loved the results. It was a way to use my own designs and create a piece of nuno felt that was completely different and in my own style. Click on the link above to register, scroll down the page and fill out the contact form.

Screen Printed Felt Journals by Ruth Lane

Experimental Screen Printing on Felt

Screen printing has long been one of my favorite techniques and I love its quirky look on felt. This class shows you the basics of many different screen printing techniques and you will learn an experimental approach that will allow you to take these ideas and expand them into your own unique style. Click on the link above to register, scroll down the page and fill out the contact form.

Printing, Stenciling, and Playing with Thickened Dye on Felt

What you will learn:

How to make a print board
How to make thickened dye
How to transfer your designs
Choosing what designs are appropriate for stencils and stamps
Creating stencils from a variety of supplies
Cutting and burning stencils
Creating stamps from a variety of supplies
Cutting a linoleum type stamp
Burning a stamp from insulation foam
Looking at items around the house with a new eye for use in creating patterned felt
How to play with thickened dye
How to stamp and stencil with thickened dye on to felt

Click on the link above to register, scroll down the page and fill out the contact form.

Free Motion Machine Stitching on Felt

You will learn the basics of free motion stitching. I will show you the basic techniques and equipment needed as well as give you lots of practice ideas to improve your skills. Next you will learn about machine lace techniques and how to incorporate them into felt making. You will learn to use a hoop in the machine with water soluble fabric. Then learn about thread sketching. We’ll start out with easy designs and then progress to how to use water soluble fabric to transfer a design and free hand thread sketching. Lastly, you will learn about experimentation and moving forward with your newly found free motion machine skills. I will show you how to add stitch to a felt painting as well as other ideas in how to use your sewing machine to enhance felt. Click on the link above to register, scroll down the page and fill out the contact form.

Wet Felting For Beginners

As always, our Wet Felting for Beginners Course is always available. Click on the link above to register, scroll down the page and fill out the contact form.

Now if you have made it down this far, I have a question for you. I have finally finished my Level 3 Art and Design class and I want to add some more tutorials here at The Felting and Fiber Studio. What types of things would you like to learn about? These will be fairly simple tutorials or tips, so do you have a burning felting question that I can answer for you? Is there a technique that you don’t understand? Or do you have tip or technique that you’d like to share? Let me know. I will be creating some new content soon so keep your eyes peeled 🙂

Third Quarter Challenge – Beneath the Surface

July 4, 2018 ruthlane Comments 12 comments

This year’s challenge theme is all about surface design. So you would think that most surface design is just that, the top layer of embellishments added to the surface. But wool is such an interesting fiber. You can add things underneath the top layer of wool that will affect the surface design. So that is this quarter’s challenge. To add something underneath the top layer of wool that will change the surface after felting. I am using photos from our library here on the website so not all of these photos are of my work. But these are to give you some ideas.

One of the things that you can put beneath the surface are inclusions such as marbles. Here Ann has made some felt cuffs where the marbles definitely change the surface design. You can leave them in, take them out or cut them partially open to have the marble or inclusion partially exposed.

Here are a few more pieces that have inclusions in the felt. I have used yarn, a felt bead, marbles, and a glass color sample. I have also created craters with a different color wool underneath to create a complementary color scheme.

You could also use resists under the top layer of wool to create a design. By having a different color underneath, you will expose the contrasting underneath color when the resist is cut out and removed. The piece on the right is cut back applique where three layers of felt were stitched together and portions were cut back to reveal the design.

Another method of changing the surface from beneath is to have two or more layers of wool in different colors, these can be stitched as in the photo above to create ridges and then cut back. Or you could try this with felt beads with layers of color and then cut them to use on a surface. Or if you created a vessel with thick walls with multiple color layers, you could carve parts of the vessel back to show the different colors. There are many options with this technique.

Using a coarser wool under a finer wool will change the surface design as well. In the photo above, Terri Berry used a Gotland wool underneath the top surface teal merino. She used a plastic resist to create the pattern under the merino. The Gotland migrates through the merino and the only teal merino left is where the plastic pattern blocked the migration. You can read her entire post about it here.

You can use different wool underneath to achieve a different texture on the surface. These two samples were created by Zed with two layers in each sample. The sample on the left is Mixed 56’s on the bottom covered by 18.5 mic Merino. The sample on the right is two layers of 18.5 mic Merino. The coarser wool underneath gives a different texture than the two layers of Merino. (Thanks Zed!)

One very simple way to change the surface is to use a different color underneath the top layer. As you can see in the photo above, the red on the black wool looks different from the red on the white wool.

There are many more ways I have seen that people have created different surface designs by what they put underneath that top layer of wool. These are just a few examples to get you started. What can you create by changing the surface design from beneath the surface? I hope you’ll give it a try. And if you create something for the challenge, please show us over on the forum.

Year End Round Up

December 28, 2017 zedster66 Comments 12 comments

I hope everyone’s enjoying the Holidays 🙂 I have one more scarf and scarf sample left to show you. This first one is a grey marl Merino on hand dyed cotton gauze. I blended up 4 shades of 18.5 mic Merino, 2 greys, a duck egg and black. It wasn’t very easy to get photos, they kept turning out blue!:

The sample is a fabric which might look familiar as I bought 3 scarves with the same design in different colours. I think this is the first time I tried it with 18.5 mic Merino:

Whenever we do posts looking back over the year, I think I haven’t done much, but then get surprised! I think there was a definite theme of texture and surface design for me this year, so, here’s a slide show of some of the things I’ve enjoyed making this year:

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Thanks for reading over the past year and leaving comments, I hope to see you in the New Year!

Embellishing Felt with Surface Design Techniques – A Mixed Media Approach Online Course Registration is Now Open!

December 16, 2017 ruthlane Comments 2 comments

You can now register for any of the four modules of Embellishing Felt with Surface Design Techniques – A Mixed Media Approach. Just hop over to the online classes page that you’re interested in and fill out the form at the bottom of the page. All four modules will be starting January 5, 2018. I would suggest taking these classes one at a time and not trying to double up or take them all at once. They are all online four week classes with an extra two weeks of tutor support and make up time if you get behind. Click on any of the links below to register or for more information about the class. Each module will be offered on a quarterly basis and the class schedules are listed on each page.

Nuno Felting with Paper Fabric Lamination

Experimental Screen Printing on Felt

Printing, Stenciling and Playing with Thickened Dye on Felt

Free Motion Machine Stitching on Felt

As always, our beginners class is always available with unlimited access so you can sign up at any time.

Wet Felting for Beginners

And then it all went wrong.

August 1, 2015 shepherdessann Comments 23 comments

I have been making some tea cozies ready for fall shows. While I was having a visit at my friend Maureen’s I came across one of her samples and used it for inspiration for texture on a tea cozy.

I really liked the contrast of the orange and the blue and the purple silk on top. I picked 2 shades of orange and 2 shades or blue and laid them out separately.

I wanted a different shape to the cut outs and some movement across the piece. I cut the resists out of some thin floor underlay.

I wrapped the orange around the resist and wet it down before adding the resist for the texture. I then added on the blue piece, wet it down and flipped it.

This is the second side with the resist in place. It all looked very promising. I spent a lot of time rubbing this piece, especially in the holes of the resist. When the whole thing started to shrink I decided to cut out the resists to continue fulling. The first cut out wasn’t so bad

They cut out but they are just barely attached. Then I did the other side. That is when it all went wrong.

Most of the pieces were not attached at all. I think the problem is the resist was to thick and the holes were to small. I have all the pieces so I think I will needle felt them on and then finish the fulling. I was disappointed but nothing ventured nothing gained.

Year End Round Up

December 30, 2014 zedster66 Comments 26 comments

Every year I think I never had much time to do everything I wanted, but at least I did get to do some things which I enjoyed. I always enjoy the challenges we do on the Studio site and seeing everyone’s entries. I think this was my favourite piece from all the challenges, from Ann’s Stewart Stephenson challenge:

I tried a few new things this year, one of them was making a hat for the first time:

I also tried commercial prefelt pieces kindly donated by Heidi Feathers.

I also tried a new embellishment fibre, Kapok:

And some new animal fibres. This is yak, it was the softest fibre I’d ever felt (or felted!):

Until I got some camel fibre, even softer!:

I know a lot of people prefer to make felt with a ‘purpose’, but I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of experimenting and trying combinations of different wool breeds or animal fibres with various embellishment fibres, just for the fun of it. A few of my favourite pieces: Dark Brown Corriedale with Ingeo: