felting techniques – Felting and Fiber Studio

Surface Design Elements

August 22, 2017 zedster66 Comments 16 comments

I made an accidental landscape picture last week at the well-being centre. I’d taken lots of the wool kebab tubes in for a play around and thought I’d see how laying them in 2 different directions worked out. I put the middle lot of tubes on first, then the diagonal ones at the top, then filled in the gaps at the sides with a couple more on each end. We were talking about the bag of dyed embellishments I’d taken in and I pulled out some cotton and fluffed it up, and noticing some gaps on my layout, thought I’d add it to show how it felted. It looks kind of futuristic, in a non gloomy or dystopian kind of way:

The mix of fibres is more apparent on an angle:

One of the grey angled tubes was made from weird tops I got in a mostly grey bag of Botany lap, it is a soft natural wool blended with something like Angelina. I never thought I’d find a use for it, but wrapped around a skewer it looked kind of industrial, like something with copper wires poking out. I tried to get a good close up:

I thought I’d try making a piece with the tubes kind of crammed on, instead of laying them out neatly next to each other, because they tend to move a bit and leave gaps. I didn’t over do it, just added two or 3 more than if I’d positioned them. I also wanted to see what the tubes looked like if they were stretched, so I pulled some of them from each end until they were the right size to fit accross the layout:

On an angle:

I liked the contrast of the shiny red and yellow bamboo on the Sapphire blue of these:

These next couple of pieces are made with wool and fibre twists. I used quite a lot of the tops from my weird grey/black and white botany lap waste bag for the twists used on this, plus a few blends of my own:

An angled pic of course:

And a sideways close up:

I thought it’d be nice to show twists used simply because not everyone wants to make something which looks ‘real’, I cut the twists in half, and then made some little woolly balls to go in the gaps:

It has a kind of swaying seaweedy feel to it:

**EDIT: I realised it isn’t easy to visualise making the wool tubes with the kebab skewers, so I’ve done a quick video:

Second Quarter Stephenson Challenge

June 21, 2014 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 18 comments

I’ve been working on the challenge on and off for a couple of months. My first impulse was to chose his Blue Vertigo.

I made some batts and used them to make the circular design. I pulled strips off the batt and laid them out. Then added bits of colors as needed.

This piece worked out well, but I wanted to try another of his watercolor like pieces. So, the next one was based on his Purple Rooftop.

I used some black pencil roving in the middle, a black background underneath in the center of the piece to help shadow the reflection in the pond and some mulberry silk for a reflective effect. Unfortunately, the purple wasn’t as obvious in mine after felting.

Stephenson’s Green Love reminded me of the carving technique I learned in Fiona’s class, so I wanted to try that, too.

The background is black prefelt and with a white center of merino over cotton batting and some of the radiating lines with different colored roving. The carvings weren’t as wide, but I like the effect.