felting – Page 4 – Felting and Fiber Studio

Demo Last Weekend

September 29, 2017 Shepherdessann Comments 11 comments

This last weekend my guild did a Demo at the Carp Fair I went on the Sunday. I took a blending board to make some more rollags. I had some hand cards with me and I had a spindle I was spinning a rollag on so I could explain it all. It was very popular with the visitors to the fair. .

Bernadette was spinning Rambouillet on her wheel. In this picture she is Chain plying it.

Jan was working On the Edo Challenge. And Yes that is an octopus. I am hoping to get her to do a post about her progress. Here she is explaining it to some visitors.

Her fish was there on display and tried to eat a passing child.

Julie was weaving. She is doing shibori on the loom. She weaves the draw strings right into the scarf ready to be tightened up and then dyed. She has a finished sample onto of her loom.

And lastly 2 of the display tables.

I didn’t get any of the third table except Jan’s Fish. We had a great time chatting with people about spinning, weaving and felting. Have you been doing your crafts in public lately?

Fibrefest.

September 13, 2017 Shepherdessann Comments 13 comments

This last weekend was Fiberfest. I was a vendor. Set up was Friday afternoon and the sale was Saturday and Sunday. It was a good sale and I didn’t take a lot of pictures. Here are the few I took of my booth.

You can see my new table drape with my name. I should have got a better picture of it. I always forget when I am busy.

Here are some pictures of some of the new scarves in progress. I had planned on taking more pictures especially finished ones but I ended up in a rush to get done and packed.

This is some softsilk. I got a small bag at another fiber festival. When I looked at it on line it looks like the silk sari threads. I think it may be but it has been shredded finer. It is very soft as the name implies.

After set up I went home to make tarts for the farmers market on Saturday morning, Strawberry and Blueberry.

My husband son and Mom will be going while I am at Fibrefest.

It was a busy but fun weekend

A Zed Inspired Book Cover

August 4, 2017 Shepherdessann Comments 10 comments

I bought myself a new sketch pad that is in a book form rather then a flip pad. I decided I wanted to cover it in the way that Zed had last shown us here project-updates-2/

I am lazy and wanted to get to the decorating so I started with a piece of white prefelt. I didn’t take a picture of it but you can see it in the picture of attaching the cord farther down. This is the overall piece just wet down.

Here is a closer look at the flowers and the little resist I put in for a pocket. I want to be able to put a pencil eraser nd pencil sharpener in the cover. I used some of my handspun for the stems.

The area with the pocket will be cut off and sewn in to make the sleeve on one side of the book cover.

I flipped it over and started to layout the purple for the inside when I realised I hadn’t added the cord yet.

I made a hole and stuck it in.

Then I decorated the inside of the flap. I am not sure how this will work out but we will see.

Now all I have to do is find time to do the felting and sewing. Not sure where half the summer has gone already. How much felting have you done this summer?

Making a Feather

June 25, 2017 Shepherdessann Comments 16 comments

I had and odd special request several weeks ago, could I make a feather. Well sure I suppose I could, I say. A feather would do, but preferably if it could be held like a quill pen, it would be better. Sure I say, I can do that……. Next Figure out how to do that….

I started with this wool from Ashland Bay https://www.ashlandbay.com/sandalwood.

The first one I made was to flimsy so I did a second. I laid out the wool from a line in an upward angel to look like the lines on the vane of a feather. I did 2 of these one for each side of the feather.

I made the quill by wrapping a pipe cleaner in white wool and rolling it in a mat. After they were felted and fulled I cut one side of each strait so I could attach it to the quill part. I attached them by needle felting the vain to the quill. If you look close you can see the vain colour poking through the quill

To get the right shape for the feather I went to google images and searched for drawings of feathers for kids to colour. I printed out the one I liked and then drew around it to make it a little bigger. I cut it out and pined it to the wool and trimmed it.

Here is the Front and back finished.

I am generally happy but would have liked to have time to do another one. I like the way the vain looks in parts but would have liked the direction of the wool layout to remain more. I really like the upper part of the right side of the right picture. I was surprised at how much the purpley blue disappeared. I would like to make the quill part thinner next time but I am not sure how to do that and still have it stiff enough and with enough wool to attach the vain sides to it.

How would you tackle the problem of making a feather?

Second Quarter Challenge

March 31, 2017 Shepherdessann Comments 13 comments

I can’t believe it is April first tomorrow and time for the second quarter Challenge. We are doing Art periods this year. I decided to do Celtic art. Well then I started looking and of course it is not that simple. I decided to go with Early Celtic art, a term used for a period, stretching in Britain to about 150 AD. The other name for it is the La Tène period (broadly 5th to 1st centuries BC) this is a period when there were not so many “Celtic” knots and more people and animals in the art along with many swirls. I think of Celtic as being Irish but it starts over in Switzerland and spread out from there. I think, if I am reading it correctly, it’s the romans that squashed it over towards Ireland where it survive because the romans didn’t make it there.

This is a good reference http://www.ancient-celts.com/ancientvsmedievalart6.html these pictures came form this site.

I haven’t had time to make anything yet myself but I do love swirls and spirals.

Wikipedia has a lot more information that I won’t rewrite here for you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_art There are links to more information if you want the history part. And her are more pictures to inspire you art link . I hope you enjoy creating in this style. Please post your creations over on the forum. We like to see what everyone is doing, beginners and experts alike.

Felted Birdhouse Class

March 15, 2017 Shepherdessann Comments 12 comments

Hi everyone I am a day or two behind so please forgive the late post. On Sunday I had 3 ladies for a Felt Birdhouse class. There should have been 4 but one lady was sick. I hope she is feeling better now.

Here is the start, 2 gourd shapes and a circle.

Locks where very popular this class. Carlene ( blue ) brought lots her own and some threads as well. This is side one

side two after wetting

Healing the cut after making the hole to get the resist out and let the bird in.

And all finished. We used Corriedale wool and you can see the shrinkage, about 1.3. The brown took more work to shrink for some reason. I hadn’t had the colour make any difference before.

They got sent home with instructions to blow up a balloon or some scrunched up plastic bags inside to get it to dry in a nice round shape. Carlene posted some pictures of her birdhouse on facebook when it was dry.

You will notice there is a red lock missing at 4:00. So she has added one with some felting needles. I think it turned out great.

Have you done any felting in preparation for springs arrival? We just had 15 cm of snow dropped on us and it is still snowing so thoughts of spring are all we have.

Merry Christmas Everyone

December 25, 2016 Shepherdessann Comments 11 comments

Wow it is hard to believe it’s Christmas already. Seems like just yesterday we were complaining about the decorations being in the store to early.

I had two partners in the our holiday card exchange this year. Tricia sent me 2 lovely cards that arrived a few days ago.

Marilyn’s card arrived Friday just in time for Christmas. the picture doesn’t do it justice. the bow and wreath are both sparkly.

This is the card I sent to Marilyn

The card I sent to Tricia that has arrived just in time.

Just one more that I made this year and sent to a friend.

About The Studio Site

December 11, 2016 zedster66 Comments 16 comments

Can you believe it’s just over 5 years since we first started the Felting and Fiber Studio site and blog? We’ve had a lot of new visitors and commentors on the blog recently, and lots of new members on the forum too, so I thought it might be time to do a reminder about everything we have to offer here on the Studio site. The main page where all the blog posts appear is the ‘Home‘ page. Whenever you open the website up, this will be the page it brings you to, so after having a good look around, click ‘Home’ to bring you back here.

The ‘Contact Us‘ page is for getting in touch with us about anything which doesn’t relate to any of the blog posts or other pages. Maybe you have an idea for a Guest Post, or some info we can add to the site, or just want to make sure you don’t miss out on any classes! Leave your name and contact email and send us a message in the ‘comment’ box.

In the drop down menu under ‘Online Classes‘, you’ll find a list of the classes we offer.

If you hover over each one in the menu, you’ll find they all have sub-pages, where you will find more information, testimonials and galleries of work produced by the students who took the classes.

The ‘About Us’ page tells you a little bit about why we started the Studio site, and there are sub pages for each of us with some info about ourselves and our interests.

The Felting page gives a brief outline about what felting is, and in the drop down menu, different types of felting: Machine, Needle, Nuno and Wet, all have their own pages with more in depth info and sub-pages with galleries of examples.

Most fibre artists like to branch out a bit from their main area of interest, and you probably know from our blog posts that we do too, so it’s no surprise we have a ‘Mixed Media‘ section on the website. As well as the Mixed Media page, there are sub-pages for Beading, Hand Stitching, Machine Stitching and Surface Design. Each of these pages also have gallery pages featuring lots of work and inspiration.

The Fibers section is packed full of information about wool and other animal fibres. The main Fibers page explains some of the different terms that are used to describe wool in its various stages of processing. The Wool and Other Animal Fibers page has a lot of information about wool, and animal fibres such as Alpaca, Angora goat, Llama and Camel. There is also an explanation of the Micron and Bradford Count systems of measuring a fibre’s fineness or coarseness; and a PDF guide to the most common sheep breeds and their Bradford and Micron numbers. The gallery page features photos of different animal fibres. Preparing Fibers has a guide to processing your own wool, from washing a raw fleece to carding it into fluffy batts ready for felting or spinning. There is a photo set and detailed description. And if you want to go even further in fibre prep, have a look at the Dyeing page for some inspiration.

The ‘Other Fibers‘ section has lots of photos and info about the fibres and fabrics we commonly use in felting such as silk and organza fabrics; fibre prepared into tops like bamboo, banana, viscose, and the more unusual fibres like crimped nylon, plastic and Angelina fibres.
There are individual pages for Silk; other Protein Fibres; Cellulose Fibres, Synthetic Fibres and also Fabrics. The gallery sub-pages for each one feature lots of uses of all the different fabrics and fibres.

A site full of info wouldn’t be complete without a Tutorials section. There are free Dyeing, Felting, Fiber preparation and Mixed media tutorials all written by one of us, including a video on how to make your own roving using a diz, PDFs on Degumming silk and dyeing it; Stitching on felt, making mixed media wall art, using a sander for wet-felting, a beginners guide to using a drop spindle and dyeing with food colouring.

And if you can’t find what you want there, there are also links to outside sites in the Links/Resources section, including rosiepink’s free felting tutorials and their fantastic e-book showing how to make amazing felt artwork and some felting and fibre suppliers too. A fairly recent addition to the site is the ‘Shop‘, where you can safely and securely buy various books, e-books and tutorials on wet felting and needle felting.

One thing the Felting and Fiber Studio site needs and which has helped it be so succesful is a Community.

We’ve been so lucky to get to know and become friends with so many like-minded people from all over the world. From 4 of us starting the site 5 years ago with a handful of supportive friends commenting and spreading the word, we’ve grown to have almost 350 regular followers; a very popular forum; lots of fellow fibre artists and bloggers regularly contributing with guest posts; and really popular online classes. So as well as this post being a guide to what’s available on the site, it’s also a chance to say Thank You to everyone who’s been with us since day one, and to those who’ve joined us along the way, and supported us not only with blog views and comments and writing blog posts, but with sponsoring banners on the forum to pay for hosting and to keep it ad-free. Thanks! 🙂

Guild Show and Sale

November 7, 2016 Shepherdessann Comments 10 comments

Just home form 2 days as a vendor at my guilds annual show and sale. It was a busy weekend. we stayed open late on Saturday night but with it being the first time it wasn’t busy. It did give us time to look at each others things and have some good chats with fellow vendors, so not all bad. It did make for a very long day, 10am to 8 pm. Sunday morning before everyone got there I took some movies of the show so you can see it. They are not grate but I am doing better at moving slower and smoother. I hope you enjoy them.

My both is the second one you see, in the corner.

I don’t seem to have any programs on my computer that edit video. I thought I did but the programs that will show me the video want me to buy and upgrade to be able to do anything with the video. these videos were done with my iPhone What do you use to edit video?

Makers Faire

October 22, 2016 Shepherdessann Comments 18 comments

Last weekend we did a demo at the makers fair. It was the busiest dem I have ever done. Next year we will take more people. Almost 6000 adult ticket were sold. Children were free. My voice was almost gone by the end of the first day. I wondered if I would be able to talk on Sunday. But years of practice talking too much paid off and I was good to go in the morning and lasted all day.

Jan is on the left for weaving, Elizabeth in the middle doing spinning and weaving and then my place is on the right were I had people making wet felted felt beads.

And a little closer, the elephant was made by Elizabeth on a ridged heddle loom.

This is my how to make a had display

These are the guild sample books. One for sheep, one for other animal fibers and cullies fibers, and one to other fibers. the black at the front is Kevlar.

First Jan dressed her loom, and then started a sample piece for a Viking blanket. She has found information on several way these were done so now she is figuring out what will work best for her.

And this was me most of both days. Jan had a hard time getting a picture of me as I was always surrounded by not just children but also adults wanting a turn.

One of the Leaders form this group came and made a bead so she could use it as a spacer in one of the machines that had some had some metal parts hitting each other.