first quarter challenge – Felting and Fiber Studio

Some old jewelry, some new Jewelry and and Experiment.

February 2, 2020 shepherdessann Comments 13 comments

I was looking for some flat circles I made a week agone to try out some ideas for the 1st quarter challenge of Jewelry. LINK While I was rummaging around for where I had stashed them, I found these. I made them a long time ago. The long one was meant to be attached to a hair clip but it never happened. The small round one has a pin on the back.

I did find a few circles. Not the ones I made last week for this but these will do.

The first one is locks, I wanted to use them to make a pattern. I anchored the cut ends in the middle and then curled the ends around and back to the middle.

I left some of the longer ends sticking up but the first thing my mom said was, did you miss these ends? I guess they didn’t look deliberate. I felted them flat into the middle. I think I will add some beads to the middle for interest. Maybe one big bead but more likely some small purple beads

I think I will make some bigger circles so I can use some longer locks I have and make some hat pins. I think this would be good with alternating colours too

Next is my experiment. I watched this cool video of how to make a 3 arm St Bridget cross from straw. LINK I am not sure how something with 3 arms is a cross but that is what its called. It looks like one of those pagan things that got converted to Christian. Historically this happened a lot. There is a 4 arm st Bridgid cross too.

I thought some yarn might work for this If I anchored it in the middle of a backing piece. I envisioned the arms spreading out getting wider and wider making like a sunburst with a triangular middle. This is the first attempt. I laid them down side by side to get spreading but it really just looked a mess. I pulled it off and separated the strands and thought maybe if I wove the strands it would work better with yarn. It was messy too.

I pulled it off again and tried it keeping the yarn one over the other and lining it up with the angle instead of right up against the last thread. This one worked fairly well. At least it looked like a triangle in the middle. I think yarn is just too flexible and squishy. I am not sure it is useful for anything.

Have you made any jewelry for the Challange? or just for fun?

Natural Wools and First Quarter Challenge

March 18, 2018 zedster66 Comments 21 comments

We made thick mats/placemats/coasters at the well being group last week. I took in some natural wools, partly to keep costs down, but also because I really like the combination of colours and textures they create when used together. I made my base out of some Portuguese Merino batts I’d put through the drumcarder. The fibre was really short and had tiny nepps in. This is how the back looked:

The edges were a lot thinner, I didn’t add the top ‘decorative’ layer of wools as thickly there, so I got what I can’t help thinking of as a ‘pie crust’ effect:

Some of the wools I used were raw so kept their character:

Close up:

The ‘pie crust’ edges reminded me of when I made another natural piece years ago. I used lots of different wools, with different shrinkage rates, which created a similar effect on the edge. I used my steam iron to firm up and shrink the edges before cutting it into pices for small placemats and coasters. It was alsmost 8 years ago, and the mat has sat on my computer desk ever since. I do use it as a placemat, so don’t look too closely because I noticed it needs a wipe! This is how it looks today:

I found an original photos of it, it was a bit dark so I brightened it, and the colours look a bit different on the white background, but here it is 8 years ago:

Those of you who read my last post will know I was asking about print-on-demand sites for t-shirts. I don’t have an update on that yet, but while I was asking around at local printing shops, one of them mentioned transfers, which reminded me that years ago (probably about 11 or 12) I bought a pack of transfer papers to make t-shirts at home. I found the pack, but had lost the instructions (typical!). I also found some prints I made and never used because of a tiny ink splash. I thought I’d combine experimenting with how long I need to iron the prints with trying them on different surfaces for the First Quarter Challenge. The first thing I tried a print on was a felt sample. I can’t remember what wool I used, but judging by the tiny crimp/texture, I’d guess it’s either 18.5 mic Merino, or one of the fine Swedish wools Zara sent me. This is how it turned out:

It felt crispy! I did get a nice imprint from the hem of the tea towel I used to protect the wool, though:

The next thing I tried was a transfer print onto Muslin. I used a print I’d just made which had turned out wrong. It looked ok in parts:

But in other parts I didn’t iron it long enough and part of the transfer paper came off, but some didn’t … still won’t even after soaking:

The last attempt on muslin was a bit better. I probably should have ironed the muslin first, so I could line the print up with the weave:

If I hold it up to let the light through you can see the weave still:

And here’s a close up of the edge, it doesn’t feel quite as ‘crispy’ as the wool, but is definitely stiff with texture:

Now, I just have to try the samples and see how they felt 🙂

First Quarter Challenge Done.

March 7, 2017 shepherdessann Comments 20 comments

It’s not even the last day of march and I have my First Quarter Challenge piece done. Here is the link to the challenge if you haven’t see it yet. https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2016/12/31/2017-quarterly-challenges/

It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to remake an existing Fauvist painting. Then I remembered a couple of pictures I had when I was a child that had ballerinas in them. One was them dancing at night and one in a French garden. I doesn’t know where the pictures are now but what I remember is that they felt very happy. Fauvism should express emotion with simplified form and bold colour so that was the choice.

I did what I usually do for back grounds, a piece of cotton gauze between 2 pieces of prefelt. It measured about 14×14. Then I positioned my ballerinas. I used silk hanky pieces for the dresses.

I used prefelt, merino top and the large blue piece is a small left over piece of batt I made last year. I then wet it all down and felted it down to 12×12. For an art piece this seems to be enough shrinkage. the size lets me use it for my guilds upcoming art show celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday. https://www.facebook.com/events/282526522160719/

Here it is after felting I think it qualifies as Fauvist.

It was ok but I wanted to emphasise the ballerinas more so I made their skirts 3D by needle felting some more silk hanky on to them.

I liked it before but I like it much better now.

I hope those of you that haven’t made anything yet will be inspired to so something before the end of the month. It was fun.

Under Water Again

June 4, 2016 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 19 comments

I was really fascinated with Teri Berry’s book resist tutorial in January for the first Quarter Challenge. So, I decided to give it a try.

https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2016/01/22/book-resist-tutorial-by-teri-berry/

Since my mind has been under the sea lately, I doodled around and came up with a design that reminded me of coral. I decided to have an odd number of pieces.

I inverted the copies so the arms would be facing in different directions. I used an old shower curtain for the resist then sewed them together.

I soon discovered even though it was a heavy shower curtain it was challenging to get the fibers tight enough around the appendages. The first layer was Romney which may have been a mistake because it is a long staple.

After I covered all the sides with the Romney, I covered each side with nepps because I wanted a bumpy texture. Then the second layer were batts which combined natural hand dyed Domestic 56s with Madder that Cathy (Luvswool) had given me from her artist residency in Arkansas. https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2015/05/09/dyeing-with-plants/ I was a little short so I used some my own hand dyed orange Cheviot mixed in.

It was a large bundle so there was a lot of rubbing before I could do any rolling.

When I finally cut out the resist I had to use my finger to open up the appendages and rub and roll. My fingers got a real workout! Because the wool had expanded over the shower curtain resist I had to really work each “finger” to get them to shrink and not felt together. But the resulting lumpiness was the look I was going for.

Here it is drying.