Felting and Fiber Studio

In my last post, I showed you the beginnings of a tree trunk that I have been creating. Next up was to make a branch, leaves and lichen for the trunk.

The branch was made from the fringe that I cut off when I felted the tree trunk. There is extra fringe at the top of the photo above and the branch that I created from a similar piece of scarf below. I did a bit of twisting, tacking it down with a felting needle and then wet felted the branch.

I painted some lightweight interfacing and some nylon organza to make the lichen. It was fun to make lichen in purple!

Here’s the set up that I use for burning synthetic fabric. It gives off bad odors so I put a piece of glass on my stovetop, turn on the fan in the vent hood and burn with a soldering iron first. Once I get the shapes, then I use a heat gun to further shrink and change the shape of the fabric. It shrinks the fabric down, so you need to burn out more pieces than you think you need. (Make sure to be very careful with the soldering iron and keep it away from your fingertips. You also might want to wear a mask.)

Here’s the burnt interfacing on the left and the result after heating with the heat gun on the right. I usually tear these pieces up into smaller sections as that looks more like the way lichen grows on tree trunks. Do you like the little dog at the bottom? Totally unplanned.

Here’s the nylon organza. I do both the interfacing and the organza because they each give a different texture. That way when mixed together, it looks more like real lichen.

Next up was to create the leaves. I used tea bag papers that I painted. I wanted a soft peach-pink color but ended up with more of an orange color. Oh well, I kept going. The top right shows the tea bag papers layered with two papers and then free motion machine stitched to make veins. Then I cut out the leaves to the correct shape and then used a soldering iron to burn bits away and make little holes. Now they look like fall leaves.

But I was still unhappy with the color. I definitely wanted them less orange and more pink. So I took some leftover tea bag paper and tried several different media to see what I liked best. I ended up using the pink colored pencil. Now to stitch it all together and see if it needs anything else, but you will have to wait until June for that post.