mixed media felt – Felting and Fiber Studio

First Quarter Challenge – Mixed Media Surface Design

January 17, 2018 ruthlane Comments 29 comments

As many of you may know, I do a lot of mixed media on felt. I especially enjoy trying out ideas that are not usually considered appropriate for felt. Some work, some don’t, but I do like to see what happens. The mad scientist in me, I guess. My latest explorations are in paint pouring. You can find tons of YouTube videos about how to do this so I’m not going to go into the details here. Paint pouring is usually done on canvas or hard surfaces. But I wanted to see what would happen when I poured on felt or on cotton fabric. Would it work? Would I be able to machine stitch through the fabric or felt after the paint was dry? What else could I do with a piece of fabric or felt that had paint poured on it?

Our group got together last Friday to do a session of paint pouring. Everyone else was pouring on canvas, board, ceramic tile or some other flat surface. I had prepared a couple of canvas ahead of time by covering with felt or cotton fabric and stapling the backside while stretching the fabric tight.

Here’s the backs of the canvas and then the front sides. The dark purple one is the felt.

Normally you follow a procedure as above that Sally poured on a black ceramic tile. It’s really a lot of fun doing this because the results are pretty random with this type of pour and it is exciting to watch and see the changes that occur in the paint.

Here’s the tile after it’s completely covered. It wasn’t dry yet so it probably still changed from this photo but you get the idea.

I started with the cotton fabric covered canvas. I poured some white paint on the corners to cover completely. Corners are the last to get covered usually and I didn’t want any issues because the paint didn’t travel as well as on canvas.

Then I did a “dirty pour” as seen in Sally’s tile photos above. And it worked! I haven’t seen the dried piece yet as it is still at Paula’s house. These take a while to dry.

Next up felt! I should have done the same type of pour that I did on the cotton but I decided to try pouring the different colors separately which you can see on the left. The minute the paint hit the felt, it barely spread at all. Very little mixing of paint. So I decide to try adding more black and white paint at the edges and spreading them lightly over the surface. That is the photo on the right. Ugh. Pretty ugly and disappointing. Again, I haven’t seen it dried yet and we’ll see if it can be salvaged in some way. The next step is to take it off the canvas once it’s dry and see if it can be stitched. Hopefully, I won’t kill my sewing machine.

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Here are some other people’s results on various substrates. We had a great time and I will carry on with my experiment once it is dry. I’ll show you the results even if they are the ugliest thing ever!

Mixed Media Piece From Felt Scraps

May 17, 2013 zedster66 Comments 29 comments

Last year I was talking about sorting my felt and fibre scraps into categories. I sorted my felt offcuts by size ranging from long and wide to short and narrow. This photo shows them. I was trying to work out what to do with the smallest pieces. I wondered how it’d look if I just pushed them close together on top of a piece of fabric and sewed them into place. So, I tried. I started in the centre with some red pieces, and they worked alright, so I added more. I kept to similar colours and added some pieces of fabric too because I liked how the nuno felt pieces looked. I also added some art yarns for a bit more texture. I kept adding and sewing until the red section was done, then I worked on the blue part and did the green part last. When it was finished it looked like this:

I kept turning it around, folding it, measuring it. I made sure the piece of fabric I worked on was big enough for a book cover, but the finsihed piece was too thick for that. I turned it over, folded it again and measured a bit more, then decided I could make a book cover out of it if I cut it and used different felt for the inside flaps. So, more measuring, hunting for felt and sewing of felt to fabric. This is what the inside looked like before I’d quite finished the bottom edge:

And, this is what it looked like once all the edges were finished:

I’m not sure whether I prefer it with the red part on the front:

Or whether I like the blue better:

I had quite a good sized piece left over, and I actually really like the green part the best, so I thought I’d use it for a gadget/camera/phone case. This is one side: