Browsed by
Tag: #needlfelt picture

21) adjusting the Pink Sweatshirt the little pet combs are being used as carders as blend purles, pink and a bit of light grey and white
Part 2, Maureen Shared her vacation, which became A Little Needle Felted Landscape

Part 2, Maureen Shared her vacation, which became A Little Needle Felted Landscape

Comments 15 comments

Part 2 of Jan’s picture.

Now that i have sat and thought for a while, lets get back to felting fun!!

Monday, July 22nd: I have spent some time to consider, looked at my digitized progress felting, and have decided what to do next. The shadow is not deep enough in the sweatshirt, the spinning wheel needs more definition, and the suggestions of flowers, need more suggestions. Let’s see if I spot anything else I need to improve.

I had a short-staple small batt of yellow that had tiny nepps in it. I would not have had fun spinning it but a tiny pinch and a pair of embroidery scissors shortened the fibres even further and I got the nepps to look a bit more like yellow flowers.

adding the suggestion of yellow wildflowers17) adding the suggestion of yellow wildflowers

I had some carded top in white that I pulled off a staple length, then cut it into short bits about ¼ inch to maybe 1cm long. I then opened out the fibre creating more of a cobweb, that, was positioned where I wanted bits of white flowers to be.

Top cut with scissors 1/4 inch or about 1cm18)Top cut with scissors

That’s a bit better….

19) the wisps of short fibers of white, teased into loose cobwebs to suggest many little white flowers amongst the various greens19) the wisps of short fibers of white, teased into loose cobwebs to suggest many little white flowers amongst the various greens

The yellow is still a bit too intense…yellow can do that, I laid over a light spiders-web-whips of white. It’s getting better. Now let’s try to define the wheel a bit better.

20) I like the wheel, but let’s fix the pink top it had deeper shadows.20) I like the wheel, but let’s fix the pink top it had deeper shadows.

21) adjusting the Pink Sweatshirt the little pet combs are being used as carders as blend purles, pink and a bit of light grey and white21) adjusting the Pink Sweatshirt

Hum. No the edges are too strong but I like the tonal values, they are a little darker looking in the photo than the felt.

The angles are not quite right yet, let me fix that. There is something odd with the shorts too, they’re too short.

seeing more spots that need a bit more work 22) a few more spots that need work

Ah, looking at the angle of the back is not right. I think it was a wisps that extended themselves a bit wider when I wasn’t watching. The angle at the elbow is also a bit off…  I can fix that too.  This may be due to not putting a reference frame in as I was transferring the image and the image slipped a bit as I was using the Sharpie. I will remember to use pins and more reference points next time.

Oh now I have to do a bit of touch-up on Ann’s Sheep so I will get back to this later this week.

 

Wednesday, July 24th:

Marie is having another woolly Wednesday on YouTube, so while I wait for that to start I am continuing to fix the sweatshirt, I am almost done, I think…

nuged wool over a bit to fix the angle on the back and have lenthend the shorts. still fussing a bit with the hint of flowrs too.23) I have nudged the wool over a bit to fix the angle on the back and have lengthened the shorts. still fussing a bit with the hint of flowers too. the sweatshirt looks much better, I’m almost there.

Hum, still missing the highlights

fixed the highights on the sweatshert and i think i may have it to my likely. 24) fixed the highlights on the sweatshirt and I think I may have it to my liking.

That’s close I think I should look at the picture in a mat.

adding mat and frame floating felt by pressure so I can assess it. Yellow arrows show specks on the mat from the frame paint chips.25) adding mat and frame floating  the felt by pressure so I can assess it. Drat! bits of black flecks on mat!

The frame is lint-ing bits of black paint onto the mat, the Yellow arrows show specks on the mat from the frame paint chips. they were very obvious to me in person and they will annoy me if I leave them (13 years of picture framing coming back to haunt me!!!)  I will take it apart and clean it again.

Yes, I think that’s better let me think about it for a bit but I may be done!

took the frame apart and recleaned the mat, dusted the mat and wiped the frame. then put it together again.26) re-matted with a cleaner mat.

I will look into a better mat.  it’s a standard size so it should not cost the price of a full sheet of mat board for an 8×10 mat. I wonder if I can find a piece of acid-free 2py to go with it?

I am going to leave it in this mat and frame for a bit and see if it still feels finished.

I wonder if Maureen will recognize the picture! I am so glad she posted it! You never know where you will see an image or idea that inspire you.

The Bull

The Bull

Comments 22 comments

We have three public houses in Sturminster Newton (at one time there were 11 in our small market town!) and The Bull Tavern is one of the oldest. The building consists mainly of a 3 roomed 17th Century cottage with an attic room, built of old timber infilled with wattle and daub. Some additions were made in the 18th Century. Records show that the cottage was definitely an alehouse by the late 1700s. Apparently there was a slaughter house at the rear and a Pound where straying animals were kept until collected – upon payment of a fee of 1 shilling (which must have been a fortune when you consider that a married man’s weekly wages at the Town’s Workhouse were all of 9 shillings and a single man’s only 6). Part of the C18th additions was a stable block (which eventually became a skittle alley and later part of the restaurant of the pub). It is rumoured that the horses stabled there were used to help get carriages and carts up the adjoining steep hill leading to Sturminster Common and the small community of Broad Oak.

The building, known to Thomas Hardy (one of our famous inhabitants) as The Old Bull Inn,  is shown on the earliest known map of the area dated 1783, as being part of the Pitt-Rivers Estate.  You can learn more about the Pitt-Rivers family here: https://www.dorsetlife.co.uk/2012/04/sturminster-newton-and-the-pitt-rivers-family

About 18 months ago, after our then favourite landlords moved from the White Horse Inn in Hinton St Mary, the pub was closed for refurbishment. Hinton is a village about 1.25 miles away, where the Pitt-Rivers manor house is situated.  We used to walk there 3 times a week – our exercise with benefits – but since the benefits had disappeared we decided to patronise The Bull – for our exercise of course.  The only trouble with that was that it’s uphill on the way home whereas it was down hill from the White Horse.

During that time we had come to enjoy the chats with Marianne and Lance, the Bull’s managers.  Lance being the very good chef, and Marianne “Front of House”.  Early in January 2021, they announced that on Christmas Day they had got engaged.

One of my felt paintings – commissioned by a mutual friend –  had been given to the White Horse landlords as a wedding present a few years ago, and Graham, my husband, suggested that I do something similar as a wedding present for Lance and Marianne.

Felt picture of sepia tint image of old public house
My interpretation of an early image of The White Horse, Hinton St Mary

Although The Bull itself is a very interesting building, I wondered if I should do a picture of an actual bull for them. No date had been set for the wedding at that time, but I thought I should at least start collecting reference pictures, both of the pub itself, including some of their Pub sign and of some animals. I thought about breeds that might have been around in the 16th Century – White Park Cattle and black Gloucesters; and also looked at Herefords since that was the breed on the Pub sign.

image of Bull Tavern sign with hereford bull above image of the public house
The Bull Tavern and it’s sign
image of black bull with winners rosettes and image of large white bull
Gloucester and Park White Bulls
image of hereford bull head, image of bull grazing, image of bull in field
3 Hereford Bulls. I eventually picked the one at top left.

In the end I decided on a Hereford bull. After a lot of thought and manipulation of pictures, and also starting on a background field for the bull to stand in, I still could not come up with a layout that I was happy with. One idea was to surround the image of the bull with cameo pictures of nearby local landmarks – the water mill and the mediaeval bridge – with perhaps an image of the pub itself as well.

Then, just after Christmas 2022, Marianne said that they had set the date for the wedding – 10th June 2023.  Now I had to get my ideas together and get on with it.  The picture would need to be simplified if I was going to get it done and framed in time.

It was about then that my picture of the horse on the hillside in Devon was finished and it occurred to me that I could use a similar method of producing a figure with more depth.

image of felted horse on background of trees and stream
Detail from my Glorious Devon picture showing the horse added to the finished landscape.

  I finally decided upon a cameo type picture of the bull’s head and shoulders and I would use the background which I had made back at the beginning of this saga.  I would paint (with wool) the shoulders and neck and outline of the head on to a piece of flat wet felted core fibres.  With a separate face and ears, and a further separate set of horns and the nose on another piece.  I would cut all of the pieces from the backing when these were substantially finished.  I would fix the torso and neck onto the original background and layer on the face and ears, horns and nose, then I would do the final titivating and framing.  I made a start and here are the initial progress pictures:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

As I said earlier, it was intended that this picture would be a wedding present for Lance and Marianne, but at the beginning of April this year, they told us that, because of various unforeseen difficulties arising out of successive pandemic lockdowns (which included them catching Covid between lockdowns so having to shut the pub again)  they had decided to give up the tenancy of the pub.  They had obtained a job, with accommodation, managing a Touring Caravan Park in Cornwall.  Marianne was leaving almost immediately and Lance would stay on for a couple of weeks, with his last trading day on the 19th April.  So the picture was going to have to be a leaving present.

That caused a bit of a panic at home as you can imagine, so I had to get my head down and finish it NOW!  These were the final steps;

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I managed to finish the picture and, with Graham’s help, I mounted it in a deep box frame in time to hand it over to Lance on the 19th, when we went in for a final lunchtime meal.

So here’s the completed and framed picture – my entry for the 2023 Third Quarter Challenge – Something Special About Our Town.

image of felted bull head and torso on a field and sky landscape in wooden box frame
Finished and framed.