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A Summer Round Up

A Summer Round Up

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As I sit down to begin this post the sky has darkened and the rain (fingers crossed) is about to fall, heaven knows we need it, but what a fabulous summer it’s been so far here in sunny Lincolnshire! I don’t know about you but I tend to not do too much in the way of creative stuff through July and August as there are too many distractions and this year the intense heat has made me feel very lazy so lots of time spent relaxing, reading and watching creative videos. Consequently I’ve now got a table of projects I want to finish and a head full of others I want to start!

A couple of projects I did do this summer are two wet felted vessels. The first one, inspired by a shrivelled seed pod, was made at the İFA Region 8’s Summer School in Arnesby near Leicester. Our region encompasses several counties and is so spread out we struggle to get our İFA members to attend. On the other hand we have a regular group of creative ‘non members’ in the locality who are more than welcome to come along to our events, and thankfully they do! It was a busy and fun two days…..

My seed pod began life as five leaf book resist measuring 27cm x 36cm and various colours of Merino and Corriedale fibres.

It’s final shape was formed after lots of pushing and pulling and using strong clips to get it to stay as I wanted it.I decided to keep the opening as tiny as possible and, as a consequence, the resist had to be ripped to shreds in order to remove it! I’m wondering about adding some hand embroidery here and there in the shape of circles using a dull gold thread, I think it’s lacking something but is that it?

Photo of a wet felted 3D multicoloured seed pod with a shrivelled appearance.
Photo of a wet felted 3D multicoloured seed pod with a shrivelled appearance.

The second vessel was started last Friday when I was working at the Usher Gallery in Lincoln. I’d seen a post somewhere mentioning they were having their second Artist Studio Day and inviting local artists to apply. If successful it meant I would get the use of a table in their ground floor workspace and get to spend the day with four other artists. It sounded like a great opportunity and I’m so glad I applied! Only four artists turned up on the day and unfortunately one of those had to leave early. My other two companions were both painters and it was nice to get to know a bit about them and watch them work. We had a few members of the public come in to see what we were doing but for most of the time it was very quiet which allowed us to focus on what we were doing.

Knowing I wouldn’t get finished, but would need to get my vessel to a stable state before leaving the gallery, meant I needed to do a bit of prep the day before. So I decided on a size, cut my circular resist and made this piece of prefelt combining threads, fabrics and fibres to cut up and use as surface decoration.

Prefelt for surface decoration
By the time we had to leave I had a stable prefelt that looked like a pizza and could be folded into my bag….it was too large to carry it flat!
The finished rock inspired vessel

One of the Summer pieces I’ve yet to finish is an Iris which I started at the end of July. This is going to be for the Lincolnshire Textile Groups Bountiful Botanicals competition taking place in October. I’m creating it from hand painted Tyvek fabric and wire and the flower will be approximately 30cm dia by 115cm tall. I’ve just got the leaves to do now and then I’ve got the perfect spot for it in my lounge when it’s finished. I don’t want to reveal too much before the competition so this is a sneak preview for now…..

 Finally I’ll leave you with some images from this year’s fabulous Asylum Steampunk Festival. As ever there were some outstanding costumes, some very strange costumes and some that looked like they’d missed the theme altogether but it really didn’t matter! There were steampunk enthusiasts represented from all over the UK and from various European countries. One lady said she had come over from Hong Kong especially to join in the festival! The atmosphere is the friendliest you could imagine and the whole Cathedral Quarter was buzzing!

True to form I didn’t make time to create a costume but this year I did dig out a long skirt and a waistcoat as a (very) token gesture in order to wear my oversized steampunk dragonfly brooch.

 

Scarves all done, well almost

Scarves all done, well almost

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The felting part of the scarves is all done. I have moved to adding buttons. A friend helped me pick out all the buttons at our guild social On Monday night. At one point we had lots of buttons out of the bags on the table as we poked through them in search of just the right button. Unfortunately no picture of that. Jan got a great close up of this button we were trying on this scarf. Actually all these pictures were taken by Jan Scott except the 2 of her and her new wheel.

Here is a picture of part of the social. There was spinning and weaving and knitting and wheel adjusting, probably other stuff too.

And Jan brought her new wheel. It is an electric spinner and it fits in a small plastic container. It is as portable as a spindle. There were lots of oos and ahhs as she showed it off.

And lastly 3 great pictures of my scarves, thanks to Jan.

I hope you like all the pictures. Now I have to get on with the finishing, the hardest part.

 

Nuno Felted Scarf Class.

Nuno Felted Scarf Class.

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I recently taught a class about an hour north of where I live. I had 4 lovely ladies in the class and we had a great time making the scarves.

Here are thier layouts just before wetting.

And after much rubbing and rolling and a lunch break in the middle

They had some lovely scarves, this is the wool side.

And the silk side.

These where still wet so they will all lighten up as they dry. The difference in length is mostly do the lay out direction ( across or up and down) and some to how much fulling each person wanted to do. Everyone seemed happy with thier results so that makes me happy too.

 

3 New Things

3 New Things

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I chose a few felt pieces to make things from recently. One was a piece I made about 3 and a half years ago, it was my first attempt at a plaid-inspired piece:

I thought I could improve it by adding some machine stitching, so I just added a few straight lines and some zig-zg stitches. A couple of strips looked too plain so I added some offcut strips, then sewed it up into a book cover:

The strap is removable, this is the front:

This is the back:

And, opened out without a book inside:

The other 2 pieces were texturey nuno pieces. They were planned to be the right size for coin purses. I was going to make them my usual way, of cutting out and blanket stitching, but I thought the first piece was a bit too ‘grungey’ for neat stitching:

And when I got the other piece to cut up I thought the same thing:

So, instead I just cut one piece for the inside pocket, and tried to keep the natural edges, just folded and stitched. This is the ‘antiquey’ looking one:

I tried a button, but I think it’s too new:

Inside:

The bluey green nuno I made this from is one of my favourite pieces that I’ve made. It made a nice purse too:

Open:

There are so many colours and textures:


Sometimes it seems like a cycle of just making lots of felt, then making lots of things from felt!

Experimenting

Experimenting

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The wet felting classes at the Well Being centre are a great time for experimenting. One of our members often brings in offcuts and scraps of fabric, so I thought I’d try some out. I used some scraps of my stranded scarves with a couple of offcuts and some 18.5 mic Merino:

I laid the wool out very finely, cobweb thin really:

The fabric offcut rippled into a nice texture:

I used just two fabrics for this one, strips from a green viscose scarf and strips from a very pale green/beige/ blue charity shop dress which I was convinced was silk until I did a burn test, very realistic imitation!

I laid the 18.5 mic Merino wool tops thicker on this piece, though they were still quite fine. I also didn’t go right upto the edges of the fabric:

The ripple textures were interesting, the viscose seemed to ripple more vertically, and the imitation silk more horizontally:

We had a new member come to the group last week, so I made a soft wispy piece with her:

Texture close up:

I hope you enjoy the hollidays/festivities these next couple of weeks 🙂

More nuno felt class.

More nuno felt class.

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I taught nuno felt scarves again on Sunday. I wasn’t as good with taking pictures but I will show you what I have.

This lady Had to leave early. She was going to finish at home. I am hoping to get her to send me a picture of it finished and I will insert it if when does.

I didn’t get one of this one finished either

I can’t remember if  she added more or not. She had to leave before she finished but she said she will send me pictures today. I will insert them when she does.

 

This is the last one. We stretched 2 white silk hankies very thinly over the whole thing.  The last picture is of the scarf dry.

That’s if for classes for me until mid January. Now I will have to do some felting of my own to show you.

 

 

 

The Finished Hat and Some Scarves.

The Finished Hat and Some Scarves.

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I finished the Hat I was teasing you with last week. Now you know what I did with the spike.

red and gold scarf layout 3 red spikey hat 1 red spikey hat 2

I also finished this scarf. It has a antique colour wool base and then a thin layer of mixed brown on top and then some brass/coppery silk hankies stretched over it all.

laying on the brown silk on brown

I was thinking it might appeal to men as well as women.

brown and copper scarf brown and copper scarf close

I’ve started 2 more scarves. You will get to see them next time. I may get one more done but then it’s time to start ironing and tagging everything for the coming weekend. the show info is here http://mvtm.ca/fibrefest-2016/   It is always a bigger job than I think it will be.

purple carf 1

red and gold scarf layout 1red and gold scarf layout 2

 

Nuno Felt Scarves and Some Yarn

Nuno Felt Scarves and Some Yarn

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I managed to get  couple more scarves done this week. I forgot to get shots of them before I wet them but here they are finished and drying. I lightened them so they are more the colour they will be when they are dry. I had to be fast taking the pictures, the breeze was blowing again and my son had to play interference with the turkeys who were too interested in what I was doing.

scarves

pink close green close

 

I started another with the last of the scarf blanks I dyed. I will have to dye some more. I need to add some purple to the inventory.

orange scarf start

The other thing I did this week was skein my hand spun yarn so I could get it washed. I want to sell it in small skeins for people to use as embellishments in wet felting.

Yarn washed and hanging

Scarves group 4 Scarves group 3 scarves group 2 Scarves group 1

I have to decide how much yarn to put in a small skein. I measured the yarn I put on the green scarf, The scarf starts out just shy of 8 ft. long. I was surprise how much yarn I used; 404 inches/ 33.66 feet/11.2 yards Or 1026.16cm/10.26 metres. So I think maybe 12yds/11meters in a skein. Some will be shorter because there isn’t 12 yard total but the length will be on each label. What do you think? Pricing it is the next problem.

 

More Nuno and Resists

More Nuno and Resists

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These are the last of my recent nuno felt pieces (I think!). I’ve shown small strips of these fabrics before on smaller pieces.  I showed the unusual scarf I used on this first one, a couple of months ago. I liked how the ample strips looked and the larger piece turned out really nice too:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI’ve no idea what the loose yellowy golden fibres are trapped between the layers, they do look a lot like soy top, here’s a closer look at the texture:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI used a piece of linen scarf on this next piece. I was surprised to see it say linen on the label, I thought it was viscose by the look of it. I showed a sample piece of this earlier this year too.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAHere’s a close up:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd a super close up:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAWe’ve started playing with resists at the well-being centre recently. The first week, we used strips to make flaps/channels. This was the piece I made, it’s Merino with natural viscose fibre and dyed viscose fibre embellishments:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAWe played around with the pieces afterwards, shaping them to visualise other ways of using resists. This is mine in a tube/cylider shape:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAWe used a flat resist to make flat cases/pouches last week and next week we’re going to use flat reists for 3D felt.

Nuno and Pencil Roving Weaving

Nuno and Pencil Roving Weaving

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I’ve made a couple of camouflage inspired pieces lately. I think it must be one of my favourite ‘themes’, I know I’ve made a camouflage hat and drawstring bag, a shoulder bag, a notebook cover or two, and a felt cuff and coin pouches (I still use that one in the photo, 4 years on). Maybe it’s because I really enjoy doing  felt layouts, choosing all the colours of wool and embellishment pieces. This first one uses some strips from a camouflage patterned silk scarf:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAHere’s a close up of one half:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis next piece took a lot longer, it has patches of cotton gauze, the camo silk, cotton scrim, cheesecloth and some muslin Ruth dyed and sent to me:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThere’s your piece in the middle, Ruth 🙂 :

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI got a small kids’ weaving loom not so long ago, and finally had a go recently. One of the things I tried was pencil roving waste from World of Wool. I’ve tried weaving and felting with it before, but had to do it ‘freestyle’, this was the post about it: https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2015/06/08/pencil-roving-mats/  I think it was a bit ‘closer’ using the loom, and I left the edges longer, but it looked pretty much the same really:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERALooking at it on an angle:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd close up:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI really like the pencil roving waste, it knits nicely and felts nicely. I’d use it more if I had more colour variety.