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September Adventures

September Adventures

September has been a busy and exciting month in contemporary textile art (specifically felting art) in Ireland so I thought I would feature what I got up to, I will call it my September Adventures.

Weather wise, the month started as we hoped it would continue (it didn’t by the way) with a return to fine warm weather – something we had not seen since last June.  So I took the opportunity to visit our National Botanical Gardens (https://www.botanicgardens.ie/) which are situated on Dublin’s north side.  The gardens (there’s free entry, if you ever visit Dublin, Ireland) opened in 1800 and are an oasis of calm with restored glass houses, magnificent specimens, bee hives and, of course, a tea room.  There’s also a pedestrian access to the historical cemetery next door which I suspect is not seen too often.    Glasnevin Cemetery also houses a genealogical archive for anyone wishing to trace their Irish ancestors (https://www.dctrust.ie/genealogy/home.html).

But, I digress.  Let’s go back to the gardens.  My visit coincided with their annual exhibition ‘Sculpture in Context’.  The exhibits feature artworks in various media including ceramics, wood, metal.  I decided to focus purely on the textile element of the exhibition and to photograph any pieces I came across as I wandered around.  I was aware that some of the members of Feltmakers Ireland had pieces accepted for the exhibition; Clare Merry (http://www.merryland.ie/index.htm) an exceptional artist who quietly creates her pieces was featured.  If you would like to see some of Clare’s work please check out her website, which, she tells me, is not really up to date, or Google her and feast over the images; Fiona Leech (https://www.instagram.com/feltathome/?hl=en) had three beautiful pots which were originally housed in the cactus house.   Annoyingly two of the three pots were stolen within a matter of hours of their arrival and the remaining one was moved to a safer spot in the garden’s gallery.  I thought I would show you the three pots as they were originally grouped together.

Fiona Leech’s three pots (source: Fiona’s Instagram page)

I searched but could not find Leiko Uchiyama’s beautiful work but here is a link to her website if you would like to check her out: https://www.leikofelt.com/my-felt-work/  I found two other exhibits from members of the guild.  Their featured work while not through the medium of felt were equally stunning.  Congratulations Mel Bradley (https://melbradleysilks.ie/)  and Mette Sophie Roche (https://metteroche.com/)

I put together a slideshow of my textile finds in the gardens which I hope you enjoy.

We had our first meeting after summer in Feltmakers Ireland and as usual the committee put an incredible amount of preparatory work into making it successful.  It was a busy morning as everyone beavered away felting flowers to create a tapestry as part of the 20th anniversary celebration for the guild.  Much to everyone’s delight, the guild’s founder Elizabeth Bonnar joined us. I thought I would feature Elizabeth here as without her it is doubtful that there would be such a vibrant community of feltmakers today.   Here she is with her granddaughter and with the committee.

Feltmakers Ireland founder Elizabeth Bonnar and her granddaughter
Feltmakers Ireland committee with founder Elizabeth Bonnar (3rd from left)

Here are some photos taken on the day.

The finished tapestry was revealed at Feltmakers Ireland ‘Bountiful’ juried exhibition which opened on 30th September.

Feltmakers Ireland members: The Floral Tapestry to celebrate 20 years.

The exhibition also saw the launch of the new book “Exploring Irish Wool for Feltmaking”  The book is the product of a collaboration between many members of Feltmakers Ireland guild, sheep farmers, shepherds, shearers and suppliers and not forgetting the various washers and carders who took the raw fleeces, converting them into usable fibres for testing.  I think this approach was quite unique and it will certainly be a worthwhile and useable addition to any textile maker’s reference library.  Understandably it was a huge project so congratulations are due to all, especially Annika (Berglund), Breda (Fay) and Sinead (Doyle) who collated all of the findings into an invaluable resource on Irish wool.  It’s so full of well written practical advice and it was made extra special by the presence of one of our Government Ministers, Pippa Hackett an ardent supporter of the project, who officially launched the book and the exhibition . Here is a quick look at the contents page to give you an idea of the scope of the book:

Exploring Irish Wool Contents page

An added bonus is that feltmakers/wool artists can now make direct contact with numerous artisanal suppliers so there is no excuse for any of us not buying closer to source and of course for anyone overseas who wishes to use Irish wool fibre in their work purchasing from source.

It is available to purchase from the following link and I understand will also be available in eBook format shortly:  https://feltmakersireland.com/exploring-irish-wool-for-feltmaking/

I hope you have enjoyed my September adventures.   It has been an exciting month.  Once again I would like to thank Feltmakers Ireland and their hard working committee who work tirelessly to maintain this vibrant community – it makes such a difference that, as textile artists, we can gather together and create regularly. I take my hat off to Elizabeth Bonnar and her decision to found Feltmakers Ireland twenty years ago; the catalyst for lifelong friendships, masterclasses, collaborations, exhibitions, networks and travel.

To complete September’s birthday celebrations, I thought I would produce a slideshow of the Bountiful exhibition which is running for the month of October in Phoenix Park, Dublin Ireland.  I took photos on the day so I apologise where the light may be shining on the artwork.  There are over 30 pieces of art and it will give you an indication of where Ireland’s vibrant felting community is at in its journey.  I hope you enjoy it!

Nuno Felt Scarf Class + Sheep

Nuno Felt Scarf Class + Sheep

I had another wonderful day teaching some ladies to nuno felt scarves.

I was busy ( talking) and didn’t take as many pictures as I would have liked at the beginning. So no pictures of the starting silk. I dye the blanks myself using the scrunch method of low-immersion MX dying. I learned how to form Paula Burches All about hand dyeing site. It is an amazing site. Don’t go unless you have some time to explore, there is so much information.  http://www.pburch.net/dyeing.shtml 

If you click any of the pictures they should open up larger in a new tab.

Back to the class, here are the layouts just before we wet them down.

pink and purple wool in the shape of a scarf, with an orange silk flower pink and purple wool in the shape of a scarf, with an orange silk flower. close up

Dark grey wool with silk hankies in various colours. In the shape of a scarf. Dark grey wool with silk hankies in various colours. In the shape of a scarf, close up

blue, grey and brown wool and silk in the shape of a scarf. blue, grey and brown wool and silk in the shape of a scarf, close up

pink and orange wool and silk in the shape of a scarf. pink and orange wool and silk in the shape of a scarf, close up

and then everyone got rubbing. This is the time it’s great to have a chatty group. It makes the work go faster. And I don’t have to do all the talking.

woman rubbing a wool scarf layout to make a felt scarfwoman rubbing a wool scarf layout to make a felt scarf

woman rubbing a wool scarf layout to make a felt scarfwoman rubbing a wool scarf layout to make a felt scarf

 

Sorry, no rolling pictures. The problem with a chatty group is I love to chat too and forget to take pictures.

But I do have some pictures of the finished scarves once all the fulling was done.

Finished pink and purple nuno felt scarf with an orange flowerFinished pink and purple nuno felt scarf with an orange flower. close up of flower end.

Finished grey, brown and beige nuno felt scarf with colourful accents.

Finished blue grey and brown nuno felt scarf Finished blue grey and brown nuno felt scarf up close

finished Pink and orange nuno felt scarf. finished Pink and orange nuno felt scarf close up

here’s a nice group shot from the end of the class.

Group of women holding nuno felt scarves

 

One of the ladies went home and dried her scarf so she could wear it right away. Doesn’t Kim look great? The colours really suit her.

Kim taking a selfie with her new scarf.

Denice also sent me a picture of hers when it was dry. I love the silk flowers.

nuno felts scrf on a hanger, dry

It was a fun day for everyone.

I taught a short sheep class the other day. They were young people so just one picture of the finished sheep.

4 multicoloured felted sheep

9 Vases & a Plant Pot

9 Vases & a Plant Pot

Some of the first felt objects I made were vases: made around a flat u-shaped resist that I designed to try to get a good even layer of felt on the base (wobbly bases not being good for vases). Every so often I get the urge to make a few vases, so I thought I’d show you some I’ve made recently.

My felt pictures are often inspired by my coastal environment. So, I thought I’d make some coast-inspired vases.

I prefelted some recycled silk scarf pieces to make pebbles then added pebble shapes to the lower section. The sea area had a pewter-coloured merino base with blue and green wisps of wool plus some silky fibre for the sea foam. The wave was a combination of some sort of knitted yarn I’d also found in a charity shop, with added mohair and the same silky fibre (I’m not completely sure what it was, it was just hanging around and looked suitable!)

I made 3 in total – here are the other 2.

Sometimes it’s the materials themselves that suggest pieces rather than the local scenery.  I put some beautiful bright coral-coloured dyed locks against contrasting duck egg blue and teal merino and thought that might be interesting

‘Locks’ vase

Continuing my vase-making spree: I’d dyed some merino for a workshop last year and I thought it might be a good idea to use up some of the hand-dyed wool on vases.

Now enter stage left the plant pot.  A friend who’d previously bought a plant pot holder from me asked about making one specifically to suit a plant she had.  I wrote a blog a while ago about my love / hate relationship with commissions but that was about pictures – I felt much happier about a plant pot as it’s not such a big commitment.

I was keen to include her in the design so I did a couple of very quick potential design sketches and consulted her on the fibre colour choices. As the plant was only in a plastic pot with holes in the bottom, I scoured my local charity shops and found a beer bucket to make the plant pot water-tight.

We decided to go for coral / pink / burgundy colours to highlight the under-sides of the leaves and an overall texture rather than a leaf-shape pattern.

I decided to do the top of the inner 2 layers green so it would show when you look down at the pot. With hindsight I should have done the whole of the inner layers green but I wasn’t sure I had enough of the green so did the lower section white. I carded together various colours of merino and silk fibre rather than use the fibre labelled ‘carded’ on the fibre picture – but keep and eye on that as it comes back later on….. Then laid locks on top.

And here’s the plant in its personal designer pot. My friend was very pleased with it.

Then it was back to the vases but with a twist.  I recently found in a charity shop an old chemistry lab heavy glass 3 neck flask and, as ever, I thought….I wonder how that would work with felt.  There’s a little corner of my brain that is devoted entirely to felting possibilities and it kicks into play whenever I’m mooching about charity shops, which is often!

On the same day I found some interesting yarn in another charity shop so I splashed out a further 20p and thought I’d bring these 2 finds together.

I was clearly wearing my sensible head that day as I made a sample with the yarn to make sure it would felt and see how it came out.  Even more sensibly, I used it on both sides of my sample (I wish I always remembered to do that) so I could decide which effect I liked best

I stared to ponder the engineering challenge of the 3 neck vase and decided I’d have to have a hole underneath.  Usually my vase covers are solid on the under side and the glass slips into the top. With this I wanted the felt to fit tightly round the necks so I’d have the glass entry point on the base.  I carefully measured and calculated at least 40% shrinkage then made my resist.  This time an upside-down U-shape

I laid 4 layers of natural white merino over both sides of the resist then ran a single strip of the yarn around.  I then added single black nepps below the yarn line, more densely near the yarn and just a few further down the shape. This seemed like a good idea but it took absolutely ages to separate out individual nepps, pick out only round ones and of a similar size, and then place them where I wanted them to sit.  One of those decisions you regret before you’re half-way through but can’t bear not to finish as you’ve already invested so much time in it!

Anyway, here’s the finished vase.  Actually, I’m pleased with the pattern, although I’d intended the yarn to sit a bit further up the flask. I’d not properly taken into account how much of the felt would be underneath.

I thought I’d find some more old 3 necked lab flasks. Having consulted both EBay and Google it rapidly became clear that they are not to be had.  I have not found a single similar 3 neck flask (there are new ones which are much thinner and tend to have domed bases, no good for vases).  The nearest I could find was a similar heavy glass 2 necked flask which is on EBay for £40.  £40!  I now feel I can’t sell my vase as I don’t want someone to buy it for the flask and rip off the felt! So, that one is staying with me, at least for the time being.

And finally we come back to the pre-mixed fibre I mentioned (labelled ‘carded’).  If you’re ever lucky enough to visit World of Wool in Yorkshire, you’ll see they have two huge skip-type bins full of ends of lines and wooly remnants (one with coloured fibres and one just cream /white). There’s a low fixed-price per weight for the content of each bin and you can ferret out all sorts of hidden gems. I can spend a long time almost falling into those bins. This mystery fibre-mix was one such find.

I thought I’d make a vase using that plus a piece of a pink silk scarf I’d just found in a charity shop.  That day, alas, I was not wearing my sensible head and didn’t think to make a sample: partly because I didn’t have a lot of the fibre and partly, well, because I just didn’t think about it.

I laid out 2 layers of a matching pre-dyed merino, 2 layers of the mystery fibre and a strip of silk and set about felting.  Fairly soon my error became clear.  The mystery fibre was not felting at all.  I persisted.  It still didn’t felt.  I persisted.  And persisted.  In the end it did felt, presumably with help from the 2 inner layers of merino.  It shrank more than I’d expected and the fibre hadn’t been all that keen on pushing through the silk, which means the silk ruching is rather loose in places. But it’s fixed completely round the edges and anyway, I like a bit of loose ruching.

So, here are my recent adventures in vase-making, with a little diversion via a plant pot.  I hope you’ve enjoyed them. Do you have a favourite?

Mystery Fabric Nuno Scarf

Mystery Fabric Nuno Scarf

We were having a discussion on the forum about nuno felting and how to maintain the length of fabric without too much shrinkage in that direction last week. Then I happened to find a piece of mystery fabric cut in a scarf length in my studio. I can’t remember where I got it but I think one of my fiber friends must have given it to me. It has a loose weave and appears to be a man made fabric and feels fairly soft, kind of like jersey.

Here’s a photo of the scarf and a close up. If you look on the mid to lower right hand side of the right hand photo you can see the weave. (click on photos to enlarge)

The fabric has a fun pattern and I decided to use blue green for the wool color. I wanted to use a minimal amount of wool so the scarf stayed light weight and I wanted to avoid shrinkage of the length of the fabric as it was already fairly short.  I had some blue green short fiber merino in batt form that I decided to use.

I decided to use blue tape to outline the fabric so I would have a pattern for laying out the wool. I could have turned the fabric over and laid out the wool on to the fabric but didn’t feel like turning it over after layout. (Being lazy again)

So I laid out a very thin layer of wool laying the fibers at a right angle to the length of the scarf.  Then I put the fabric back on top of the fiber, wet it down and began rubbing on the fabric side. I usually always recommend doing a sample first to make sure the fiber will migrate through the fabric but since this was such an open weave, I didn’t think it would be an issue. And, luckily, I was correct in that assumption. The fiber migrated very quickly and I ended up just rubbing the scarf with soapy hands, rubbing the scarf with fabric side down on a rubber ridged surface and it held together very quickly. Then I did some fulling holding the scarf in my hands and accordion (sort of) style folding and stretching lengthwise to full.

Here’s the scarf after felting and fulling. As you can see, it shrank more than 50% of it’s width but minimally lengthwise. The scarf is very lightweight and still long enough to wear as a scarf instead of a cowl.

So now I have a new scarf just in time for 6 inches of snow and 1 degree F cold that dropped on us this past weekend.

A Spring Shawl

A Spring Shawl

This is a throwback post. We had a very busy first day at the farmers market. The busiest day we have ever had. We had what we thought was a 3-week supply of Pasties and sold all but 2 of them. So there will be no felting this week while I restock 4 flavours of pasties for next week and hopefully enough to last more than one week. So, I hope you enjoy this post from a few years ago.

The museum store wanted some shawls that are more “springy”.  This is the first one.

It is a pastel pink and blue silk with pale pink wool on 2/3 of it. I then added some silk hanky flowers and leaves at each end and in the middle. It was to plane so I added some more leaves down the length. At this point, I remembered to take some pictures.

pink-shawl-silk-flowerspink-shawl-left-end pink-shawl-middle pink-shawl-right-end

The pink wool is in a very thin layer so it will be very lightweight for spring. The finished piece is about 15 inches wide so it can be a small shawl or a wide scarf.

finished-spring-shawl finished-spring-shawl-wool-side-2

finished-spring-shawl-wool-side-1 finished-spring-shawl-silk-side

I like doing shawls with a silk section left to float as you walk.

The pictures are in my studio, taken hastily as my turn to blog snuck up on me. Everyone seems to be complaining about it being too dull outside to take pictures. I have the opposite problem. The sky is blue, the sun is shining and the ground is covered in white highly reflective snow. It is blinding out there.

Are you thinking about spring things with soft colours or are you still in hibernation with warms cozy colours?

 

 

Playing with Color Mixing in a Bark Sample

Playing with Color Mixing in a Bark Sample

I’m still playing around with Ponderosa pine bark samples. This time I wanted to play with colors and add some nuno felted silk to the top layer. I wanted to see how neutralized the colors would become with fiber migration in the felt. You can see my first bark sample here.

So I started with blue green and red orange, complementary colors on the opposite sides of the color wheel. When you mix these type of colors with paint, you will get a neutralized color leaning towards brown or black. So what would happen with felt with the fiber migration? I didn’t have a true blue green so I used a layer of darker green leaning towards blue and then added turquoise on top of that. Then the red orange on top since the Ponderosa pine bark leans toward more red orange. I used a herringbone style layout.

Then at the last minute, I decided I wanted to add more texture and decided to use the left over pieces of pre felt from my poppy vase I showed you last week. It wasn’t even really felted at all, just laid out and wet down. I put it underneath the layers of laid out wool as you can see in the photo on the right. I should have used harder felt as you will see later.

I then wet it all down. You can see the back in the middle photo. On the right, I added some cut pieces of hand dyed 5mm silk that Paula gave me. (Thanks Paula!) These were cut in the shapes of the bark after it falls off the tree and I just randomly applied them. There are two layers of silk in some places.

Here is the piece after felting. We have been having a discussion over on the forum about rubbing vs rolling and I was thinking about everyone’s replies when I was felting this piece. It seems everyone has different ways of felting. Check out the discussion here. We’d love to have your input too! If you want to know how this piece was felted, I use a ribbed mat underneath and mainly rub, apply pressure and gently vibrate with my hands.

And here’s the piece after fulling. I fulled this piece very hard as I wanted a lot of fiber migration and mixing of colors. I did that by rolling the felt against itself on the ribbed mat, throwing, and scrunching between my hands. I will definitely have to play with mixing colors more this way because I love the end result. I think I will try making some batts with these colors and then felting them to see the difference in color mixing. I didn’t like the end result of the use of prefelt to add more depth to the piece. The prefelt just squashed out and felted into a sort of small hill. The already hardened felt in my first bark sample was much more defined as you would expect.

I am planning on adding some free motion machine stitching to get more definition in the depth. I may also add more fabric applique but haven’t decided yet. What do you think it needs?

 

Nuno Felt Scarf Class

Nuno Felt Scarf Class

This is a quick( I lost a day so I am late) post about the class I taught on Saturday. I taught it at the Ottawa Valley Weavers’ and Spinners’ Guild. Mostly it is just a lot of pictures of the layout and then after felting.  I hear that’s what social media is supposed to be these days lots of pictures and very little reading so I hope you like it.

These are the layouts. A very creative bunch and I think everyone used silk hankies to have a go at making flowers.

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I think everyone really enjoyed themselves. It was more work than some thought it would be but that is normal for a felting class. In the end, I think they liked the result.

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I used the batch resize feature of my photo program for the first time and it worked out really well. If I had had more time I probably would have done som more precise cropping but when your in a hurry you just have to hold your breath and push the yes butten.

Third Quarter Challenge – Part 2

Third Quarter Challenge – Part 2

I showed you my ideas, concepts and sketches for my cityscape last week. Now on to the felting.

First I needed to make some prefelt for the buildings. I had a mixed brown batt already in my stash so I decided to use that as the buildings in my inspiration photos were variegated brown.

Once I got the brown wool to prefelt stage, I let it dry and then used my sketch to make pattern shapes for the buildings. I used tracing paper to trace the shapes and then cut them out of the prefelt. This is when my perspective began to go wonky.

I found a piece of hand dyed silk in my stash that looked like night sky. I put that over a piece of commercial white prefelt and then laid down the black base, trees and prefelt building shapes. I thought they were well positioned for the perspective I needed but with felting they must have shifted slightly.

Here it is after felting. The buildings are getting wonkier. There is a reason that I don’t usually felt man made designs. I have difficulty keeping the perspective correct and as I progressed in this process, they just seemed to get more and more off as I went. But I had hopes that with the addition of windows and doors, this would improve.

I did fold the extra silk fabric to the back and hand stitch it in place. This gives the edge a more finished look.

I eyeballed where the windows and doors should go and tried to get the perspective correct with them. But that didn’t really work out so well. In hindsight, it might have worked better to stitch my lines for the wooden siding first and then added the windows and doors afterward.

Next week, I will show you the machine stitching and the finishing technique I used to get a starry sky. If you have created a cityscape, please go over to the forum and post it here. 

Nuno Felting Class

Nuno Felting Class

Hi all, sorry for being late I am a day behind in my week. Probably to make up for me thinking it was Sunday all Saturday.
This last week end I taught a lovely group of ladies how to make nuno felt scarves.
This is what the set up looks like just before the students arrive.

After everyone picks their scarf blank and the main colours for their scarf they got down to laying out their patterns.

Here they are a little farther along.

After adding all their embellishments it was on to rubbing and rolling

and then the fun of throwing to finish the fulling

Here are everyone’s scarves front and back

This last picture on the right is a close up of the silk hanky flowers that were added to one end of this scarf. the look great but will look better when they dry. They will lighten up and some hidden silk will show up. I never get to see them dry. It was A good class and everyone seemed to have a good time.

Have you given or taken a class lately?

 

 

Pieces For Greetings Cards

Pieces For Greetings Cards

It seems like we’ve not had any well-being centre felting sessions for ages. We meet up on a Monday so we lose days when we have a bank holiday; the reception had a bit of a weekend make-over too so was closed one Monday after and August being popular for gigs and festivals has meant less attendance and cancellations too. So, I was feeling a bit impatient to be creative this week. I could have made something with the strips I pieced together last week, but I wanted something a bit more ‘instant’! I need to make some more greetings cards, so thought making pieces for those would be a good way to be productive. This is the first one:

I stuck to Blues and Greens because it’s so messy and fibres/threads get everywhere. This is the 2nd one:

These next two are two halves of one piece I made. I thought it made sense to make a longer one and cut in half. I also made these more green:

I like the blue offcut with cotton nepps on this piece, it was left over from the piece I turned into a notebook cover not too long ago:

They all look very similar when they’re all togther. So, for something a bit different, here’s a piece of nuno I made earlier this year. I used a piece from a silk scarf I got at a charity shop. I think I planned to make a coin purse out of it:

Close Up:

Do you have any ‘quick + easy’ projects for when you want to feel productive and accomplish something?

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