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Third Quarter Challenge – Part 2

Third Quarter Challenge – Part 2

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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

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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

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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?

Scarves all done, well almost

Scarves all done, well almost

Comments 14 comments

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.

 

Works In Progress

Works In Progress

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A while ago when I was making a bookcover from felt strips, I made an extra piece for a future inside piece/sleeve. I usually save my plainer/flatter offcuts for this so they’re not too bulky:

It got me thinking about making another cover. I’ve had some longer offcut strips recently, so I got a few out to see how they looked together and see if they were long enough for the width of a cover:

Which then led to getting out some of the smaller offcuts I’ve saved from Nuno smaples recently, and playing around to see which ones work together. I thought these might be good for 1 side of a small bag or maybe case:

And for the other side:

How durable they are will probably help me decide if they’re suitable for a bag or case. One of our wet felting group members has a nice piece of silk she wants to use for nuno scarves, so a couple of weeks ago when there was only the two of us, we made a couple of samples using 18.5 micron Merino. I know it’s early to be thinking about making scarves for winter, and it was about 32C the day we made them, but we took the opportunity while we had a quiet day! This was my sample piece:

I used a bluey green blend for the white end, and an orange/pink/red blend for the patterned end:

This is the patterned end:

And the texture:

I forgot about the piece and left it in my bag, so it dried with a few creases in! I’ll re-wet it to get them out 🙂 One thing I finished recently is a little case ‘thingie’ made from some old jeans. I wanted to make use of the pocket so thought I’d make a little bag/case with a zip at the top:

I haven’t decided on a use for it yet though!

Nuno Felted Scarf Class.

Nuno Felted Scarf Class.

Comments 13 comments

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.

 

Ruffle Scarves

Ruffle Scarves

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This week I have been working on some short ruffle scarves. They go just around your neck. I need to build my inventory for the fall shows.

I lay them out in the usual ruffle configuration. I have a template under my plastic so they are all the same and one end isn’t smaller than the other. This is the class I will be teaching at Almonte fibrefest this September. http://almontefibrefest.ca/workshop/ruffle-scarf/

I do not have many in prosses pictures. I got into a groove and forgot to take them.  This is what thy look like finished but wet. These ones are nuno felt as well. The purple and turquoise one is an upcycled scarf someone gave me. I wasn’t sure how it would work but it felted right in.

and dry,

I think they look like dumbbells when you roll them up for storage. I hope people like them. They are nice inside your coat. You can leave them up like a tall collar to keep the wind out or fold them down over you coat. Either way the are warm and fashionable. I almost forgot to tell you I will put a button on each one.

 

 

 

Next Steps Putting Together the Bags.

Next Steps Putting Together the Bags.

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Last time I showed you the parts of the bags ready to be put together.   https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2018/06/04/making-some-more-little-bags/ Now I will show you how I do it.

First I wet one side. I use the resist to press the wool down and make sure it will be wet where I need it to be.

Next I add one of the pieces of silk.

Then I add the resist and the 2 pieces used to close the bag.

Next I add the second piece of silk and wrap the wool around everything

I add the second side of wool and wrap that around too.

After I’ve done that to all the pieces I add some embellishments. I am using a multicoloured top for grass on the blue one and the pink one got a rolled up ball of silk scraps. I covered the ball with more pink wool and will cut the top off near the end.

This is after several rollings. you can see they are curling as they shrink.

I cut the slit for the bag and rub it with well soaped fingers to heal the cut edges.

Next will be more rolling and some throwing to get the fulling done. I will show you the finished bags next time and some I finished with some embroidery.

Ann

 

 

Sunset at the Lake

Sunset at the Lake

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Here’s another one of the nuno felt pieces I made in April.

This one was originally supposed to go this way with the silk at the top being the sky.

But then I decided to turn it into a sunset and this orientation worked better for that. So the silk became the lake.

I added some tree shapes in hand dyed cheese cloth.

Then ironed those down with fusible. The fusible keeps them in place when free motion machine stitching and prevents the foot from catching on the loose pieces and moving them around.

I then added machine stitching to the trees, made shadows on to the lake and created the sunset. I also added a few lines to the water to make it look a bit more lake like. I used a variety of thread colors especially in the sunset.

Here is the result and better than I expected. About halfway through the sunset, I thought it was going to look terrible but I pushed on through and it worked. I wish the sun wasn’t so near the center of the piece but I do think it looks better when it is cropped and I can change the cropping if I really want to cut a little bit more off the right edge. I have two more of these to go and then I need to get them all framed. The set of 6 will be shown in an exhibition in September.

 

 

Morning Aspen

Morning Aspen

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This is the second in the series of nuno felted landscapes that I am working on. It is the only one that is a horizontal presentation. All the others are vertical.

Here is how it started after felting and before stitching. I wanted to add some aspen trees in the background and red twig dogwood bushes in the foreground. I did several sketches of other ideas but decided that I like this idea best. I originally planned on stitching the trees with white, grey and black threads. But then I decided I would do something more in the style of Wolf Kahn. His trees are always really colorful so I thought I would give it a try.

I started with what I thought was a fairly dark pink thread. As you can see, these trees just sank right into the background and were nearly the same value. So I needed much darker darks and paler lights. Back to the thread box. I should have had a small sample in the same colors to try out my threads but I didn’t have that available. So I just kept going.

Here are the trees after I added more darks and more highlights. You can click on the photo to see a bit closer. I did add some more highlights to the trees on the left hand side. The trees are stitched with a variety of dark purples, reds, pinks and lavenders.

I then added the red twig dogwood bushes. These are stitched with a dark wine red, medium red and then a variegated thread that is red, orange and purple.

And here is the completed piece. The uncropped version on the left and the cropped version on the right. I might crop even a little bit more off the bottom. It’s a very colorful piece and I do like how the colorful trees look like the morning sun is shining on them.