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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.

Second quarter Challenge, Nuno Felt Surface Design.

Second quarter Challenge, Nuno Felt Surface Design.

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The second quarter is already here, I am not sure how that happened. I think using fabric as a surface design instead of a base is a good idea for the second quarter. Use cotton or silk or rayon or what ever you like to make some surface designs. You can make texture or pattern.

Try a mosaic? (I think one is Zed’s)

or making a picture? I made this to practice machine embroidery on.

Layer some silk

How about some texture?

 

 

Or let your imagination sore, have fun with it.  You can post your experiments good and bad over in the Felt and Fiber Studio Forum. http://feltandfiberstudio.proboards.com/thread/3708/2018-second-quarter-challenge

 

 

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 🙂

Some Different Nuno Felt Scarves

Some Different Nuno Felt Scarves

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Here are a couple more scarves I made for the recent Winter fair. I think apart from the Burgundy/Pink/Orange/Yellow one I showed last week, they were all nuno-felt scarves. Both of these were made with 18.5 mic Merino and hand dyed cotton scrim. I embellished this first one with hand dyed bamboo top:

I don’t know if you remember the nuno scarf sample I made and showed a few weeks ago using irregular pieces of scrim, but I wanted to do a few variations of that. I first cut a strip of subtley variegated lemon/yellow scrim to size, then cut the strip into roughly even pieces and re-arranged them before adding the Merino on top:

That one used similarly sized pieces, but this next one used more irregular shapes. I didn’t want to make the overall shape of the scarf quite as irregular as the sample though, just more ‘uneven’. I got out lots of pieces of scrim in blues, greens and grey shades and ironed them-apparently those big plastic craft tables bend from heat more easily than I thought! I laid the pieces out on the template, and overlapped them in places for a bit more texture. Then I chose some 18.5 mic Merino in similar colours and matched the wool layout to the scrim.

It was interesting to just follow the colours of the scrim instead of planning the colour layout, it was a lot more random:

I really like the scrim side, it is so texturey and reminds me of lots of different landscapes:

Nuno Felt Scarf Class

Nuno Felt Scarf Class

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I had another delightful day teaching some ladies to make nuno felt scarves. I made a slide show of the scarves. For some reason I only got one shot of the last one.

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And finally a group shot of the ladies and their scarves all finished.

It was a fun day I love seeing how different they all turn out.

One of the students, Renee sent me a couple of pictures she sent so  ma pop ing them in now.

More Scarves

More Scarves

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I made a short, wide scarf/wrap similar to the white scarf I showed last time, using natural cotton scrim and 18.5 mic Merino:

It’s about 3 times as wide as the scarf, and I didn’t scrunch the scrim first:

I used 3 different cellulose fibres for embellishing this: Viscose, Rose and Tencel, this is the Viscose:

I made a few scarves for the craft fair this last weekend, the weather was predicted to be sub-zero, so I thought I’d get lucky. But this is Manchester, we all have a scarf collection and everyone had come prepared, mostly with ‘scarves’ which wouldn’t look out of place on a double bed!! This is a bright, colourful one I made, I always prefer the side where the wispy ends of the wool tops overlap (or underlap since they’re laid first) the next colour:

This is the other side where the colours are in blocks:

An ‘arty’ shot to shop how soft it is 🙂

Colourful Nuno

Colourful Nuno

Comments 18 comments

A while ago, I made a few pieces of orange felt to get the right one for my friend who wanted me to make a purse. It took a while, but I did finish the purse. Here is the front:

And the back:

Inside:

I made a couple of nuno felt pieces recently with plans to make them into things. I left the tassels hanging over the edge because I thought it’d look good made into a bag:

I like these scarves, luckily other people don’t seem to anymore so I’ve found quite a few at charity shops:

Great texture:

I made a patchy textured piece:

I like the combination of textures:

I really like the way viscose fabric ripples in such a soft ‘swishy’ way 🙂

Do you have a favourite fabric to nuno felt with?

I’ve Definitely Been Challenged!

I’ve Definitely Been Challenged!

Comments 11 comments

I have written earlier about the Third Quarter Challenge which is based on the Japanese Edo period. Once to show you the design I developed to use and the other to show you the felt I created.  Then I showed you the disaster that included stitching and cutting out of the resist. I wasn’t happy with the results so I decided to start over. What could go wrong?

I decided that I would make a silk screen with matte vinyl fuse. Then I could silk screen the design on to the previously dyed silk and then nuno felt the design. (If you’re interested in learning how to make this type of silk screen, it is included in my online class Experimental Silk Screening.) At our recent art retreat, I made up some really dark violet thickened dye and screened it over the silk. It looked perfect. I used Procion dye and soda ash to set it. Then, once home I washed it out in preparation for felting it.

And every single bit of dye disappeared! Nothing was left at all. Arghh! I have since decided it was due to the fact that this is very thin silk and has been previously dyed and it just wasn’t going to take any more dye. Sigh.

I have to tell you that I was discouraged. I had to go to my Art & Design class I really didn’t have time for this setback. But if nothing else, I have perseverance (AKA stubbornness). So one more try.

I decided I would just screen print with acrylic paint mixed with screen printing medium. So that is what I did. The paint once dry wouldn’t disappear with application of water. So with a little bit of a different color, more maroon this time, I screened the silk.

I laid out some pink Merino that Karen from Big Sky Fiberarts gave me a while ago. I made it fairly thick because I didn’t want a lot of shrinkage and especially with nuno felting, less wool equals more shrinkage and distortion of the silk.

So here’s the wool layout with the silk on top. I proceeded with felting and the design finally did what I wanted it to do. It didn’t disappear and it pretty much kept it’s shape.

Here’s a poor photo of the piece after felting while still wet.

I think if I never saw this design again, I wouldn’t mind. To say the least, this was quite a challenge. I am not sure what I am going to do with this piece of felt yet but for now, I’m just happy it’s finished. I also have found it interesting that many people think this is a Celtic design. I guess that many ancient designs have a similar feel but this one is based on the Japanese Edo period. And I finished before the end of the third quarter, I think it’s a miracle!

Small Nuno Pieces

Small Nuno Pieces

Comments 16 comments

I thought some of the recent scarves I’ve bought might make nice panels for the front of bags. I usually do a few samples when I get new fabrics, see how they felt at various sizes with different thicknesses of wool. This first piece attached ‘better’ at this size than it had when I tried a narrower strip. I think it’s viscose:

It has a nice texture:

These next 4 pieces are all silk. I wasn’t sure which colour of Merino to use with this, it was a toss up between ‘Mink’ and ‘Catkin’–a pale yellow. On its own it looks beige, so I chose ‘Mink’ , but now it looks more cream in colour so I might try a sample with the pale yellow 🙂

This was a difficult one to colour match too. I wasn’t sure whether to go for green or pinky purple. I decided on green, I didn’t have quite the right shade, but got as close as possible:

I used another piece from the same scarf, it might have been a panel from the bottom of the previous sample, this part definitely seemed like it’d be better with a pinky/purple shade. I chose the closest light purple I had, ‘Orchid’ I think, and used a bright pink underneath:

It’s funny how something looks a certain colour until you match it with something, then you see different colours more. This looked very pink, so I used a Salmon base, after felting, the beige seems very similar to the first piece and the lilac/pink/purples look similar to the previous piece. Maybe they’d work together in strips?

This is one of my favourite pieces. I think the scarf I tore it from is Polyester. This attached better than a narrower sample I tried too, it turned out much better than I thought. I tried to match the colours of Merino to the colours of the stripes on the scarf so they werent dulled by migration:

It has a really nice texture too:

Have you bought or tried out any new fabrics lately?

Latest Nuno and Bookcover

Latest Nuno and Bookcover

Comments 12 comments

I made the last of my nuno strip pieces into panels for a bag. It was this yellow piece:

I used various types of fabric–cotton, viscose, silk, suspected silk, so got various textures:

I liked these two strips next to each other, they showed the very different way felting/shrinkage affected them:

I used some of the spare offcuts from the orange piece to make up the panels:

I made the Green felt which I piled with BFL locks into a notebook/diary cover. The pictures look a bit weird because I had a small patch of desk out of the sunlight when I was taking photos, but it must have been shadier at one end so, to me, they look upside down!

Here’s the other side:

This is the inside without the book:

And this is the outside without the book:

I’ve finally got the buttons and buttonholes on nearly all the purses from a few weeks ago, so hopefully, I’ll have those to show next time 🙂