Back in January I picked a worked for the year, Breath. I think I managed to do that more or less. Stopping to think about what I want to do. I tried some new felting things and learned to use a serger. Signed up for some new shows. I went to the medieval fair all dressed up and had a great time. So I did breath and do some things I have been wanting to do for a while.  I still haven’t worked on complicated resists much but I am still thinking about it.
Dressed up for the fair
It’s been fun and educational doing this blog with Ruth, Karen and Zed. Through the forum I’ve got to know some friends better and meet some new friends. All in all despite some sad times this year it has been pretty good and on track.
I decided not to wait until the last min to do my challenge piece this time. The forth quarter challenge is weather. http://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2012/10/25/weather-challenge/ This piece I did on a piece of black silk chiffon. It’ s meant to be framed. I was going to use this for my exchange gift but then thought It wouldn’t be fair so send something they then had to frame.
Â
The picture on the right is of the snowscape and several other things rolled up. I am messy. You can see the water on the table from me wetting down and it pouring off the corner. It’s OK though I have cement floors and a center drain.
Needling on some of the snowflakes that did not stick during rolling. I think I made the little balls to tight.
Â
The finished picture from the front and back. I like both
I have a second entry on the same theme I will show you in a few days.
The guild I belong to, the Ottawa Valley Weavers and Spinners Guild, had its annual exhibition and sale this last weekend. I had a booth selling scarves and wraps and flowers and cuffs and hats etc. The guild does a display on a theme and has demos and promotes our classes. It’s our big event for the year. The venue is beautiful it is a community center now but used to be a church and has a huge domed center.
Here are some pictures of my booth and me explaining what nuno felt is to a customer.
Â
Â
This is one of the organisers wearing an exquisite shawl she knit using her own hand spun alpaca.
This my friend Judy,http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jumaka.com%2Fspinning%2Fpetfur.html&h=fAQGCIXhy , she not only likes to spin yarn, including dog and cat fur she also likes to spin wood on a lathe to make nostepinne for manually making a center pull ball) and drop spindles in several styles and weights including supported spindles like she is using in the picture. This is her booth, she shares it with another friend who is more camera shy.
Â
The Guild display had the theme around the house and of course we had spinners and weavers demonstrating.
Â
Lastly here are pictures of some of the many booths that where there. We had a good variety with both finished goods and supplies.
    Â
    Â
All in all it was a good show with not as many people as usual but the ones that came were buying. I hope everyone’s upcoming sales are good.
In the spring I made some shrug jackets using a pattern I saw in a book about making simple garments with your weaving. I don’t weave but I can felt a rectangle instead of weaving it. You would think that I would read what to do instead of just going from memory but that would have been too easy. I made some nice looking shrugs.
Orange shrug after over dying
They look nice enough but they didn’t really fit as well as I would have liked. They were to puffy at the back so not very flattering. I think the problem is the rectangle they are made from was to wide making the shrug to long. I decided to change them. I unpicked them and gave them a wash to get rid of all the thread holes.
IÂ folded the top down about 1/3 to create a kimono sleeve. You end up with something that is more like a shawl that doesn’t fall off as you use you hands and go about your day.
If you would like a larger collar you can wear it the other way up.
You could also just sew a line down the edge or just the other direction to have a larger sleeve opening. I like these much better. I hope other people like them too. I am going to my guild exhibition and sale this weekend and I will have them there. On that note if you are in Ottawa this weekend  Drop by the Glebe Community Center to see what we are up to.
We’ve actually had such a long cold wet winter here in oz that the site of some sunshine is so lovely and with the weather finally starting to warm up I found myself at the beach briefly the other day just taking in the ocean and some warmth, so I thought for this challenge we could felt a piece depicting our own weather no matter where in the world we live, and be it the ocean and sunshine or freezing temperatures with your lovely snow topped mountains, its your seasons.
And just a couple of lovely pictures of our Island in the sun !!
This is a place called the Nobbies were all the little fairy penguins live
Just a gorgeous sunset on the Island, would make a gorgeous felt piece
Looking forward to seeing everyone’s weather challenge to see the difference in our temps right now. Happy Felting and we’d love to see you in our interactive forum where we all love to share some great information or just have a chat, so come along and join in the fun http://www.feltandfiberstudio.com/
A while back I went to a felting friends for a few days fun.  She showed me how to make bubbles and cut them  open to great effect. Here are the pictures of what I did.
First of course I laid out some wool to felt. But these are samples so plain felt won’t do . I added silk threads and a silk square and some silk roving and other wools to see how it would all go. This is the underside.
This is what the top side looks like
Then of course there was the usual rolling and fulling.
rolling rolling rolling
Here they are all finished and ready for the marbles.
The next step is to put marbles in while it is still damp. You pull the felt tightly around the marble and secure it with an elastic and now it is a bubble. We used the elastics they use to put braids in horses tails and manes because they are small, stretchy, Â strong and cheap. Â You put in as many as you like and what ever sizes you like. You can also use felt balls. the felt balls are good if you want to leave them uncut. Marbles are to heavy for that.
Here they are all tied up.
Felt with marbles tied in to make bubbles
Here they are cut.  I cut the tops off , I cut x’s and star patterns and some I tuned inside out. if you cut more off you see more of the inside and you can stretch them flatter too.
Bubbles cut open
You can see how the underside becomes the inside of the bubbles. These samples started out about 6×8 inches and the finished pieces are about 1.5 by 2.5 inches. They take up a lot of room. I only have 2 of them left my friends dog ate one. I think I will glue them to some leather and make broaches out of them. They are lots of fun to do. I made some wrist cuffs with this method and I will blog about them next week.
I’ve been dying some shrug jackets this week. I made all the fabric white then sewed them with silk thread before dying. this way the thread will get dyed with the fabric and it will match.
This one I did spiced pumpkin. I would say it came out of the dye pot pumpkin without any spice at all. So, it needs to be over dyed.
Orange shrug before over dying
I decided to add my own spice. i found a reddish brown to use. I mixed it up and poured it on in stripes across the wet jacket.
Orange shrug with dye poured on.
Then I rolled it up and popped it the microwave for a few min to get it started. I wanted some of the striping to remain and not have the dye just disperse into the water and dye the whole thing. for plastic I used half a cheap plastic drop sheet. the are nice and thin but huge.
Orange shrug ready for the microwave.
Here it is after cooking and drying. It’s not a great picture because it is a really bright sunny day.
Orange shrug after over dying
You can see some of the stripe but it’s not a rigid line and the orange has gone a little spiced and not quite as blinding orange.
I haven’t been doing much that is interesting to look at lately. Everything is white and is waiting for the dye pot. Â I thought I would show you some samples a made a little while ago. The first 2Â are purple merino with some silk strips on them. I thought they came out nicely with lots of texture.
Purple wool with strips of silk before feltingPurple samples after felting
The second is orange merino with some silk and curls on it, here I wanted to felt the curls right into the background. I also wanted to see how it would stick if I put it over the silk. I really like the way the little blob of curls all became one with nice texture. The curls going across the silk stuck down very well. Enough wool migrated through the silk to grab the courser wool of the curls.
Orange wool with silk and curls before feltingOrange sample after felting
This last set I wanted the curls to be attached at the base and left loose and hanging for the rest of their length. I use a small piece of scrap floor underlay with a hole in it so the wouldn’t stick down. It worked very well. I am not sure how I ended up with one really long curl.
Small samples with curls with their resists on before feltingSmall samples with curls after felting.
I am not sure what I am gong to do with these. I might make some buttons or hair clips. Do you have any ideas?
Well time to look back at the year and see what has happened. There was lots of felting for sale and some teaching along with family, work, farm and farmers’ market. I decide early I wanted to make a nice nuno felt vest for myself. It doesn’t sound very hard thing to do but I never seem to make the time to make things for myself. It took a month to design the resist and find the time to do the felting and I ended up with a not very good-looking vest. As it turns out it was a good thing because it allowed me to become better friends with Linda as she helped me reshape it with her sewing skills. We went on to design jackets for ourselves this summer. I am still working on the jacket, hems on the sleeves and bottom and it needs some form of closure but I haven’t decided what yet.
I managed to try a couple of new shows to sell my work and expand my felting skills with the help from felting friends when we got together for our annual spring fun felting weekend.
One exiting thing that happened was being asked by Ruth to send some felt to her publisher to have its picture taken to be in her new book. So soon I will be able to say I’ve been published. Supporting Ruth while she wrote her book was a real pleasure and an eye opener as to what is involved in getting a book put together.
Starting the new blog and forum with friends from around the world has been fun and hectic as we decided to do this at the busiest time of the year. It really is amazing how the internet has made it possible meet like-minded people, make friends and take on projects with people you may never meet in person and otherwise wouldn’t have met at all. I feel very lucky indeed. Now IÂ need to have a good long think about what IÂ want to get done this coming year.
