nuno wall hanging

Pandagirl’s Year in Review 2015

December 27, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 26 comments

I really challenged myself the beginning of 2015. I was determined to try free motion embroidery and used Rosiepinks (Lyn’s) instructions for making a round bowl. It turned out nice, but it was a little tense going round and round.

My fan has to be the hardest felt project I’ve done so far. Getting and keeping all those fan blades in place was maddening.

Then I began work on making batts and bootie favors for my daughter in law Mari’s baby shower. 60 of them!

I attempted a felted box.

A clutch/makeup bag for a new Grandma.

I gave my drum carder a workout blending colors and making a color wheel for the 1st Quarter Color Challenge.

Still in baby mode, I felted over a wire baby buggy.

Cathy and I received our first order from WOW, so the sample making began using wools I hadn’t used before.

A wine bottle cozy.

Going back to my roots, I made denim paper, then felted it, and later made a glass case.

Stepping out of my comfort zone, I started using neutral colors and some wildly bold combos.

Some wooly fun with my Grandson Luke.

For a short period, Cathy and had a fish off.

For the 3rd Quarter Challenge I used a color generator, dyed, carded some batts using those colors, then made in Ipad cover.

My sister invited me to her quilt group for a Trunk Show.

To keep my earrings organized while I travel I made a jewelry roll.

I tried getting my work space organized.

Cathy and I attended the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival.

Dyeing for special projects. Some yet to be seen.

A nuno wall hanging for my daughter in law Lia.

A challenge in combining techniques to make an elephant pic for my Sister.

The 4th Quarter Challenge – monochrome panda with dimension.

Odds and ends.

Making ornaments with my Grandsons.

I had a lot of help this year and want to thank Cathy Wycliff for posting about making arm warmers, learning to make batts, her artist residency in Breckenridge CO, dyeing with natural plants, and Bengala dyes; Zara Tuulikki Rooke for showing us her process for making batts from raw fleece, shearing sheep, lambing in Sweden, making a rug from raw fleece and sampling different Swedish wool breeds; Leonor Calaca for giving us a virtual tour of the Knitting and Stitching Show in London; Carol Gascoigne (Craftywoman) for submitting her 3rd Quarter Challenge; Lyn (Rosiepink) for her 3rd Quarter Challenge submission; Mary Stori for her advice on beading; and Jill Chadek for sharing her journey to becoming a felt artist.

Happy New Year! On to new felting journeys for 2016!

October 8, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 32 comments

Since I started felting, my daughter in law Lia has been fascinated with the nuno textures. So, a while back we shopped for some fabrics we thought may go with her decor and she picked colors. Unfortunately, after making samples, the gold polyester fabric we chose even with open weave did not felt well.

She loved one scarf I had made in particular that I had hand dyed. So, I went to plan B and dyed more silk gauze and merino. She picked out the wool colors for accents.

Originally it was planned to be a very big wall hanging and I calculated a 50% shrinkage rate that I had achieved with the scarf. I had to recruit another table and used boards on top to give it more length and width to do the layout and felting. I couldn’t even get the whole table in the pic and I was standing on a high chair.

What was really fun was flipping it over to layout on the other side. Not.

When the first side was layed out, I wet it down and began my rubbing until I felt the fibers were catching enough to flip it. I did the same on the second side before I began the rolling.

The process went quicker than I expected and the shrinkage more than I wanted. But the ruching was what I wanted. I had to square it up and then figure out how to hang it. So, I pinned it to a towel and let it dry.

But when dry I noticed there were big spots that were bubbled up. It didn’t help the shape for hanging so I added some wisps of fiber and felted them in and had to re-block it and wait for it to dry again. Fortunately, I put enough fiber around it to get the edges to roll in for a nice finish. But I still had to figure out how to keep it’s shape for hanging.

After adding extra fiber to fill in big bubbles.

Lia didn’t want to put it under glass, but wanted to keep it floating against the wall. I wasn’t sure what a framer would suggest so I came up with an interim solution. I had some thin wire that I sewed around the edges trying to keep it concealed. It gave the nuno felt more stability and shape. I didn’t want to invest too much time in the event she didn’t like it or wanted to take it to the framer. There were a couple of spots I wrapped in scraps of silk that showed thru the front. I tried hanging it on the wall to see how it would look. It’s hard to see the detail.