paper – Felting and Fiber Studio

The Final Projects for the Paper Lamination Class

July 22, 2016 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 10 comments

I wasn’t able to finish the coursework for Ruth’s Paper Lamination Class within the class time, but have since completed the last two assignments. We had a choice of several different options for the last two weeks. I chose to use one of the lamination pieces on a pillow. It was a piece of silk habatoi that I used a stencil with acrylic paint on a piece of copy paper.

I made a couple of batts with gray, a little green and purple accents over a resist. Then wet felted. Of course, I had to cut a side to get the resist out and the pillow stuffing in. While it was drying, it was a nice square shape. Now its a funky shape. But that’s ok, the colors go perfectly in my bedroom.

It seemed a little plain so I tried adding prefelt leaves, but I felt they overwhelmed the design. I was very pleased with the texture and dimension of the flowers and decided not to do any stitching like I had on the bird project.

So, I decided to stitch around the silk using a cretan stitch. It was an exercise in patience and practice. I used a silver sharpie to put a few dots in the center of the flowers as stamens.

Here’s the back with a subtle marbled effect:

Next I made a wall hanging. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the organza I painted. I call it “paintbrush.” In the closeups you can see the brush strokes if you look hard.

I also got some great dimension:

Here is the back:

Now it is hanging in my kitchen. Yes, the wall is teal.

I’m very pleased with both projects.

Thanks Ruth for offering the class. I really enjoyed it.

That Doesn’t Look Like My Old Jeans

May 17, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 35 comments

A while back I made a note to myself to make paper from and old pair of jeans. I wanted to play with some fiber in a different way from felting.

The first thing I did was to cut the fabric into small 3/4″ squares, discarding the seams. Then I dragged out my old papermaking equipment which includes an ancient blender.

Using warm water I filled the bender half way, then added a pinch of the squares and ran the blender for 30 seconds or so until the water turned blue. This was a long process since I couldn’t overload the blender.

The resulting pulp was strained. When I had about a quart (1.14 liters) of pulp, I gave the blender a rest.

The set up for making the paper included a big container of water, a mould, deckle, pellon and blanket sheets. The deckle in black, the screen covered mould on the left.

Using a handful of pulp, I added it to the water and agitated it. With deckle on top of the mould, I submerged the pair into the water at a 45 degree angle and came out with a pulp filled sheet. Without going into all the nitty gritty of all the papermaking steps and terms, I couched (pressed) the paper onto a wet pellon sheet and repeated the steps until I had used up all the pulp and had a pile of sheets.

The next step was to press the paper in my homemade paper press.

After letting it sit awhile, I gently placed the paper on a white board and used a haki brush to place it on the board to dry.

Since the blender was old, the fiber didn’t get chopped very fine, but it made an interesting texture and look with the various long fibers running through the paper.