Browsed by
Tag: Studio challenge

Sewing, Felt Hat to Purse, Felt Boots.

Sewing, Felt Hat to Purse, Felt Boots.

Comments 13 comments

Last time I told you about organising one section of my room and clearing off the table. My next area is the sewing area. It’s coming along. It started like this:

sewing area before

There is also a bunch of stuff on the floor under and around it that you can’t see in the picture. I have made progress but the shelves to the bookcase have disappeared so it’s hard to fill them up. I did switch the old singer that needs a part for a newer one. I haven’t tried it but it may need a cleaning. I still have the pfaff I can use. I want to set it up for free motion embroidery. It is a work in progress

As part of trying to do some fiber art everyday I have been working on converting a hat to a purse, well, 3 hats actually. The hats started out looking like this:

hat to purse 2

I cut the holy part off and did this:

hat to purse 1

This should add some interest with great texture.

Here is one that has the texture done. The colour on the left one is more what it looks like I think it’s called Laurel.

hat to purse 3 hat to purse 4

I had planed to get the lining in before posting but that didn’t happen. I will show you when I get it done. It will also get a zipper too. I haven’t decided if it should be a clutch or I should find some sort of strap for it. What do you think?

Lastly I have started my on-line boot class. It took me  a while to convince You Tube to let me see the videos and then my Internet went out for a week. So all I managed to do was my sample and get my pattern drawn out.  The sample of gray Finn wool shrank a little more than 50%.

shrinkage

There was a lot of measuring and some math to get the pattern the correct size for the shrinkage.  This is what it looks like at the moment.

boot patten

My mom came for a visit so I couldn’t lay out the boots today. I decided I want to make a leave motif on the boots when they are done so I cut out leaf shapes in white and black. the booths are gray. I stretched a couple with some vintage “artisanal silk”. I am told it’s not real silk but its pretty.  I don’t know if I like it. I was thinking of sewing some veins on with my machine to see how that looks. I have some dissolvable interfacing I thought if I put the leaves on that I should be able to stitch them.

leaves

So I haven’t been able to actually do some fiber art every day but I have been thinking about it everyday and getting to play most days.

My Second Entry into the Weather Felting Challenge.

My Second Entry into the Weather Felting Challenge.

Comments 14 comments

I was tidying up after making something else and had a pile of green trimming. With Zed’s felt scraps post still fresh in my mind they looked like branches to me. I think I must be in a tree mood. I used prefelt for the back ground because I didn’t have any scrap black felt and I wanted to get on with making the pictures and not with felt making.

  

I used the edge of an off cut in very pale blue piece of felt for the snow and a very thin edge piece for the clouds and moon. its hard to see but I layered the snow pieces on  2 of the pictures to see if it would give more depth after felting. i have never had much luck wet felting finished felt to semi felted pieces but after some rubbing and rolling it all went together really well. I am quit pleased with how they turned out.

There is more depth in the layered pieces. It doesn’t show well bit it does make the snow look more dimensional.  They still need ironing to straighten up the edges. They are a bit to big to use on cards. I think they might look nice side by side in a long frame.

So now I have answered Zed question what do you do with your scraps. http://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2012/11/10/felt-and-fibre-scraps/

4th Quarter Challenge _ Weather

4th Quarter Challenge _ Weather

Comments 12 comments

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/

My Studio Challenge Contribution and Excuse

My Studio Challenge Contribution and Excuse

Comments 6 comments

The second quarter is almost done and I finally have one of my planned pieces done. It is the simpler of the two but I  know I will not get the more complicated one done. This one was done like a line drawing with just a few bits of colour. It didn’t turn out as nice as I would have liked.

I make myself a piece of prefelt. Prefelt is just barely felted wool. You stop the process when everything is just holding together. I used Briggs and Little country roving. It comes as 5 strands of very thin roving ready to be put through a spinning machine. The only colour I had was red. It bleeds. I thought it might give the piece an interesting look. Here is the first strand on the prefelt.

roving on prefelt

Next I drew the picture and added some coloured felt from my left overs bin. Before cutting out the shapes and placing it, I brushed the back side with a dog brush to make it fuzzy.

all the elements added

I covered it with netting and rolled it up in a straw mat and rolled in all directions. I didn’t do any heavy fulling to shrink it because it does not need to be really strong.

I did start my second piece. I made the felt for the base. I used some cotton gauze for strength so I wouldn’t have to use much wool. I plan to cover the whole base with more wool  in several layers using my embellisher so wanted to start out fairly thin.

wool folded over to make neat edges
second base ready

While we are talking a little about technique people ask me why I use a star burst Tupperware lit to do my rubbing. I do it because when I rub directly on the sheer no mater how lightly I rub the I pull would right through the sheer and out. I’ve found about 1/3 of the people who come for classes have the same problem. I don’t know if our hands are just to rough or what.  Here are 2 pictures of what happens.

wool pulled through

And lastly my excuse. Besides waiting to long to start I have been getting ready to sell at our local medieval fair. One of the things that has taken time is my costume. Here is the under dress drying on the line after tea dying so it is not bright white.  There is a lot of material in it and I haven’t hemmed it yet. I have a little over a week to go and I have to make the top dress yet. I have a busy week ahead.

underdress dyed with tea
2012 Second Quarter Studio Challenge

2012 Second Quarter Studio Challenge

Comments 13 comments

For the second quarter challenge I thought abstract representation would be a good one. Take a picture, landscape or portrait and do it over as an abstract. There are many kinds of abstract design. Here are 3 pictures to give you some style ideas.

I like to do abstracts. Trying to make something that is life like is just an exercise in frustration for me.  Abstracts give my artistic side a chance to express itself.

If you’d like to join in, please join our Flickr group and post your photos there with a tag of “Abstract challenge”. Or if you have your own blog, post about the challenge and then come back here and leave us a comment with a link so we can go check out your abstract piece or process. We’ll put all the links into one of our Felting Around the Web posts so that everyone can see.

Plastic Fibre twists

Plastic Fibre twists

Comments 11 comments
 
Plastic fibre twists

This is my finished twisted plastic piece for the Studio Challenge. I’d originally planned to make a smaller piece, but once I started making the twists, I really liked the look of them so I made more to make a larger piece. I blended merino wool and recycled plastic bottle fibre with hand carders, then separated small amounts and rolled into twists.  The base is 3 layers of merino tops, and the merino and plastic fibre twists were layed on top. I layed the twists so that the wispy ends met in the centre and went over the edge of the base by about an inch.

Plastic Fibre Twists Close Up
 
 
 

I’d used the plastic fibre a few times before and expected this to be more ‘spongy’ than it was, it does have a nice look and feel to it, it feels nice and thick, but lightweight. We’d love to see your work with twists, twirls or spirals 🙂

Studio Challenge

Studio Challenge

Comments 10 comments

A few months ago I revisited an idea I’d had a few years ago for using wool twists to add texture to felt. This led to developing the theme we’ve used for this quarter’s studio challenge: Twists, twirls and spirals. This could be anything from including coiled or twisted wool in felt or a mixed media piece, using or spinning yarns, creating a 3D object such as a twisty hat or vessel, or using a spiral design on a flat needle-felted piece. There’s no size limit and the piece can be in any medium.

I’m still working on my piece, but here’s a sneak preview of some of the merino and plastic fibre blends I’ll be using.

If you’d like to join in with the challenge, there’s a couple of ways you can do this. Firstly, we have a flickr group, if you have a flickr account, click to ‘Join This Group’ then add your photos. Don’t forget to tag them “Felting and Fiber Studio” and also “Twists, Twirls and Spirals” (using quotations around the tags keeps the words separate). The second way you can join in is by commenting on any of our Challenge posts and linking to your blog, website or photo hosting site so we can see your photo.

These challenges are just for fun, to make us think and try out new things, or even revisit old ideas with fresh eyes or different fibres. We look forward to seeing what you make 🙂