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Deconstructed Screen Printing Session

Deconstructed Screen Printing Session

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My local group had our annual retreat in early September. We go out to a lovely lodge on Little Bitterroot Lake and spend a couple of days creating and playing with art stuff. This photo is from sometime in the past. Sadly, this year, the air was full of smoke and you could barely see the mountains across the water. This year, our activities included deconstructed screen printing, making a book and creating some “faux” rice paper.

These are a few of the paper prints that I created. Deconstructed screen printing is done with a previously prepared screen in which the thickened dye has been left to dry. Then you use more thickened dye or plain print paste to release the dried dye from the screen. It is a serendipitous process and you are never sure what you will get in the final prints. I teach this process on felt in my online class.

I usually use fairly thick paper so that I can wash out the thickener that is left on the paper. That way I can do other processes on top of the paper without it running. These are similar to some of the papers that I used in my recent collage challenge.

One of the fun things about the paper is that you can end up using either side. The photo on the left shows the front side of the printed paper and the right photo is the back side.

Here are some of the fabric pieces that I printed. If you click on the individual photos, you can see what type of fabric I used. The little scraps on the top left photo are what was left over after I used a piece of printed hemp canvas for the cover of my book.

These prints are all on silk. The left side is silk habotai, the middle is silk organza and the right side photo is the silk organza layered over the habotai. You could print on many types of silk and this would be a great way to create your own fabric for using in nuno felting.

I will be using these for my upcoming classes that I am taking as backgrounds for stitching, in collages and wherever else suits my fancy.

Next time, I will show you the book that I created while at the retreat. It’s not entirely finished but you will be able to see the deconstructed screen printed canvas as the cover and a piece of printed paper as the inside covers.

Fall Online Classes Open for Registration

Fall Online Classes Open for Registration

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The fall series of online courses are open for registration.  The registration for the 4 modules of Embellishing Felt with Surface Design Techniques – A Mixed Media Approach opens today, August 27 for a class start date of September 10, 2021. Click on any of the links about the courses to learn more. The courses are four weeks of PDF and video information and two extra weeks of instructor support for only $45.00 US for each module. You don’t have to be present at any certain time during the course.

Here is a video that I made about the first module of my online courses, Nuno Felting with Paper Fabric Lamination.

The second module is Experimental Screen Printing on Felt. Screen printing is loads of fun and you can obtain a huge variety of results with the techniques you will learn in this class.

Or you might want to try the third module which is Printing, Stenciling and Playing with Thickened Dye on Felt. You will learn how to make stencils and stamps as well as the use of thickened dye to decorate the surface of your felt and make your own unique designs.

The fourth module is Free Motion Machine Stitching on Felt. Have you always wanted to add machine stitching to your felt but didn’t know how? This course takes you through the basics of machine stitching on felt and works through to more complex techniques of using your sewing machine to embellish felt.

If you are interested in any of these online classes, please click on the links above for further information about the classes and scroll down to the bottom of the page to register. You will also find the supply lists of what you will need for each class on the linked pages.

Our Wet Felting for Beginners online class is available any time. You will have unlimited access with this class. So if you’d like to know more about the basics of felting including laying out the wool, embellishments, shrinkage and a variety of felting methods this is the class for you. You can sign up any time at the link above.

Spring Online Classes Open for Registration

Spring Online Classes Open for Registration

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The spring series of online courses are open for registration.  The registration for the 4 modules of Embellishing Felt with Surface Design Techniques – A Mixed Media Approach opens today, March 12 for a class start date of March 26, 2021. Click on any of the links about the courses to learn more. The courses are four weeks of PDF and video information and two extra weeks of instructor support for only $45.00 US for each module. You don’t have to be present at any certain time during the course.

Here is a video that I made about the first module of my online courses, Nuno Felting with Paper Fabric Lamination.

The second module is Experimental Screen Printing on Felt. Screen printing is loads of fun and you can obtain a huge variety of results with the techniques you will learn in this class.

Or you might want to try the third module which is Printing, Stenciling and Playing with Thickened Dye on Felt. You will learn how to make stencils and stamps as well as the use of thickened dye to decorate the surface of your felt and make your own unique designs.

The fourth module is Free Motion Machine Stitching on Felt. Have you always wanted to add machine stitching to your felt but didn’t know how? This course takes you through the basics of machine stitching on felt and works through to more complex techniques of using your sewing machine to embellish felt.

If you are interested in any of these online classes, please click on the links above for further information about the classes and scroll down to the bottom of the page to register. You will also find the supply lists of what you will need for each class on the linked pages.

Our Wet Felting for Beginners online class is available any time. You will have unlimited access with this class. So if you’d like to know more about the basics of felting including laying out the wool, embellishments, shrinkage and a variety of felting methods this is the class for you. You can sign up any time at the link above.

Heart Cards

Heart Cards

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Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you who celebrate it. I have been working on creating some simple heart cards from felt and fabric in my pursuit of “using stuff up”. My stash includes hoards of printed felt and fabric. So I decided to combine the two with a bit of free motion machine stitching to make some Valentine’s Day cards to sell.

I started with a pile of fabric from orange to purple. I thought it would be good to have some contrasting fabric for the hearts.

First I cut out a stack of felt backgrounds that were the right size for my cards. The cards are smaller than I usually make and the pieces of felt were only 3 1/4″ x 5″. The photo on the right shows one of the pieces of felt sitting on the paper note card. Next I chose the fabric to go with the different colors of felt. I then put fusible web on the back of the fabric with the iron to give the fabric a bit of stiffness. I wanted to be able to free motion machine stitch hearts on without using a stabilizer and I hoped that the fusible would give enough stiffness. I ended up leaving the paper backing on, then stitching and then removing the paper backing.

I then free motion machine stitched the cards. I was using white bobbin thread and didn’t have the tension exactly right but it’s good enough for me. The photo in the middle shows the back of the stitched fabric with a portion of the paper backing still in place. I removed all the paper backing and then cut out the hearts. Then I fused the hearts to the felt and fused the felt to the paper card. Fusible web sure does make things easier.

And here are the cards after I finished fusing them all together.

I put them in cellophane sleeves, luckily I had the right size although the envelope was a tight squeeze. Now they are at the store ready to be snapped up by customers (hopefully). Do you make cards for specific holidays? How do they sell for you if you sell them? Or do you just give them to friends and family?

 

4th Quarter Challenge Sample

4th Quarter Challenge Sample

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I thought I’d try an idea out for the 4th Quarter Challenge. The basic idea was to use wool tubes with fabric, some under, and some over. Because they are quite thin and hollow, I thought they probably wouldn’t have much effect on the fabric, other than visual. I did use a couple of wool twists too. This is the finished piece:

When I’d rinsed it and squeezed the water out, I didn’t roll it in a towel or try to flatten/smooth it, like I usually do, I wanted to keep the texture. You can see it from this angle:

And this one:

This is a strip of cotton gauze:

This is some synthetic chiffon. I’m guessing I used twists under this piece because there seems to be more of an effect:

The close up photos of the silk strip didn’t turn out, but here’s where silk, cotton gauze and silk taffeta all meet:

This is a close up of the Silk Taffeta, I used twists over and under this:

I used some heavier synthetic chiffon. I know this fabric doesn’t attach very firmly, but I like to use it because it does ripple nicely and looks good:

I love my camera! I can see inside the ripple here:

It’s given me a better idea of what I might do on a bigger piece. How are your ideas coming?

4th Quarter Challenge 2018

4th Quarter Challenge 2018

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The theme of this year’s challenge has been Surface Design. So far, we’ve had Mixed Media, Nuno Felting, and Beneath the Surface. I was torn between a couple of ideas, but went with the one I had when the 4 of us discussed the theme for this year: something about rolling and twisting fibres. So my challenge is: Twists, Tubes and Yarns. I made a post not too long ago with some pieces I made with wool twists and tubes, and there is a video at the bottom which shows how to make the tubes using a kebab skewer. This is a pile of softly twisted wool I made:

To make the twists, I take small amounts of wool and fibres and while holding one end, roll the fibres across a surface, a piece of bubble-wrap is good. I then hold the other end, and twist again. You can ‘set’ the twist by spraying with a little water too. I made this piece about 10 years ago, it’s still one of my favourites:

You can make blends of wool in different colours, or blend fibres in. This piece is made with twists of wool and plastic fibre:

And, this piece is made with twists made with wool and commercial novelty yarns:

The wool tubes, or ‘kebabs’ are something I love to make, just making a pile of them feels creative and is really relaxing. I first made them accidentally when I realised a kebab skewer was great for poking into my little hand carders to pick up trapped fibres, and they’d come out easily if I rolled it around. I ended up with some funky/random tubes.

Like the wool twists, the wool tubes can be made of just wool, or wool blended with fibres, threads etc. Have a look at this post for some ideas: https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2017/08/14/felted-wool-kebabs/
This is one of my fave pieces, probably because it had very little planning/thinking involved, I just grabbed a couple of colours of Merino and a handful of already made tubes:

Handmade yarns can be made from anything you can twist (try organza or plastic bags if you haven’t already!) and can be used in many ways. This piece is made with wool and some old threads and unravellings from fabric, from a previous challenge:

This is a wet felted piece I made using some of my earliest attempts at making hand made yarn on a drop spindle:

I tried out some other early yarn that I made on two pieces, one was wet felted:

And the other was needle felted:

It’s great for weaving with:

Or, if you want something a bit more adventurous, how about needling it onto a vessel (scroll down) https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2012/12/12/yarny-vessel/

So, there’s just a few ideas, if you’ve tried some or all of these before, step out of your comfort zone, try something new, and maybe even use some of this years previous challenges for inspiration or in combination!

Latest Makes

Latest Makes

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I got a really cool embroidered cushion cover years ago (probably over 15, thinking about it) and the back kept splitting at the seams. I mended it a few times, but it was past repair so when I went to the fabric shop recently I had a look for some fabric to replace it. I found a really nice abstract plant/paint splash design, though that’s not so obvious from the small cushion back:

It doesn’t exactly match the front, but now I have a reversible cover! This is the front:

We had a ‘play day’ at the well being centre the week before easter. I’m sure I work better the less thought I put into something! I just grabbed a couple of colours of Merino and a few wool ‘kebab’ tubes from the bag someone else had got out. I honestly don’t think I could have made a nicer piece if I’d planned it!

This week most of us did some form of nuno felting. A couple of us did a bit of ‘extreme nuno’, laying out various fabrics, then 4 really fine layers of Merino, and bingo-wing-busting amounts of rubbing until our pieces are roughly a quarter of the starting size! I need to stop using so much blue, it is a nightmare to photograph, but this is my finished piece:

I loved the ripples on this red fabric:

I can never resist using a bit of scrim and synthetic chiffon for these pieces:

This was from some fabric donated by Judith or maybe Terri, a nice shiny piece of viscose:

I’m not sure what this fabric is, one of our members brings us lots of offcuts to use. I like the way it just crumpled:

And this is the back, there was quite a bit of texture, but I liked how there was a lot of definition from a piece of organza which had kind of bent out of shape:

If you missed it, Ann’s 2nd Quarter Surface Design Challenge is Nuno Felting, so have a look here and join in 🙂

Year End Round Up

Year End Round Up

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I hope everyone’s enjoying the Holidays 🙂 I have one more scarf and scarf sample left to show you. This first one is a grey marl Merino on hand dyed cotton gauze. I blended up 4 shades of 18.5 mic Merino, 2 greys, a duck egg and black. It wasn’t very easy to get photos, they kept turning out blue!:

The sample is a fabric which might look familiar as I bought 3 scarves with the same design in different colours. I think this is the first time I tried it with 18.5 mic Merino:

Whenever we do posts looking back over the year, I think I haven’t done much, but then get surprised! I think there was a definite theme of texture and surface design for me this year, so, here’s a slide show of some of the things I’ve enjoyed making this year:

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Thanks for reading over the past year and leaving comments, I hope to see you in the New Year!

Surface Design Elements

Surface Design Elements

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I made an accidental landscape picture last week at the well-being centre. I’d taken lots of the wool kebab tubes in for a play around and thought I’d see how laying them in 2 different directions worked out. I put the middle lot of tubes on first, then the diagonal ones at the top, then filled in the gaps at the sides with a couple more on each end. We were talking about the bag of dyed embellishments I’d taken in and I pulled out some cotton and fluffed it up, and noticing some gaps on my layout, thought I’d add it to show how it felted. It looks kind of futuristic, in a non gloomy or dystopian kind of way:

The mix of fibres is more apparent on an angle:

One of the grey angled tubes was made from weird tops I got in a mostly grey bag of Botany lap, it is a soft natural wool blended with something like Angelina. I never thought I’d find a use for it, but wrapped around a skewer it looked kind of industrial, like something with copper wires poking out. I tried to get a good close up:

I thought I’d try making a piece with the tubes kind of crammed on, instead of laying them out neatly next to each other, because they tend to move a bit and leave gaps. I didn’t over do it, just added two or 3 more than if I’d positioned them. I also wanted to see what the tubes looked like if they were stretched, so I pulled some of them from each end until they were the right size to fit accross the layout:

On an angle:

I liked the contrast of the shiny red and yellow bamboo on the Sapphire blue of these:

These next couple of pieces are made with wool and fibre twists. I used quite a lot of the tops from my weird grey/black and white botany lap waste bag for the twists used on this, plus a few blends of my own:

An angled pic of course:

And a sideways close up:

I thought it’d be nice to show twists used simply because not everyone wants to make something which looks ‘real’, I cut the twists in half, and then made some little woolly balls to go in the gaps:

It has a kind of swaying seaweedy feel to it:

**EDIT: I realised it isn’t easy to visualise making the wool tubes with the kebab skewers, so I’ve done a quick video:

Final Project

Final Project

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Happy holidays everyone and to those who celebrate,  Merry Christmas!

As we wind down for the year and start planning for next year, I’ve decided to share my final project from Fiona Duthie’s Surface Design class.   My intention is to use it as a reminder of incorporating more of these techniques in my felt work going forward.

I didn’t set out to use a specific number of techniques, but let the picture dictate which ones to use.  We learned many more than I used here.

I started with making a bridge using the lace technique and decorated it with pencil roving and stitching with yarn on the top  to create a handrail on top and matching decoration below.

2014-05-16 13.41

I added the cracked mud/tile effect to the ends of the bridge.

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Before adding techniques and felting

 

The water is fabric manipulation using some silk habotoi with some shadowing under the bridge.  The hills in the background were prefelt cut outs with silk embellishments for texture.  I also used pencil roving to define the shoreline in the distance.

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On the beach is a tree trunk made using the shibori and carving techniques then added beads, cotton batting  and gems as inclusions under silk gauze.  I used silk and locks for the water rushing over the sand and to embellish the sky.  There is a 3D water lily on the waters edge.

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2014-12-07 12.14

I also added loops on the back to be able to hang the picture.   I debated straightening the edges, but decided I like the organic edges.  While its not gallery material, I enjoyed making it and am proud to hang it in my family room.

The class was fun and I learned a lot.  I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to expand their felting techniques in a classroom setting working at your own pace.

What projects or techniques are on your list to try next year?

 

 

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