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Fossil Piece Complete

Fossil Piece Complete

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I completed the hand stitching on my felt fossil piece that I created for the 4th Quarter Challenge.

I added scattered straight stitches in colors that were already present in the “fossils”. I felt like the grey background was a bit plain and I needed to move some of the colors to other areas in the piece.

Here is the piece completed. From a distance, the background just looks mottled but you can see the colors of the background stitches when you look up close. You can click on the photo to enlarge it and see the details better.

Here’s a photo so that you can see the texture a little better. It does have quite a bit of surface dimension. Now I have to decide how to finish and frame the piece. How do you finish your pieces? What would you suggest?

More Natural Wools and Fibres

More Natural Wools and Fibres

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I was looking through my flickr account recently for some photos to use on a flyer for the well being centre, and I came across some felt pieces I made with natural fibres and natural wool combinations. I haven’t done a post about ‘naturals’ for a while so I thought you might enjoy this old post from 2012:

Another couple of natural wool and natural fibre combinations I’ve used recently are Oatmeal Bluefaced Leicester with Ingeo top, and Humbug Jacob Tops with black and white Bamboo tops.

Humbug Jacob tops are a stripey blend of black and white Jacob wool tops. Just on its own it produces a nice result, but I thought I’d try using strips of black and white bamboo tops for effect. Both bamboos are really soft, white bamboo looks silky, but black bamboo is fluffy and more like fluffy cat fur. They felt quite differently too, the white keeps its silkiness and shines really nicely, and the black almost fades into the background, staying very matt.

Ingeo is made from corn, it is soft and shiny and smells faintly of caramel 🙂 I decided to cover the whole piece with Ingeo as it has such a lovely sheen. This was another fibre which shone even in dim light. The effect after drying is gorgeous, Ingeo is such a nice silky fibre and went really well with the Oatmeal Bluefaced Leicester. I think this combination would make a lovely soft and shiny scarf.

*The previous post I’d made was also about natural wools and fibres, if you’re interested, you can find it here

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?

A picture for exhibition

A picture for exhibition

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Last week I missed doing my blog post because I had no power or internet. My area was hit by 6 tornados. We were not hit we had no damage.  Some areas near us were hit very hard, the large power substation near us was hit and some of the cell phone and internet towers too.

Before all that I did manage to work on my piece for the guild exhibition and sale. I  do not think I will get it done in time as it is due in a week.  The theme was a 100-mile inspiration. I decided to do a scene with the Parlement buildings. I am using 2 prefelt layers with a piece of cotton gauze in the middle for the background.

First I found a simple outline picture I could use for the outline of the building. I cut that out and tried it on the background.

I pinned it to another piece of prefelt and cut it out.

Then it was time to work ou the clouds.

After I took the picture and looked at it I realized I had made the clouds to symmetrical. Its funny how looking at a picture sometimes shows you more than just looking at it. I tacked all the pieces together with a few jabs of a felting needle

Next was adding fireworks as I am thinking it should be Canada Day.

Then I cropped the picture to see better how it will look.

I wet felted the piece and now I need to do some stitching around the building so it will show better.and my daughter said I should add beads around the fireworks like the sparkles you see with fireworks. I thought maybe some sparkly thread and a bead at the end of each firework.  What else would you add to this silhouette picture?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Uninformative Sample

Uninformative Sample

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This is probably going to be the least informative post I’ve ever done, but it has nice pics! A while ago, Cathy sent me some wool and fabric which she’d dyed with natural/plant dyes. I tend to be a little bit ‘messy’ and had misplaced them, but found them last weekend. I took them with me to the well-being centre and made a piece of felt with some English 56’s and lots of the wool and locks Cathy sent. Unfortunately, I forgot to write down what I used and left everything at the centre, so I will edit the post once I get the info! So, this is the finished piece with all the samples:

On a bit of an angle to see the textures more:

Closer along the surface to see the locks:

These grey locks looked really silvery:

This rose coloured wool had a nice rich colour:

I think this was Indigo dyed, I wish I’d used more of this:

I love the colour of these locks, I think they were Turmeric dyed:

How gorgeous are these, with the rich yellow and subtle orange, and gorgeous sheen?

I don’t think these locks had been dyed, I love ones like this, with small, tight crimp, they remind me of crinkle-cut chips!

I think these are the same as the Turmeric dyed ones, but natural:


Sorry, for the complete lack of info! But I hope you enjoyed the pics 🙂 One thing I can tell you is that none of the wools I used lost any colour.

Shibori Shrug Jacket

Shibori Shrug Jacket

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Heres another throw back post. I thought if I do not remember doing this maybe you won’t either. I hope you like it.

After seeing Ruth’s jacket it reminded me I had made a small one for one of my daughter’s dolls years ago. I thought I should give it another try but life size this time. I thought about doing it seamless but decided that it would make something that is a simple design into something complicated. Although I am not a great sewer I was sure sewing 2 straight seems on my machine should not be beyond me.

There are quite a few pictures so I have put them in a gallery for ease of viewing. If I could figure out how to post pictures side by side or in groups I would but that is beyond my skill level.

First I made a large piece of nuno felt. I used silk gauze and merino wool. After it was finished I put it in a red dye bath. It came out quite nice. It’s hard to tell from the picture because my camera did not like the red at all. The one you see was the best of a bad lot.

The next thing to do was the shibori. I finger pleated the middle of the piece starting at one short end. I very carefully held it flat and tight while I tied it. The first tie is the hardest one. After that you just pleat it up tying every couple of inches. You don’t want to be too neat about it. If the pleats are to perfect you get straight lines. You want your pleats to be tight so some of the material will resist the dye in the second bath. This type of shibori is supposed to make a bark like pattern. I put the tied up piece in a purple dye bath hopping for a nice red purple to appear on my cloth. It came out black. After it was dry the gauze side had more of a purple look but still very dark.

I sewed up my jacket. I made the material far too wide so the jacket ends up long. The short sides overlapped a lot when folded up. I had to have long “lapels” to make it work. It is not a mistake it’s a design feature, just ask me :O) It is still to long for me. I think it may look good one someone who is tall and thin. Two things I am not.

All in all not a bad try. I’ve made another piece of nuno felt to try again, I made it narrower this time. Now I have to find the time to sew it up.

Works In Progress

Works In Progress

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A while ago when I was making a bookcover from felt strips, I made an extra piece for a future inside piece/sleeve. I usually save my plainer/flatter offcuts for this so they’re not too bulky:

It got me thinking about making another cover. I’ve had some longer offcut strips recently, so I got a few out to see how they looked together and see if they were long enough for the width of a cover:

Which then led to getting out some of the smaller offcuts I’ve saved from Nuno smaples recently, and playing around to see which ones work together. I thought these might be good for 1 side of a small bag or maybe case:

And for the other side:

How durable they are will probably help me decide if they’re suitable for a bag or case. One of our wet felting group members has a nice piece of silk she wants to use for nuno scarves, so a couple of weeks ago when there was only the two of us, we made a couple of samples using 18.5 micron Merino. I know it’s early to be thinking about making scarves for winter, and it was about 32C the day we made them, but we took the opportunity while we had a quiet day! This was my sample piece:

I used a bluey green blend for the white end, and an orange/pink/red blend for the patterned end:

This is the patterned end:

And the texture:

I forgot about the piece and left it in my bag, so it dried with a few creases in! I’ll re-wet it to get them out 🙂 One thing I finished recently is a little case ‘thingie’ made from some old jeans. I wanted to make use of the pocket so thought I’d make a little bag/case with a zip at the top:

I haven’t decided on a use for it yet though!

A Few Recent Things

A Few Recent Things

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I know I said I’d decided not to make anything specific for the craft fair, but I was thinking about the comments I get and questions I usually get asked, and one thing which people often say is that they’d love to have a go at felting if they had the time. When I made the practice felting videos recently, even though I was being conscious of going slow to demo properly, both the layout and felting only took about 15 mins each, so I thought this might be a good ‘selling point’. So I put together a few small fibre packs, spent some time editing the videos to speed them up, copied them onto my phone and thought I’d take my tablet with some tutorials and do a special offer to go with the packs. I did get some interest, but even though it was a really cloudy day, you could barely see anything on my tablet or phone from the glare! Best laid plans and all that!
If you remember, the camera battery had run out before the end on both videos. I redid the wet felting process one, and took the piece from the video with me. I don’t know why, but it looks like it has been scrunched in a box in these photos! Maybe it got creased on the washing line.

I do like the light turquoisey blue nylon fibres, especially on the pink:

Close up:

I took some sari silk to the well being centre a few weeks ago. I’d cut the pieces to take a while ago, so I’m not sure if this green piece is from a sari I’d already used. They have a few different areas of pattern and I’ve not had the whole pieces out for a while. It actually looked like quite a plain pattern, but the texture makes it look a lot busier:

It rippled quite ‘deeply’:

Close up:

A while ago (so long I can’t remember when!) Tracey sent me a beautiful piece of silk. I only got around to trying that out recently too. I only managed to get one decent photo of it:

I love the way it felted, and I think I’ll try a piece with some gooseberry or lichen wool to match the green parts, see how different it looks. Thanks for the silk, Tracey, it’s gorgeous 🙂

Finished Bookcovers, Unfinished Purses

Finished Bookcovers, Unfinished Purses

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I actually finished a couple of notebook covers this week. The first one is the landscape piece I showed cut out ready for sewing. This is the front:

And this is the back:

I think every time I use ‘scene’ type pieces for book covers, I tell myself to make the top and bottom ‘sections’ bigger next time, because I always have to compromise over what gets cut off. I always forget! But, then I can use those nice pieces for something else, like part of a collage book cover! I tried to make this next one nice and bright, you might remember me choosing some of the pieces back in February:

And I did make a start on it in March, and then put it away for a while. I realised last week that I was going to be hot, sweaty and miserable no matter what, so I may as well just try to be a bit productive and get my sewing machine out and finish the cover:

Other side:

This is the inside, with some hand dyed cotton fabric as lining:

Front and back opened out:

I bet a hat made like this would look great! I still haven’t manged to get any further on some purses I cut out, but I did get a photo of them:

Making Felted Sheep

Making Felted Sheep

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Another flash back post. some needle felted sheep. I hope you like them.

With the start of show season gets closer I realise I only had a few sheep left. Time to make sheep parts.

sheep body 1 sheep head 1

I have to make bodies and heads. I roll them up and give them a few pokes. I use 2 needles held together with a hair elastic. It makes them comfortable to hold.

needles

There will be white sheep too

sheep head 2

Once they are rolled and poked they get put in to the legs of some nylons.

sheep parts ready fo the wash

These will go into the washer and dryer with a regular load of laundry.

I also make wet felted snakes to be cut for legs and a flat sheet of felt to cut ears out of.

sheep parts

I can’t find my bag of black spare parts.  may need to make more.

This is what the finished sheep will look like.

sheep small

They all get a safety pin on one side so you can wear them.