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Trying To Be Productive

Trying To Be Productive

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I’ve got a craft fair in a couple of weeks, so I’ve been trying to make some new things to take with me. I can never predict what might be popular or sell, so I’ve given up trying to 2nd guess, it just leads to a lot of stock piling up and a lot of disappointment. Instead I decided to concentrate on things I enjoy … with the exception of felted soaps, I’m going to give in and make some, they’re guaranteed to generate interest! Sounds like a plan, ay? Except we’ve been having the most ridiculous heatwave here, so I’ve managed to do very little, unless you count sweating and eating ice cream as being productive 🙂 I did manage to make one new piece of felt though, a ‘seascape’:

And I even managed to turn it into an A5 book cover. This is the front:

And the back:

I had a look through my already made felt pieces and found one from a challenge which I thought would make a nice cover, so I cut that out:

I’ve got both ends sewn so far, so I’ll show it all sewn up next time. I also got as far as choosing some pieces to cut up for piecing together, probably also for book covers, though maybe bags since I bought a load of zips with that intention. I just hate sewing zips!

Any tips for secure closures which doesn’t involve zips or magnets? I’m leaning towards lobster clasps and D rings at the moment. I like delrin clips but making the felt straps is so time consuming.

Finished Felt Inspired By Paintings

Finished Felt Inspired By Paintings

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As promised last time, here’s a photo of the finished piece I showed being laid out:

I did make a few small changes to it, just moving one piece of prefelt and a few fibres. This is the painting I was working from:

It’s quite texturey, which you can see better from this angle:

Using just a few colours, gives quite a lot of shades when they overlap or blend:

I thought the migration from the prefelt through to the back was interesting:

After I’d laid that piece out I had a flick through my notebook and found another piece for inspiration. It’s a really simple piece, but I’d used some colours I’d blended:

What was different/nice with this one was the sheen, you can see from this angle:

I wasn’t aiming to replicate this one at all, just use as inspiration. I even found a mastching weird pinky red Merino – ‘Damask’ for the base:

I used Rose and Viscose fibres for the shiny parts, and a small amount of Nylon for the matte:

I really like how it turned out, having some matte areas seemed to make the shiny fibres shinier:

I did add some shiny fibres to match the ‘Damask’ background, but not much:

Felt Layout From A Painting

Felt Layout From A Painting

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I really liked using a painting for inspiration on the last felt piece I made, so I thought I’d do it again and take more photos of the process. I had a look through some photos and found one I liked, then started the search for the actual painting. I was a bit confused because the photo and actual painting didn’t quite match, but I realised the photo was from while I was working on it, so it wasn’t quite finished! I took a new photo of the finished one:

I used a similar technique to the ones I showed last week, thinly overlaying acrylic paint. This looks different because it’s on a different type and weight of paper. I started with a couple of layers of Jonquil Merino, it looks more like a ‘Buttercup’ in the photos, but it’s really a prime yellow:

Originally I planned to do all aditional layers with fibres, but decided to do some more ‘background’ with Merino. I don’t have exact matches for the colours, but they’re closer than they look on these photos.

I realised that I always lay my felt out in a ‘landscape’ orientation, for some reason – it just feels natural – but it meant I was working from the painting the wrong way up. It didn’t occur to me straight away to just rotate the layout. I got there eventually though! So, once I turned it around, I added some black prefelt ‘blobs’ :

Then added some more Merino. I did add it thinly, but 3 photos of a few wisps and a few wisps more didn’t seem to show much, so this is all the Merino I added:

This is the first lot of Nylon Staple fibre I added, the blues and blue/greens:

It looks like a lot, but really isn’t, I think it’s just because it is bright. This next photo is the yellow and green/yellow Nylon added, which again looks like a lot:

When I compared the layout to the original photo, it’s obvious it’s more of a ‘copy’ than just inspired by the painting, but not quite right, either, so I might make a few adjustments before I felt it.

I’ll show the finished piece next time. I forgot how much longer it takes doing a layout when taking photos of the process so ran out of time to felt it.

Felting a Painting

Felting a Painting

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I’d promised a mate I’d do a painting for him. He liked a couple of pics that I showed him, but I wasn’t sure they’d work on canvas as the technique is better suited to paper. I thought about doing something different, but really didn’t want to, so started trying to think how I could get the technique could work. I wondered if I might be able to recreate the ‘look’ with a piece of felt, he likes funky fabrics and wall-hangings so it might be even better than a canvas. We’ve used artists and paintings in Studio Challenges and I’ve copied a painting before and liked how it turned out. So, I thought it was worth a try. These aren’t the exact pics I showed my friend, but I didn’t want to do a copy, I just wanted inspiration:

The idea I had in mind was from another painting I’d done, similar in technique, but more structured in columns and blocks. I can’t find the painting and it didn’t have the scribbley ink layer underneath, but these were fine for inspiration. They’re built up of layers, with the scribbley ink as background, then just a few colours used, but overlapped to create more colours, this is just yellow, pink and blue, but has orange, red and indigo from overlapping:

I started with blocks of colour, I chose them carefully and positioned them so they’d stay bright and not get dulled by overlapping:

I used some Nylon tops and silk threads to replicate the inky scribbles. I didn’t want to overdo it though. I put wisps of wool over them. To get the effect of overlapping colours and to soften the shapes a bit, I used mostly dyed Nylon Staple fibres. I’ve dyed heaps of this so have lots of shades. I used colours from adjacent wool patches and in places blended fibre colours together. I also used some trilobal nylon, silk throwsters waste, dyed viscose staple, and other dyed cellulose fibres for more interest and some shine

Giving it a good look over before felting I thought a few areas could do with a ‘lift’, so I added some fibres in contrasting colours too:

I like how it turned out, though this is ‘upside down’ compared to the layout pics:

The Nylon staple worked well to ‘blend’ the adjacent colours and the shinier fibres gave it more depth:

I really like this end:

And, I had to get some close-ups, of course! This is Trilobal Nylon, I used this sparingly, I didn’t want too much ‘sparkle’:

A silk thread under some blue nylon staple fibre:

And some Viscose staple fibre:

Hopefully, my mate will like it 🙂

Playing Around

Playing Around

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I’ve had a note on my kitchen white board for months which just says “unravelled knitting and plastic fibre.” I was stirring a pan of instant noodles one day and thought how much they looked like unravelled knitting and how much the frothy, boiling water reminded me of plastic fibre. I intended to make it in felt, but only got around to it yesterday. I picked Charolais wool, I thought this would make a spongy felt and help create the right effect. I think I would have been better off with something like Cheviot. This is the full piece:

Close up of the plastic fibre as frothy, boiling water:

Close up of unravelled knitting (which I think was mostly wool) as instant noodles:

While I had my White Wools tub out, I thought I’m make another couple of pieces to try combining different wools with fibres. This one was made with English 56s. It was a bit different to previous packs I’ve had, the fibres were much longer, almost like there was a high Devon content. I used some hand dyed Nylon Fibres. I love the colours you get with Nylon, especially the blues, which is why there are so many shades on this:

I don’t know if it’s obvious to you, but it definitely has a different look this Eng 56s, more ‘wavy’:

Here’s a close up of some green (the blue was impossible to capture)

For my last piece I used my new favourite wool, Rambouillet. And some fibres I have a ton of, crimped polyester lap-type things, (or as the shops call it ‘Hallowe’en cobwebs’!). I’ve tried this before with various results. It really attached well into the Rambouillet:

It looked to me like wet paper, the way it will form to whatever it dries on top of.

It kept a lot of its crimpy character while still forming a mat of fibres:

It was quite hard to get close ups, the green and orange are both fluorescent. Green:

Orange:

I don’t have any plans for them, I just needed a ‘play day’ 🙂

A Couple of Felting Videos

A Couple of Felting Videos

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I’d planned to do a different blog post for today, but my workspace re-arranging has been really slow, so things didn’t pan out. But as I have nice clean windows and more space, while it was bright and sunny yesterday, I thought I’d take the opportunity to do a few practise videos. Videos are a bit out of my comfort zone! Of course, that didn’t turn out as expected either, the first one was too dark; on the second one I lost track of how many layers I’d done, and my neighbour called round and rang my really loud and annoying new doorbell!

Third time lucky? Not quite, the camera battery ran out before I’d finished 🙂 I think I got enough info from it though to make notes on things to change, for example, maybe when laying out the left hand side, I could spin the layout around so that my arm isn’t in front of the camera. I’d planned to add captions when I edit the ‘proper’ video, but maybe it’s self explanatory? Also, I’d originally planned to edit out all background music and noise – I live near a main road and it is really noisy, but when I took off all audio, it was a bit weird. Have a look and tell me what you think.

I finished the layout while the camera was recharging. I added some fibres, all hand dyed, mostly viscose, soy and nylon staple, with some silk throwster’s waste. I didn’t charge it long enough though, because it ran out just before the end again! There was only the rinsing left to do though. I think a video of the wet felting process needs a few captions even though it is pretty self explanatory too. It’s probably about as interesting as watching paint dry, but if you want a look and offer any opinions, please do!

Here’s a photo of the finished felt:

I might have got carried away with the fibres, but there were so many nice colours!

You can’t have too many can you?

Last one:

What have you done outside your comfort zone, lately?

Felted Cat Cave, A Quick How To

Felted Cat Cave, A Quick How To

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Another old post from me. This is one of the most visited posts we have, so thought everyone might like to see it again.

I have been wanted to make a cat cave for sometime now. I decided it needed to be bright. I picked some Blue Faced Leicester  wool so it would be strong and dyed it chartreuse. Then I picked some purple and magenta for the spikes.

Spikes and Wool

I wanted an oval cat cave. I used my oval hat form to get the shape and gradually sized it up.

Drawing the Resist

I laid out 4 layers of wool for strength and even shrinkage. I put the first side aside and after laying out the second side I poked holes to put the spikes through.

Spikes in the Wool

After wetting it all down I wrapped each spike in plastic wrap so it would not get felted down flat.

Spikes all Wrapped Up

I covered it with a sheer curtain and rubbed both sides for a while and rolled it for a while and then wrapped it up and put it in the dryer twice, changing the position of the felt each time.  It was starting to shrink so I cut out the resist and switched to rolling it in a stick blind. I find the stick blinds to be very aggressive and shrinks felt quickly.  I did do some throwing too. Finally I rinsed the cave out in a bucket of alternately hot and cold water being quite aggressive with it. I then had to stretch the top so it would be domed up. I steamed it to heat it up and make it easier to stretch. Mostly I used a wooden spoon to push in a sliding motion to get the shape. Here it is on top of the resist so you can see how much it shrank.

Finished Cave on top of the Resist

Here it is in use, it didn’t take long for one of my cats, Wu, to take up residence.

 

Cat in Cave

As a foot note Wu ( queen of all things) is no longer with us. This is one of my favourite pictures of her. She really like the cave and we buried her in it, here on the farm.

Tidying My Work Space

Tidying My Work Space

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We’ve had new windows put in this week, so everything had to be moved out of the way, mainly to one corner or the sides of each room. Of course, I decided this was a perfect opportunity to have a clear out and rearrange things whilst putting stuff back, so I ran out of time to make something new to blog about. But since it was partly Ruth’s post which inspired me to make the most of my ‘studio’, I thought I’d take some photos along the way. It’s been less than 2 years since I last re-arranged my space (here’s the post), but I’ve ‘aquired’ a lot more stuff since then! This is how my storage tubs were back then:

They’re not much different now, though the paint which was in tubs on the left now have their own bookcases (they grew too!)

On the opposite side of the room I had a few tubs and my carder on an old toy chest. As the tub stacks grew, I used an old wardrobe on its side to store them, I can drop a curtain down and hide them now.

My carder feels more secure up there on the top too:

I previously had an old computer desk and pine table in the centre to work on. I got a 6ft fold up table to replace those. Both set ups had storage underneath, but they took up far too much room for what they contained, so they’re now storing general rubbish and old toys in the hall cupboard 🙂 All that’s left from underneath is the tubs which contain my netting:

There’s so much room with everything gone and the table folded away:

My shelves are pretty much the same as they were. I got a new bookcase and swapped the huge old telly for a stereo so there’s a bit more room.

I’m sure it won’t last long having the table folded up, and I still have so much to put back, but at least for now the clear space has the potential for creativity 🙂

Using Prefelt … Almost

Using Prefelt … Almost

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I’ve been meaning to make more of my own prefelt for ages. I have some commercial prefelt, but thought it’d be nice to have some in other colours and even multi colours. I also had the idea I wanted to recreate a band logo or design or something. There was one I had in mind, with only 3 colours, so I thought I’d start small. The first colour I needed was red:

And, I also needed black, not as much, but I wanted to make enough in case of mistakes:

And it’s probably a good thing I did! I’ve only cut simple shapes from prefelt before, all freestyle I think. I might have been a bit too ambitious with my idea … Firstly, all the faffing around with the design, simplifying it to individual colours, then making those just outlines, enlarging, printing, cutting out etc, that all took a couple of hours. Then I couldn’t find anything to trace around the shapes and leave a clear outline. So, for now, I’ll just have to show you the shapes ready for tracing:

Those are the main shapes (flames), there are some smaller ones I’ll need to do too. I don’t think there’s enough black for too many mistakes, so I’ll have to be careful!

One thing I do have finished is a bird pod. Probably better for nesting material, I think.

And the back:

Have you overestimated how ‘simple’ a project should be?

What To Do With All The Little Bits Or Fun Batts

What To Do With All The Little Bits Or Fun Batts

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I am very busy getting ready for the first Farmers market of the season and forgot it was my turn to make a blog post. I thought You might like to see this one from 2012 again.

Ann

Last week I sorted out my wool and put all the decent size pieces on the new shelves. this left me with a lot of little bits. I usually keep bins of little bits to use as accents. Now I had way to much of that too.  I sorted it all, picked out the stuff I really wanted to keep and put the rest into 4 piles for carding.

I have a large carder, a Patrick Green Cottage Industry Carder.

A friend came over and we carded it into a 4 fun textured batts.

pink/red/purple batt
orange/yellow batt
brown/gray/black/white batt
blue/green batt

The batts came out really nice and will be great for felting or for spinning textured yarn. I didn’t think I had that much until we fluffed it up to card. It is amazing how much you can compress wool when you’re stuffing it into a little storage box.