Sorry For the late post, I thought today was tomorrow.
Last weekend I had four ladies for a techniques class. This is not an advanced class, but it is also not a beginner class. People had to already know how to make felt.
First, we did inclusions. They used a piece of thicker prefelt and elastics to enclose some large glass beads (the kind they are used in the bottom of vases for decoration) and a felt ball. Then laying out a base and top they enclosed some glass beads, a felt ball, a circular resist with a hole and a squashed tasimo pod with a resist over it. Sorry, I forgot to grab the camera until they were at the rubbing stage. Part way through they cut some holes on top of the beads and pod.
When they were laying out I had them cover a pebble with 2 layers in different colours. I had them put a resist on top of the first layer and wrap it with the second colour. They popped them into a piece of nylon stocking to contain it all and make it easier to felt. You can see the first sample on the table in the picture below. They mostly felted the pebbles during lunch while eating and chatting. Once it was mostly done they cut a hole in the top and after healing the cut edge removed the resist and cut a smaller hole to reveal the pebble. Similar to the one below that I made a few years ago.
Next was cracked mud. I had them layout two 10×10 pieces( top and bottom) they added painter’s tape in 2 widths and then added the top
Naturally, because it was a wet felting class, they had to do some rolling.
I had them cut the mud sections at different stages of felting, prefelt, mostly done and done. so they could see how that affects it. I think they could have used more felting before the fulling but we had limited time and had to move on to book resists. I had them make a four-page book resist using half circles. they managed to get it laid out and wet down but then we were out of time so they had to take them home to finish.
3 students sent me pictures of the finished pieces. The first one she manipulated to look like origami.
And this one, She says it needs more fulling but wanted to get me the picture.
The third student got creative and combined her samples into a tea cozy.
All in all a good class. I just wish I could squeeze more techniques in. But no matter how fast you want to be felting takes time.
I bought a new to me car. The visor mirror cover was glued shut for some reason. When we tried to unstick it, it just came right off. Maybe it had fallen off so they glued it back on? I don’t know. The result is when I put the visor down I have the mirror. Even though you are not really looking at the mirror, it is distracting while driving. Must be because I am so beautiful I can’t resist looking at myself. LOL It is actually very hard to take a picture of a mirror and not be in the picture.
My thought is to make a felt cover for it and velcro it on to hide the mirror but I could still remove it if I needed the mirror.
I measured the mirror and a small amount around it to get the finished size I will need. I think I will add a little more.
Then I thought why not try Ildi’s method of felting with outlines and wet wool? I have some pencil roving and lots of wool and it’s a good sized to try it out. Here is a link to one of Ildi’s posts so you can see what I am talking about. https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2022/06/27/felted-rug/
So far I have measured and done a couple of sketches of possible designs. these are smaller than they need to be but that is the size of the paper. I will have to find one of the larger sketchbooks to do a final design and then try to use the computer and the printer to enlarge it for shrinkage.
Aaaand, that is as far as I am. The plan is to have it for my next blog post, but we all know about the best laid plans of mice and men. I have my fingers crossed. It’s going to be a busy week.
The last twelve months have, as my Irish granny would have said ‘put manners on me’. Cataracts, which were a ‘by the way’ diagnoses in my late 40s finally and quickly caught up with me. Eight increments of sight deterioration over a three month period! No more night driving, reading became a challenge and my creative curiosity disappeared. And so, the waiting game began. I am currently recovering from surgery on eye number 2. What a difference it has made and while it will be some time before I get my new glasses, I can function without them for the first time ever! Also, life in all its facets is so beautifully colourful.
So why do I mention it in my post. It feels awkward mentioning it as I am a very private person. Awkward, but necessary. Many of us go through times in life where we lose our creative mojo. Initially, I found myself angst ridden and questioning my abilities. The feeling never really went away but I had to find a way to go with the flow and tap away at bits and pieces for a while.
So now that the eyes are fixed I have started playing. Nothing too serious (well except for my last piece but more of that later). I am now a week and a half after the operation and here is what I have made over the past week.
Sample 1:
First up, a bit of a back story. I have committed to a felt swap later in the year. The theme is brooches so I thought I should start thinking about this. I used to like felting with basic resist shapes and distorting them so I thought this might be a starting point for this experiment.
First of all, I cut a 15cm square resist and rounded the corners. Then I covered both sides of the resist in eight thin layers. I started and finished with a rich orange colour and sandwiched in between were two layers of mustard and two layers of green. I used 16 micron merino which I purchased from Leiko Uchiyama https://www.leikofelt.com/merino/. Leiko’s fibre is hand dyed and the colours are sublime. She is based in Ireland and ships worldwide.
Sample 1 fibres laid out and wet down 8 thin layers
I made a prefelt in the usual way. I wanted the prefelt to be strong so I kept working it until it started to distort the resist.
solid pre-felt shrinkage has started
Then I made a small incision on one side of the resist, extracted the resist and sewed the raw edges back together with some nylon thread:
Sample 1: repairing the hole which was cut to remove resist
Then it was time to play with the square shape. I brought the edges of the square to the front of the piece and I started playing and shaping it. Once I was happy with the shape I handsewed them to hold them in position. Then I worked hard at felting the edges together and to the flat back side of the piece.
Sample 1: working on manipulating the shape
Sample 1: working on a pleasing shape
Sample 1: Shape has been secured with stitching and fulling begins
Once it was felted, fulled and rinsed, I removed the threads and started cutting. Lots of cutting!
Sample is fully felted, stitches are removed and cutting has started
I got a bit scissor happy! I sliced through a little at a time
Here is the finished piece. I have popped it on top of its original resist to give it perspective:
Sample 1 finished piece laid on original resist for size comparison
Here is a close up of the piece. The inch ruler underneath gives some perspective on size. Do you think it would make a suitable brooch?
Sample 1: close up of finished piece
Sample 2
Next up, a flower. This year sees the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Irish felting group Feltmakers Ireland, by our esteemed member and incredibly creative Elizabeth Bonnar. There is a celebration planned for later in the year where members will focus on making pink flowers. I thought I might take this down time to make at least one. But I wanted to play and not produce my usual style of flower. I wanted to make a three layered flower but I also wanted to do some free motion embroidery on each petal. I decided to make the three layers separate, felt them to my satisfaction then attack them with the sewing machine. I cut out a template for the petals (small, medium, large) and then cut these shapes from prefelt as a foundation. I laid different tints of pink merino on top and finished it off with some tints of pink viscose. Once this was wet felted and fulled, my work with the sewing machine began as I did free motion stitching on each petal. After that, I needle felted the layers together and added a central yellow disk which I needle felted and then cut back the fibre until I was happy with the dome shape. Here are some photos I took of my progress. I was really getting into it so forgot to take photos as I went along (maybe the mojo is returning):
Sample 2: prefelted flower petals and the start of the layering of the lighter colour pinks
Sample 2 is ready for wetting down
Sample 2 has now been fulled
Sample 2 dried and ready for free motion embroidery
Sample 2 with free motion embroidery completed
Sample 2 Layers are joined together and central disk has been needle felted into the flower
Sample 2: view of finished flower (still damp so not fully shaped).
Sample 2: view of finished flower (still damp so not fully shaped).
Sample 2: view of finished flower (still damp so not fully shaped).
Sample 3
My last piece this week is a personal piece I felt a compelling urge to complete. When I left the hospital I was given instructions and bits and pieces to help the eyes heal. Among these were non woven swabs which I found were really soft and well aerated. I have no idea what they are made from but I reckoned they would work nicely on felt and I had lots left over. So I made a bowl using two layers of undyed merino. I wet this down, and then placed the non woven fabric on top, cut the pieces to size so that they fitted around the curves. I then felted it in the normal way. I cut a hole in the piece and removed the resist. Then I sealed the raw edges. When it came to fulling the pot I threw it quite energetically as I wanted to get additional texture on it. Then I dried it. There was nothing particularly spectacular about the result except that it was really soft and tactile. I did not take any photos of this process as it was just the result of some personal urgency. Using the 3cm hole at the back of the pot as an access point, I did some free motion embroidery stitching on my sewing machine. It was as close as I will ever come to performing keyhole surgery! It was challenging but I am pretty pleased with the result, Again, the ruler at the bottom of the photo gives size perspective:
Sample three: small bowl covered with free motion machine embroidery
Sample 3 rear view featuring 3cm hole through which the embroidery was worked
Back to the question of creative block. I don’t know if it is lifted but I think two things are helping me at the moment. The first is making that commitment, whether it is to a person or a project, the second is keeping things small and manageable, that way I can handle complexities if a notion hits me on how I might enhance a piece. Oh yes something else too, I have started to consciously seek not to be too precious about these pieces. I have thrown paint and ink on pieces and woven stuff through them. Not always producing happy little results (to paraphrase the artist, the late Bob Ross) but the process is freeing.
Have you had issues with creative block? I appreciate that it is a personal journey to find what will work to free yourself up. What may work for me may not necessarily work for someone else but if you would like to share your journey I would love to hear from you. Together, we may be able to help others free themselves up and immerse themselves once again in this beautifully creative world we occupy.
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?
