Registration for the online class Wet Felting for Beginners closes on February 22. So if you’d like to sign up for the class, do so now. You can sign up for the class by filling in the contact form here. We would love to have you join us if you’d like to explore the basics of wet felting. It’s going to be a lot of fun!
For all of you who have already signed up – Thanks! We’ll be sending out your class information on February 26th. If you have any questions about supplies, please leave a comment below and we’ll get back to you as quickly as we can.
I have been continuing to work on stitching more of Nanci William’s original sketches of people we see every day.
This is Cody, he was just walking by outside the store with the ever present cell phone.
Here’s Georgia.
In her turquoise dress and moon tattoo.
And this is Vince.
The man in black.
I forgot to get a photo of Gwen and Rocco before I colored them in. But that is all the stitched portraits completed. Now to get them laced over matte board and framed.
I have written several posts about a collaboration between artists which will result in an upcoming exhibition and a coffee table type book. The original sketches that all of these are based on are by Nanci Williams who works at the store with me. We see a wide diversity of people and fashions. It’s getting closer to the deadline to have all the pieces completed and so I’ve finished one more. His name is Norman.
I started with Nanci’s sketch and on the left, you will see an attempt to thread sketch Norman without any guidelines. I could have done him that way but I just seem to get the proportions a bit off. So I decided I would try using colored pencil to trace the sketch and then use that to free motion machine stitch over. So that is the middle piece. He definitely looked better than the first attempt. So now to determine size. I increased the original sketch 180% and that is on the right side of the photo. I had some linen that I had dyed naturally and I can’t remember now what it was dyed with. (Note to self – keep better track of experiments.) I backed it with Osnaberg fabric by fusing it down to the back after I had traced the sketch with “Beige” colored pencil.
Then I free motion stitched him on the machine. Here he is after stitching. I actually really liked him without color but I was persuaded that he needed color.
So I colored him in with colored pencil. And I’m glad I did. He turned out just like I wanted.
So here’s a little closer view. Since I have one more on the list to do, I decided to make the next one with this same method. But I didn’t have any more of the fabric. So I dyed some heavier cotton fabric with tea and coffee. I dyed more than I needed and I’m sure that was a mistake because now I want to use the rest of the fabric with three extra sketches. Because of course I have nothing better to do! So I’ll see how many I can get done before the March 1st deadline.
Last week, I posted a review and give away for the book Felt So Good by Tone Rørseth. I randomly drew from the comments posted and the winner is: Kim
Kim, I will send you an e-mail to get your mailing address. Thanks for all your comments and if you’re still interested in winning a copy of the book, there are more blogs that are giving it away. You can find the list on the initial give away post.
Since then, I’ve gotten all the pieces backed with fusible and cut out for all four of them.
Here are Becky Sue and Mary Jane.
And this is Anna Belle and Sally Jo.
I had a piece of dyed background fabric but it seemed way too busy. So I decided to paint a piece instead. I used Dye-Na-Flow paints and added a bit of salt after painting to get some texture.
Then I placed all of the pieces and ironed them down.
I added stripes to Becky Sue’s shirt with a permanent marker. I decided to go with the red marker as it gave the best contrast.
Putting the pieces in place is a bit painstaking as everything has to be in the right position and then kept in place while ironing. I covered them with a piece of parchment paper to iron. Now on to the fun part – stitching them. I am in the process of choosing thread colors and I always like to do a little practice free motion stitching before I start. I did buy some stretcher bars for this piece so I will wrap the background fabric around the stretcher bars to finish it. I’ll keep you posted about the stitching.
I wrote a post about stitching some caricatures back at the beginning of June. The sketches are all done by my friend Nanci Williams. We are still working out the details but the plans so far for these are to have an exhibition of work by different artists using Nanci’s sketches as inspirations and to make a book of all of the people. We are thinking of calling it “Whitefish Fashion Plates”. The two previous stitched people who I did were the same size as Nanci’s sketch. This time, I decided I wanted to enlarge them considerably. I chose a sketch that had four women pictured who were all dressed very much alike.
I copied the original sketch and then enlarged each person on my copy machine by 200%. I then taped them all back together again. I gave them names as well!
I then hunted down fabric that would work for them. All of them were wearing pastel shirts, all had grey hair and wore a visor and carried similar handbags. I had a hard time finding pastel fabrics in my stash as I don’t seem to have a lot of these colors in solids. The skin tone fabric I had was dyed with tea.
Once I found all the fabric, I had to iron all the pieces so they would be flat and ready to put fusible web on to the back of the fabric.
I started with Becky Sue, the one on the right hand side of the sketch. When I traced the different body parts, I had to remember that the paper on the fusible web is on the back side so I had to turn the sketch over and trace from behind. That way when I fused the pattern on to the back of the fabric and cut it out, the figure would be facing the proper direction.
I then ironed all my fusible web with the patterns on to the back of the fabric I had chosen.
I cut them all out and here is Becky Sue ready to be fused down to the background. I haven’t chosen a background fabric yet. I only have one piece of fabric that is the correct size and it seems a bit too “tie-dyed” for a background. I have been just using fairly plain green backgrounds. All of the details will be added with stitching once all of the figures have been fused to the background.
All of the ladies shirts were plain except for Becky Sue. Her shirt is supposed to be striped. I didn’t have any striped fabric so I decided I would add stripes with a permanent marker. I made a sample piece to see which color stripes I like. Which color stripes do you prefer?
These mosaic people are by my friend Deb Stika. This isn’t a very good photo but these are approximately 2 1/2 to 3 feet tall and all done in mosaics. The resemblance to Nanci’s sketches are amazing. These will be included in the future show and book too. I will keep you posted on my progress on the four ladies.
