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Felting a Rug on a Trampoline

Felting a Rug on a Trampoline

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Our guest author/artist is Tuulikki Zara Rooke.

Last winter, I buried a couple of raw fleeces in the snow, and let the snow melt “wash” them. Well, it´s not the most thorough way of washing fleeces, but they were slightly whiter in colour, and smelled a little less sheepy when they thawed out in the spring. I have now used two of these fleeces to make a rug, with the assistance of my kids, on a trampoline.

Carding this amount of wool would take quite some time, so I decided to try just whipping the wool instead. As it was slightly windy, and the wool tends to fly around when you do this, I decided to do it on our trampoline, which has a security net around it. Very practical indeed. Beating the wool with sticks is a rather fun way to separate the fibres and, being on a trampoline, it was impossible to resist jumping around in the wool, too.

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Now that we had all this wool on the trampoline, I figured we may as well try felting on the trampoline too. We laid out the wool on an old sheet, added a thin layer of carded wool on top, and finally raw locks in different natural colours. We wet it all down with hot water and soap, rolled it up, and then the girls and I (ok, mostly the girls, but I did join in for a bit) bounced around on the trampoline until we ran out of energy.

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The next day, we added more hot water and soap and did a bit of rubbing and rolling. Then we rolled it out of the sheet and I let the girls bounce on the rug. An interesting and quite effective way to full a piece of this size.

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Apart from being fun, and giving us quite a lot of exercise, there is a practical advantage to felting on a trampoline. All the excess water drains through the woven trampoline, which makes it easy to just keep adding more hot water during the felting process, and to get rid of excess water after rinsing the rug thoroughly with the garden hose.

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A rug made with wool equivalent to about three fleeces can hold a lot of water. It took three days to dry. After that, I could add the final embellishments – swirls of black yarn that I needle-felted on the white centre.

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It´s a thick and sturdy rug, measuring 115 cm (3.7′) across. It will probably stand for a lot of wear too, as it survived the rather harsh treatment on the trampoline.

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Zara, thanks for sharing your family’s adventure with felt on a trampoline this summer.  It sure looked like fun with a beautiful result!

 

The Final Projects for the Paper Lamination Class

The Final Projects for the Paper Lamination Class

Comments 10 comments

I wasn’t able to finish the coursework for Ruth’s Paper Lamination Class within the class time, but have since completed the last two assignments.  We had a choice of several different options for the last two weeks.  I chose to use one of the lamination pieces on a pillow.  It was a piece of silk habatoi that I used a stencil with acrylic paint on a piece of copy paper.

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I made a couple of batts  with gray,  a little green and purple accents over a resist. Then wet felted.  Of course, I had to cut a side to get the resist out and the pillow stuffing in.  While it was drying, it was a nice square shape.  Now its a funky shape.  But that’s ok, the colors go perfectly in my bedroom.

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It seemed a little plain so I tried adding prefelt leaves, but I felt they overwhelmed the design.  I was very pleased with the texture and dimension of the flowers and decided not to do any stitching like I had on the bird project.

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So, I decided to  stitch around the silk using a cretan stitch. It was an exercise in patience and practice.  I used a silver sharpie to put a few dots in the center of the flowers as stamens.

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Here’s the back with a subtle marbled effect:

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Next I made a wall hanging.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the organza I painted.   I call it “paintbrush.”  In the closeups you can see the brush  strokes if you look hard.

 

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I also got some great dimension:

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Here is the back:

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Now it is hanging in my kitchen.  Yes, the wall is teal.

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I’m very pleased with both projects.

Thanks Ruth for offering the class.  I really enjoyed it.

 

Samples from the Nuno Paper Lamination Class

Samples from the Nuno Paper Lamination Class

Comments 10 comments

I just finished Ruth Lane’s online class.  Since I am also papermaker, I was excited to combine the two passions and see the results.

It was a fun experiment using a variety of papers, dyes, paints and fabrics.  Some worked, some didn’t, but that’s how we learn.

This first one is a paper napkin from one of my Grandson’s birthday party earlier this year on organza.  Since I was experimenting, I used some batts with unknown fibers in two colors, blue and green.

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I decided not to further embellish it since the “characters” were nicely defined.  I suppose I could add some greenery and clouds.  But I wanted to show the results this far.

The next one is also “finished.”  I used a tree stencil on organza with unryu paper which is very fibery.  Again it is on a batt of unknown fiber.

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I embellished around the stencil with silver silk hankies.  It felted very nicely.

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Since these were experiments, I wasn’t concerned about perfect edges and left them organic.

Here’s a closeup of the center.  You can see how those fiber areas look like branches and connect the trees.

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I got great texture as you can see from this side view.

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The one project I completed was a stenciled bird pic.

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I used a couple of paper and fabric types with this stencil, but chose this one to finish even though the colors faded.  It was a dyed paper towel on cotton voile.  You can’t see it in the pics, but the bumps from the towel can be seen in spots. I used it on a merino batt.

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I forgot to cover the edges of the voile, so I used machine stitching to cover the edges.

I decided to hand stitch the rest. There is a lot of dimension in the paper, although it’s not too obvious in these pics.

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I wanted to keep it simple.  I used double rayon thread with threaded backstitches and some satin stitches to embellish it. The green is a variegated thread. I purposely just outlined because I wanted the birds to be the center of attention. Forgive my poor stitching. Here are some closeups.

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Now I have to decide whether to frame it or leave it organic.

Thanks Ruth!  It was a unique class. I need more practice. I’m still working on the final projects.

Seeing Spots

Seeing Spots

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Last month I visited the San Diego Aquarium and a couple of tide pools while seeing relatives and touring the area.  I’m always fascinated with the beautiful creatures from under the sea.  When I returned home, I did some more research and came across the Blue Spotted Ribbontail Ray.  You can read more  about them here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluespotted_ribbontail_ray

You can also Google them and see some really beautiful pictures.

I have seen other Stingrays in Sausalito, California, but nothing this beautiful.  Of course, the colors made this guy pretty attractive to me.  I thought it would be a fun, challenging project in felt.

Although I know the body is fairly flat, I started out with making a resist.

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The eyes were a challenge because they have an unusual shape with a cutout (spiracle) behind them.  I  made tight ball which encased a glass eye and a rock for the spiracle portion, then covered it with the yellow merino.

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I used one layer of corriedale as my base on each side, then used a white batt on the underside. To give the back some height in the middle I added extra layers. Once I was satisfied, I attached the eyes and a piece of a batt to attach a tail.

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The tail was next. I used a corriedale core and covered it with a batt, then rolled it into shape.  I tried to use roving to make the blue stripes, but the rolling moved it around to much, so I striped it off.

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The tail also includes the stinger near the end. The tail is actually one and a half times the length of the body.

I had to do some studying of the anatomy to try to get it close to reality.  The nostrils, mouth, nasal flaps and gills are underneath.  I didn’t add claspers or pelvic fins.

Next was decorating.  It took a long time to cut out the spots from handmade prefelt in various sizes. I  placed a batt over the top taking care not to overlap to the underside which would stay white.  Then came the spots.

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There was a lot of rubbing before rolling.  I used a gray roving to highlight the mouth, nostrils and gills on the underside.

Once the felting was near complete, I cut out the resist, the gills, mouth then finished the fulling. The eyes came last. They were a bit tricky. The glass bead and rock had moved during the felting.  Removing the rock took a little  doing and I ended up using a tweezers. A little needlefelting helped finish off the eyes and put stripes on the tail.

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I wanted to show the ray in motion so I put two plastic bottles under the flaps while it dried, but even after drying as soon as I layed it down the ray went flat. Plan B was to use Modge Podge to hold the shape.  It did the trick, but I wasn’t happy it remained white.

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Here he is hanging on the wall near my work area.  It’s hard to tell, but the wall is a light blue.

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I sometimes wonder why I come up with these types of projects. I did enjoy the learning process though.  What challenges have you had lately?

 

 

 

 

Wet felted Hat Class.

Wet felted Hat Class.

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I taught a wet felted hat class last week end. I ended up with four students. One unfortunately had to drop out at the last min.

I let students pick the style of hat they want to make.  Two students licked a pixy style to keep warm while having fun outside.

1 laying out wool 2 laying our wool

A hat with no brim and folds and one that will be a fedora style.

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Everyone one want some like on their hats. Two chose to use silk caps to cover the whole hat.  The blue hat has silk that had lots of contrast but as it gets wet is seems to disappear.

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One person wanted flowers under the silk cap. They are made by twisting a silk hanky.

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The fedora will have wisps of silk top.

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And then we got busy felting and talking and I forgot to take pictures, sorry. I almost forgot to get a picture of them all done. The green one will continue to be worked on. She isn’t sure how she is going to treat he brim. Probably she will roll it to get it to the depth she wants. The fedora will get its brim trimmed and shaped as well.

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Jans hat Here is one finished. Excuse the Photo. I took it from a facebook message. She took it for me late last night.

Hear is the other pixy hat. You can really see the silk  now.

linas hat

Combining Weaving and Felting by Fiber Artist Cathy Wycliff

Combining Weaving and Felting by Fiber Artist Cathy Wycliff

Comments 24 comments

For many years I have been a lover of textiles, but I never wanted to knit or weave. Too fiddly….knit, purl, knit, purl. Or weave to a pattern but first figure out the sett, the epi. No, not me.

And then last year, I saw Meta vd Knijff’s small homespun weavings on felt on Flickr. Meta also uses natural dyes and paints and takes cool photographs as well. Meta is an artist in the Netherlands who I discovered on Flickr. So, back to the weavings on felt. I thought, hmmmm, if I could do that with weavings, then maybe I would like to weave. Then I discovered Saori weaving quite by accident, somewhere on the world wide web and subsequently took instruction.

I discovered that weaving doesn’t have to have patterns, that weaving can be creative and free, and what’s more–I could combine it with felt.

Over the period of a week or two, I made a bunch of small sample weaves, no plan in mind whatsoever. Then I grabbed some pre-felt I had in my stash, some homemade and some commercial. I fooled around placing the small weavings on pre-felt.

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Most of the weaving samples are cotton and/or wool, and all are woven on black thin cotton warp. There may be the odd novelty yarn thrown in there, since when I was weaving samples, I was not thinking about combining them with felt. I chose 3 samples to felt with: the largest is multi-colored, all cotton warp with all cotton weft. I chose a large bright turquoise commercial pre-felt batts called “Maori” from Opulent Fibers, which I recall being Corriedale. I used small pieces of the same prefect batt to cover parts of the all-cotton weaving.

The second largest piece was a weaving I made with mostly wool and some cotton weft. I used as pre-felt a piece I had cobbled together with my naturally dyed wool, half madder and half logwood. I did not use any wool wisps to cover parts of this weaving.

The last and smallest piece was a small sample weaving I made using partial wool, cotton and nylon weft on cotton warp. I placed the weave onto cider merino ( handmade by me) pre-felt–again no wool wisps to cover.

I felted all of them in the usual way but not rolling as long as normal because I had used pre-felt as the base. Besides, I was impatient to see how they turned out! All of them successfully felted, although I did use a bit of needle-felting to secure some areas, mostly with the largest all-cotton weaving. I think that will make a nice wall-hanging for someone who likes a lot of brightness in their decor. Unsure about the medium-sized one, perhaps a small wall-hanging or pillow-cover? And the third piece I have fashioned into a cuff with vintage buttons. The inside is soft as merino should be!

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Any weavers out there? You really don’t need a floor loom if you would like to get started weaving. You can even use a table loom, a pin-loom, or just hammer some nails into an old wooden photo frame, and you’ll be ready to weave and felt!

 

Thanks Cathy for yet another fiber technique to try!

Fourth Quarter Challenge

Fourth Quarter Challenge

Comments 31 comments

What happened to the other 2 Quarterly challenges?! As Ruth said, this year we’re focusing on felting techniques. My first thought (rather obviously, most of you will think) was embellishments. I’ve blathered on enough about embellishment fibres in the past year, so I thought maybe something we can get for free or even which might usually get thrown away. So I settled on ‘Threads and Yarns’. They might be ‘free’, but also it might not be something everybody just saves as a matter of course, so I thought giving you a few months warning will help you prepare well in advance.
So, what kind of things was I thinking of? The everyday things we use in felting and fibre art, nothing special, nothing we have to go out and buy, all we have to do is not throw it away. Things like sewing thread, long bits, short bits, natural, synthetic, even silk:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAEmbroidery threads and floss:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAHow about all those annoying threads that unravel when we tear some fabric, and have to pull off to neaten it? The bits of cotton:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThreads unravelled from gauze, scrim or cheesecloth:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAShiny and sparkly organza:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe stuff that refuses to unattach from our hands after tearing silk:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd any other scraps of threads unravelled or unwoven from fabrics and scarves we’ve torn, dismantled and deconstructed to use in our fibre art:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd then there are yarns. Any yarns … bought, made, natural, synthetic; neat, chunky, plied or arty. Big or small, it doesn’t matter if it’s a foot or so, or the odd few inches left at the end of a project.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAYou might even have a pile of knitting you unpicked, save that too!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOther things which come to mind are bits of twine and garden string, that raffia stuff you get wrapped around flowers, the tassels cut from the ends of scarves. All you’ll need now is some envelopes, bags or tubs to save them in and something to label them so you don’t lose track. And I’ll try to come up with a few uses for them in the next 9 months! 😉

Making Ornaments with the Boys

Making Ornaments with the Boys

Comments 28 comments

Thanksgiving was supposed to be in Florida with the Grandsons, but the whole family was sick so we postponed our trip for a week.  I had promised Luke I would bring more wool next time I visited, so I did along with some foam balls to make some ornaments.

I prepared by making some batts in different colors and brought embellishments and different colored roving for the boys to choose from. I thought the batts would be easier for them to work with on a round surface and I was right.

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Josh had never played with wool, but seemed to be more fascinated with the soapy water.

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I let them choose their colors and embellishments. After putting all the wool on the balls, we dipped them in the soapy water and I rubbed to get it started.  Then I had the boys roll the balls in bubble wrap. ( mostly to keep them engaged in the process.)  Of course, the Florida boy had to get into the swing of working with water. I put the balls in nylons to make it easier to work with for them.

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When the wool started to shrink I put the balls thru the washer and dryer.

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Luke also started to pull wool off to make a snake.  Later, he abandoned the idea, evidently Grandma wasn’t working fast enough.

The finished ornaments.  Three for Luke.

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Two for Josh.

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I made another for pink one Baby Lisa in California.  Josh asked me about the pink one.  When I told him, he picked up his green one and said he wanted Uncle Brad to have that one.  Awww.  Such a sweet boy.

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I was really happy to share my love of felting with the boys and they both seemed to enjoy it.  And now they have a souvenir for years to come.  Best Christmas present.

Happy Holidays!

 

Holiday Exchange and wool order

Holiday Exchange and wool order

Comments 15 comments

We do a holiday exchange on the forum. We make Felt post cards to share. I can show you the post card I sent to Cathy now that she has it. Do you participate in any fibery Christmas exchanges or challenges?

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The only thing woolly that I did this week was get a World of Wool order. I half put in an order because I needed Finn wool to do a cat cave class next month.  this is what 40kg of wool looks like when it arrives and one box open

40kg wool box open

And all ready to go to the vireos people

all ready for delivery

Inside the box you can see in the open box is a colour sample binder. I decided it was about time I had one so I could see the colours properly.

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In the bags are the colours for the 23 micron merino. I am going to have a look for more of the plastic  pages so I can put the bagged sample in them. I think they might be for coins. One lady is thinking of ordering yarn to dye herself so got a sample pack of them. They are good large samples, well labelled. They are all sock yarns.

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4th Quarter Challenge – Monochrome

4th Quarter Challenge – Monochrome

Comments 32 comments

No one will be surprised at my choice of subjects, a panda.

I had some maori batts in a  gray color so it seemed an easy choice as a base.

I’ve been trying to add more dimension into my work as I mentioned in last week’s blog post.  So, this was one of my goals with this project.

I layed out the batt then made the head of the panda in prefelt, then added the shapes for the ears, and eyes.  Since the nose would be the center of the picture, I used a needle felted nose shape in a heavier fiber then covered it with another nose shaped prefelt and needle felted it onto the batt. I don’t know why it looks pink.

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I continued to build up the shape, added gems for eyes and covered them with another layer of prefelt and more fiber. I wanted to give the fur a fuzzy effect so I carefully cut and put fibers along the edges and a little shading around the eye.  For the body, I blended some gray into the black for contrast. Since the arm blended in with the body I just used a shaded area to give it a little dimension. And of course, the panda is eating her bamboo.  Her nose is actually bamboo fiber. Here is a side view.

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After securing everything with more needle felting, I wet felted it.  The maori didn’t shrink much which was fine  because I intended to wrap it around a canvas frame.

20151024_160628A close up.

20151024_160640Well I changed my mind and hung it without wrapping it on a frame.

20151030_132929I may put it on a darker background to make it stand out from the gray wall.  What do you think?

Have you done the challenge yet?

I want to let you all know I will be taking a leave of absence.  I’m having surgery November 3 and don’t know how long it will be before I can resume felting.  In the mean time, several forum friends have offered to help fill in my blog spots.  If you have something you’d like to blog about to help out, please contact Ruth, Zed or Ann.  I hope to see you all back here soon!  Thanks for your support!