Productive Weekend

It's not quite finished but now the sleeves are attached the hooded jacket looks a lot closer to finished.

Front

Side

Back

It just needs a button and some top stitching down the front and it is finished

Yesterday I made another cat-eating fish, cat cave from some hand-dyed Corriedale.

Feeling inspired by this pine cone:

I made a bowl:

And I finally finished these 2 scarves, originially I put a rolled hem on these but did not like the finish so removed the hems, reshaped the scarves and felted the edges to stop them from fraying.

The silk is still very shiny, the photos really don't do it justice at all.

What have you been up to?

Fourth Quarter Challenge 2015

I'm still feeling a bit direction-less on this challenge, ambling from one idea to the next but I have at least managed to commit to making a couple of pieces of felt this week, both based on the challenge.

The first is a small hanging based on this photo of some cone flowers (rudbekia):

My idea for this picture was to use different tones and shades to visually bring some of the flowers forward while sending others into the background.

Using the ball of ochre coloured wool in the middle of this photo I blended some different tones and shades by adding different quantities of white or black.

And used these batts to make some prefelts:

I confess I cheated a little - the yellow in the middle is not a tone or shade of the ochre colour, the original colour is the square 2nd from right on the bottom row.

These prefelts were cut up and arranged on a square of black commercial prefelt:

After lots of rubbing and a little bit of rolling all the pieces are firmly attached and it is ready for some finer details to be added.

I quite like the jolly, cartoon-like effect but think I can make the flowers look more 3-dimensional with some shading using the left over prefelts and pieces of the batts.

This weekend I also made a start on a hooded jacket, again applying the challenge instruction of using just one colour plus black and white. There's still some way to go but here is a little taster...

Rummaging through my stash I found some bundles of carded natural merino batts in white and dark brown, I had an idea that using batts would speed up the layout, which it did, but any time I saved in the initial lay-out was lost needle-felting more wool over the thin spots at the prefelt stage. :(

I attached a hood to my favourite dress resist. Masking tape is great for making temporary changes to resists. You can see where I have permanently altered this resist to add sleeves using duct tape.

Laying out the wool with some lovely Wensleydale locks for extra texture and some white mulberry silk for a little bit of sheen.

Starting to layout the front sections:

With a little luck I hope to post the finished jacket next time.

Q4 Challenge and Winkworth Arboretum

The final Felting and Fiber Studio Form challenge for this year centres around tone and shade, mixing white and black with a single colour. Although I had a small hand in creating this challenge I know I am going to find it difficult to retrain myself to a single colour. I can't resist the drama created by placing complimentary colours next to each other.

Last weekend we paid a trip to Winkworth Arboretum, a National Trust property just south of Godalming in Surrey, a beautiful place, especially with all the trees just starting to turn red and gold, and definitely worth the excursion if you are an NT member. These are just a few of the photos I took.

I am finding myself strangely drawn to the last image, I think it is the feeling that path is inviting the viewer to some unseen destination.

Initially I had an idea to create a triptych wall hanging depicting a woodland scene with one panel each of yellow, orange and crimson but I am already wandering off on another tangent. I might still come back to that idea though as I still think it has "legs".

After having a play with the colour tools in GIMP (a free photo-editing software that is similar to Photoshop), these were the front-runners:

I quite like the last one which is more of a grey-scale with the greens added back in, although the third image down, also has merit, that one is essentially a posterised version of the last image but I am finding it looks like there is snow on the ground while the trees are in leaf. The greens are also showing splashes of blue and yellow rather than just shades and tones.

Challenge Cheat

This quarter's challenge from the felting and fibre studio was to dye or blend our colours to match samples from a colour pallet generator. I only had an afternoon this weekend for felting so decided to bend the rules a little. I found a photo I liked in Pinterest and plugged it into a colour pallet generator with this result:

Instead of blending / dyeing my own colours, I rummaged through my wool stash for the closest colours I could find to pallet of colours above:

I decided to make something small, a phone case for an iphone I haven't even bought yet. I know, I'm a little bit mad but when I get an idea in my head I rarely have the patience to be sensible.

Keeping to the flower theme of the original photo, I created a resist based on phone dimensions I found on the web and started laying out my wools and found some scarlet cotton in my scrap bag along with some pieces of hand-dyed prefelt that I thought would work well with this colour pallet (another deviation from the challenge brief).

This is the nearly finished case, I just need to trim the pocket where the phone will sit, but I will wait for the phone to arrive before I do that final step, even I'm not that brave/stupid/reckless (delete as appropriate).

Here it is drying (front and back):

I'm already thinking about adding some machine embroidery to the front flap....

Finito!

It's been a busy week but my challenge piece is finally finished! :)

Since my last post I added some embroidery to sharpen up the edges of the orange prefelts. First I had to choose some threads, I'm a big fan of the Gutterman Sulky threads for machine embroidery, they are reliably strong and have a lovely sheen that looks wonderful next to felt.

I started with the orange stripes in the top left quadrant.

I'm really pleased with the colour blending of the threads and the beautiful 3D effect you get from this style of stitching on felt.

Of course, it's impossible to stop at one small area when you start with free motion embroidery....

 When I went to bed it looked like this:

When I woke up this morning I looked at it again and took it back to the sewing machine - spot the differences....

I have been planning to hang this piece on stretcher bars from the start. Most of my felt hangings are sturdy enough to stretch directly over the frame but this one is a bit finer, it might be alright but I don't think it is worth risking it stretching and sagging in the middle so I hand stitched some poplin cotton to the back for extra support:

Before stretching it over the bars ready for hanging:

Finally some close ups from the finished hanging: