Happy Holidays!

Although I haven't been able to blog much recently I have been working! Below are a selection of pieces I have been working on over the last few weeks...

These are a few brooches / pins inspired by a session with the Region 2 IFA ladies, they are just so much fun to make and one of the few things I can make relaxing in front of the TV :)

I finally finished the icicles / snowy night wall hanging that I started nearly a year ago! This is a fairly large piece, measuring approx 3ft x 2 ft.

I finished (and photographed) a new pair of gloves. I don't know about you but I seem to be waiting for days if not weeks for enough daylight to take photos this month. Roll on spring!

The fishy reef nuno felt made a reappearance from the UFO box too, this is how it looked a few months ago.

Just adding some darker blue tones where the reef meets the water made a world of difference to the sense of perspective.

Then I got a bit paint happy...

It still needs some work, but it's making progress, I foresee a trip to the sewing machine to add some tiny fish in the distance....

Some dyeing, the red and orange wool is corriedale that I expect will become a bag. The blues are merino which I have carded into batts and plan to use with the blue variegated blue silk pictured below.

My technique for variegated dyeing is totally random, I just scrunch up handfuls of fabric and stuff it into a bag, hence I was surprised to see a distinct pattern on this piece of silk:

I'm hoping to make a dress from the blue materials and combine it with some screen printing techniques from Ruth's online class in January (click here for more information). If I can get the idea in my head to work, I plan to submit this dress to the Spinners Weavers and Dyers National Exhibition next year (no pressure Ruth! ;) )

Whatever your faith or denomination I hope you have a wonderful break, filled with fun activities and surrounded by the people you love.

Sewer's Friends

This week I have been making a selection of "sewer's friends", essentially a cross between a pin cushion and a felt bowl, I have a larger one of these and find it invaluable when working with beads; the bowl part keeps the beads under control and I can thread up a few needles in the pin cushion, all ready to go.

I also started a waistcoat / gilet / vest using some more of Zara's Gotland locks, more on that next time...

Gotland Locks - Messenger Bag or Backpack?

Zara from Sweeden is selling some absolutely gorgeous Gotland locks on the forum, if you are quick there may still be some left! Of course I couldn't resist and now they have arrived I'm so glad I didn't, they are soooo shiny and soft!

Now I have Gotland locks from 4 different sheep (2 from Zara and 2 from UK sources) so its high time I did something with them. I decided to make a messenger bag using the same Gotland resist technique I used on a cat cave a couple of weeks ago.

I used a couple of layers of Corriedale and laid out some pockets over a resist before adding 2 layers of Gotland tops, my plastic resists and some vibrantly blue merino on the outside.

I only used the locks on the front flap and used a mix from all 4 fleeces as they varied from black/white to grey and almost jet black and are different lengths.

It's interesting to see the Gotland invade the coarse Corriedale wool too:

Only the pockets remained white where the resists prevented the Gotland from going walkabout.

Where the resists were placed between the Gotland and merino the blue of the merino can still be seen.

The blue colour was brightened by a little bit of shaving.

It was interesting how the Gotland shrank (fulled) more than the merino, causing the merino to pucker slightly:

The locks were a little bit matted after I had finished fulling the bag so I combed them out which made some of them go rather fluffy, I used some leave in hair conditioner to try to tame them. Have you ever tried to hair products on your wool?

Front

Back

Inside

This is quite a large bag, about 40 cm wide by 40 cm high, now I have to decide what handles / strap to put on it. I was toying with the idea of an adjustable shoulder strap made from felt ropes but now I am leaning towards back-pack style straps, simply because it is so large it will weigh a tonne when I have filled it with everything bar the kitchen sink. What do you think?

Stained Glass Felt Hanging

The lovely Ruth Lane from the Felting and Fiber Studio Forum is creating a book of contemporary designs and posted a request for interpretations of a couple of designs in different art forms, this is my interpretation of the Nature design in nuno felt.

I started by increasing the size of Ruth's pdf on a photocopier to make it more manageable for felt and traced that design onto the dull side of some freezer paper. This was ironed onto a piece of black prefelt.

Then cut out the internal sections to leave a black felt frame. I wetted out the prefelt to help the silk pieces stay in place.

Then I started laying out pieces of hand dyed silk chiffon, trimmed so that they overlapped the black prefelt.

Once all the cut-out areas had been covered with silk, I laid a piece of white prefelt over the back, if you want to hang your piece in a window so that it will be seen from both sides you can carefully place black wool over the chiffon edges to cover them.

When I flipped it over the freezer paper was still attached to the front, this was very carefully removed so as not to pull the black prefelt out of position.

Then I gently rubbed the surface through some decorator's plastic to fix the silk and wool into position before rolling it.

Take care to check the prefelt has not moved off the silks after every 100 rolls.

The finished wall hanging:

I think it looks a lot like looking through a window into a garden full of vines. I'm toying with the idea of adding some embroidery and squaring up the frame but I also quite like it as it is and don't want to ruin it! What would you do?

Effect of Gotland on Merino

A recent discussion on the Felting and Fiber Forum reminded me of a technique I haven't used for a while, it relies the quality of some coarser wools to migrate through (engulf) finer wools, Gotland is a good example of this.

For this cat cave I laid out 3 layers of Gotland, some thin plastic resist in a scroll pattern and 2 layers of teal merino.

Here you can see the Gotland already starting to invade the merino after just 100 rolls:

The pattern on the finished cave before shaving, the Gotland has engulfed the merino except where the plastic resist was placed (even there it has tried to migrate over the merino (it really is the Japanese Bind Weed of the wool world):

And after shaving:

This is the resist and the finished cave, it shrank just a little during the fulling!

The finished cave is about 60 cm across.

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.