5000K

At this time of year I feel I really struggle to take good photographs of my felt. Even waiting until the weekend doesn't really give much improvement. So I was interested when a link to photographing textiles was shared with me.

After reading this I began to start to understand the problem. White balance. The solution was to take control of the lighting by illuminating your pieces with 5000K lights bulbs. So I thought I'd give it a go.

First test , illuminated with natural light on a grey February day.

Retaken under the 5000K bulbs

You will have to take my word for it that these colours are more like reality.

So I also took some photos of my ongoing experiments to make bubbles in laminated fabric.

These piece both use silk , and test interfacing , plastic, iron on fabric print, PVA glue and fabric glue.

One silk and one cotton , mixed successes which is good as it allows for some more experimentation.

 

 

 

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Focus and finish on Friday

Focus and Finish was a slogan from one of my recent work locations and I think this is what I need with regards my felting activities. I have done such a lot of experimenting and have just so many ideas of what I might make incorporating this experiment and that experiment into but I never do it.

So on my first focus and finish friday I set off to finish the felt and Shetland tweed jewellery I started at Christmas.

Done

I stopped talking about my framing ideas and actually finished some felted pictures in box frames.

Might needs some further improving but in reality done.

I also finished my stitching sampler. I have to keep up with my course work !

Great progress , but then yesterday over a coffee with a dear felting friend , Els, who was telling me about the new Fiona Duthie on line class , a whole load of ideas came into my head and today I am again back to the experiments again . But maybe it can work , have focus and finish Fridays and play with felting experiments the rest of the time.

 

 

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Betweens, bodkins and .....

The sewing I have been doing recently has been seriously challenging me. Not so much in terms of the sewing but more in terms in what needle I should be using to do it. I used betweens for years without really even thinking about it . Now as I start to sew with embroidery threads of different thickness onto felt and want to sew beads on, my old trusted friends really don't work.

Firstly the eyes are too small for the embroidery threads and then the eyes and thread are too big for the hole in the beads. So I started randomly choosing from the other needles in my eclectic and very disorganized needle collection. In the end I realized had to get a grip as fighting with the threads and needles was taking just too much time.

So first a stock take., throwing anything rusted away first !, Some of them are more like daggers than needles.

Now perhaps I can understand to the problem. I had loads of bodkins , from all the knitting , and I had my betweens. I had two beading needles , that were incredibly fine and pretty useless. I hardly had anything that might be described as a sharp , or embroidery needle. These needles I have also discovered come , not really surprisingly in a large variety of sizes !. So armed with this knowledge I can go and buy some targeted new needles. If anyone has any advice on this subject I'd love to hear from you.

In the meantime here a bit of the sewing that lead me to this needle clear out.

Hopefully it will be better sewing and more enjoyable with the right needles

 

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