Holidays stitches

I have been on holiday for the last three weeks , first with my family in the UK , then with friends in France , then cycling in Burgandy. Amidst all this traveling , eating , drinking , sightseeing and relaxing there was no time for felting , but I did manage to sit in the sun and do some stitching.
I stitched and sewed some beads on some cuffs. These include some Harris tweed bought on a previous holiday. Modeled by one of my daughters.

I beaded a small hanging I made at a wonderful workshop with Judit Pocs at Hawar.

For some wonderful photographs of this workshop here at where it has been captured perfectly by my good friend Els. Thank you Els for this wonderful record.

I also completed the stitching on my secret pocket , necklace come belt , started at the same workshop with Judit and finished at home. In its secret pocket is a small pebble.

I have to say my family are not very complimentary about this felted masterpiece , thinking it looks like a sporan.

Back home now , and back to the felting again soon.

Posted with Blogsy

Fibre Swop

In a fibre swop with Teri of Teriberrycreations I received some Polwarth fibre along with lots of other goodies. This was the fibre that Teri found was the best fibre for making three dimensional sculptures. Polwarth sheep were bred in Australia in the late19th century and are a merino Lincoln cross.
First a made a small test piece to add to my test sample collection. Look how the collection has grown.

Then I decided I would make a test 3 dimensional piece with this special fibre.

Here is my resist Its going to make a kind of 6 winged hollow form.

Part way through felting with the resist still inside.

Final piece basking in the sun. Well I was pleased with this , the shape was exactly as I had planned. So I thought let's dye it , let's shibori dye it. I wanted the inside to be dyed and the outer edges of each wing.

Tied up and dyed ready for steaming.
This worked and didn't work. You could see the shibori effect , but the middle pipe was hardly dyed and the shibori edges although shibori , were rather even .n

I think some kind of dye resist was needed on the outer edges and maybe a little less string so some dye could penetrate into the middle , or maybe a syringe of dye into the middle.
Overall I enjoyed by Polwarth / shibori experiment and my piece has a beautiful texture. many thanks Teri. More news about my tests with the other goodies I received from Teri , in later blogs. .

Posted with Blogsy