The last post

When I started this blog is was to record my adventures and discoveries during my in-line felting courses with Artybird Carnforth. There were lots and lots of adventures and discoveries but now it has come to an end. After three years of distance learning and I have obtained a City and Guilds Level Three diploma in Design and Craft - Constructed Textiles ( Feltmaking ). What a mouth full !
I am not finished with felting, far from it, I am more enthusiastic than ever and I still feel the need to blog . I have therefore spent this last week building myself a website with a blog . Here I can properly show my felt work and write a related blog. This is where you can find me.
I do not want to lose any friends and readers, so please let me know if you need any help in finding my new location.
It's been a wonderful three years and it makes me quite sad to make this change but I feel I need to use this moment to move on and seek out new challenges and opportunities.
Thanks for reading this and best wishes to you all.
Jane

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A Facebook story

This week I have told a story installments on Facebook about a shetland vessel that I dyed. For those of you who don't do Facebook I am going to repeat it here.

I made a shetland vessel from white and moorit coloured fibres with the aim of stitching it and then dyeing it. I am actually still exploring the best way to felt with shetland and it seems onto devour soap and need loads of water.

Here it is before stitching.

I stitched it with linen and silk threads and thought it looked more stylish with a cuff.

Now to dye. My first thoughts was to use some of the onion skins I have been saving but I decided to save them for a less prototype project and use the dried up skins of two pomegranate that I have also been storing . I deviated from my usual practise of keeping kitchen and dyeing equipment completely separate and first blitzed the pomegranate skins with water in my food processor.

The vessel was then heated at simmering point with the extracted colour from the pomegranate and left to soak over night.

After dyeing it looks paler than I would have ideally like , with not much variation of colour between the wool , silk and linen,

But with the threads sorted and a slate plinth I am quite pleased with the final effect. Thanks to Dave Mercer for thIs photograph .

 

 

 

 

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Looking back

It's hard for me to believe that this is now my 151st blog post. I would never have believe that was possible when I very nervously wrote my first post in September 2011.

That first post was about the difficulties in making white felt on a white background , my trial piece to show I could make felt at the start of my first ArtyBird City and Guilds courses.

When I look at the posts I have made , the most popular with my readers is the one about making a pair of replacement slipper boots , the first pair made from merino had worn through.

Oh how I hated making these things , I just could not get the supposedly hard wearing norwegien wool to felt. But they have been much loved by my daughter and are worn out now . So much for the hardwearing. Before you ask - no I will not make another pair !

I have had more that 7000 views, and I think over 1000 of these are my mother who is my biggest , albeit silent in the public arena , fan.

I was very excited the day I got a comment , from a friendly felter who was unknown to me and I know I have viewers that I don't know from all around the world .

The purpose of my blog was to record my adventures and discoveries during my on-line felting courses with ArtyBird Carnfoth I think I have achieved this while having a lot of fun and learning a lot about felting . During my journey I have been greatly helped by Kate Horner from ArtyBird , and also enjoyed workshops with Miriam Verbeek , Andrea Graham , Judit Pocs and Lisa Klakulak.

As ArtyBird wins more awards for its felt making courses I am pleased that out there in the ether will remain my few words about my experiences with the courses for future students and friendly felters to read and I am pleased that I took the plunge and became a blogger.

I

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Exhibition piece - Part 2

As I prepared to post this post, I realised that this is my 150th post !!! I never would I have thought when I started blogging I would be still here after so long. Probably time for a review ? ! That will have to be next time. As first I have to complete the story of my exhibition piece.

So having prepared all my fabrics :

and having laid out my background.

It was time to start felting.

 

After just a little work!! I had this final felted piece.

I treated myself to a thermometer before I started dying and a few tests told me that what I'd thought was less than 60oC was in fact hotter. So with my Ithermometer I was able to control my temperatures to better exploit the red dyes in the madder.

Here is the final result.

Very textured, and very red !

 

Off in the post to be exhibited by Artybird Carnforth.

 

 

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