A Felt Artist needs a felted handbag !

A number of months ago I set off to make myself a handbag, having felted it I decided I did not like it as it was lopsided. I threw it in a drawer. This week I got it out with the intention of making it again, or something similar anyway, as I thought as a recently self confessed Felt Artist I needed to publicly display my work. Looking at it I decided perhaps I could rescue it. All it needed was some differential shrinking and a bit of love and care, some TLC and maybe it could be revived. With this terrible photograph it makes it look worse than it was!

You can just about see the pins marking about 2 cm that needs to be shrunk away

So I set to work and manged to get the front and the back to be the same size. Stitched it as orginaly intended over the imbedded fabrics and then sewed in all the loose ends . I also made a piping following through from the handles for strength and stability.

I have a phobia about losing my important documents., having once lost my passport , so I added a hand stitched zipped inside pocket. This was not in the orginal plan, but seemed like a good addition to me now.

And here it revived and ready to tested out on my trip to the UK this week.

 

 

 

 

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Collaboration

My husband is a photographer, and he has published a photograph every day since 1/1/2013 on Blipfoto. You can see his photos here at Bizonderimage. Sometimes he publishes transformational photographs . I generally love these and one really spoke to me.

He took this photograph at the gashouders in Amsterdam .

And transformed it first to give this .

And then this.

When I saw it I wondered what it would this look made in felt ?

Well here it is .

Wet Felted incorporating silk , scrim , prefelts and mulberry bark . Then machine stitched using variety of threads.

I used mulberry bark for the first time which you can see better in this close up. I really like the effect it gives.

I feel that this is a wonderful collaboration , maybe we have a new future together.

 

 

 

 

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A Roman blind and a Rug

A few months ago I helped my pregnant daughter make this Roman blind for her babies room. I have made curtains many times before but never Roman blinds. The tricky part I think , as in a lot of sewing is the cutting. We did a good job between us and we're pleased with the final result.
This got me thinking over making a felted gift for my new grandchild and eventually I decided on a rug , echoing the birds on the blind. I wondered whether I was up to the task of felting a thick sturdy rug.
I draw / painted my design and then cut out prefelt birds , and leaves and used fibres and roving for the branches and flowers.

It then had to be reversed and laid out in order with the birds on the top.

I filled in the gaps with merino fibre.

With the addition of four substantial layers of fibre and a prefelt backing it was ready to felt.

I really spent a lot of time rubbing to ensure it was felted before I transferred to the garden table where I could add loads of water from the wateringcan and I rolled in a cloth directly onto the wooden slated table. It was not as much work as I had imaged.

All ready and waiting for my my new grandson , Sebastian, who was born on the 9/10 /14. He is too young to appreciate this master piece but I think it looks very good on his bedroom floor.

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A splash of colour

This week I decided to give natural dying a rest and try using my pleated technique with coloured fabric and fibres. The fabric was all hand dyed. I used a small element of a filterstorm manipulation below as my inspiration.

 

I deliberately went for bold and bight colours , some lime green , hot pink , sunshine yellow and bright blue. My plan as to have these colored elements on a black background.

The elements are bright and bold.

I am very pleased with the finished piece.

Well maybe it's finished or maybe not as I am just contemplating whether to add some stitching!

 

 

 

 

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Sculptural Felt International

Yesterday I went to the Sculptural Felt International exhibition at Nagele. I treat for me and a good excuse for my husband to try his new car on a really beautiful Autumn day.
This collection by 12 felt artists from around the world was hugely varied and very inspirational. Well worth a visit , here in Nagele , or at one of the other venues from now to the end of 2015. You can find more information here

I liked it all, but particularly was drawn to the concertina type sculptures of Marjolien Dallinga.

The delicate texture effects made by Rebecca Howdeshell were truly beautiful. I will be practicing my machine stitching.

Chung-Im Kim had created large undulating hangings by stitching felt together , the shapes and the contours were like surrealistic relief maps . Very fantastic especially when combined with screen printing.

These photos give just a glimpse into the wonderfull exhibition. The exhibition artists say that "We felt like crossing borders" When I reflect in what I saw yesterday I think this statement wonderfully sums up this magnificent collection of felt works.

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Black and white

When I knew I was going to be away from home from my felting studio and all my felting fluff, yet still with some felting time , I decided to keep it simple and just take black and white fibre with me . Black to make some jewellery and white to make a textured piece for my course.

The textured piece required me to make cords , balls and use resists to capture the texture of my theme . I deliberately kept it all small , no space to do otherwise!

Here are the balls and cords, with a few wooden beads thrown in.

The final piece , I think giving some impression of waves and rocks , well maybe. I am cross with myself for making a mistake I have made many times , placing the beads and the balls too close together to be really effective.

For my black theme I have been playing with incorporating beads and buttipons into rings and brooches . I think one of the keys is to make sure the bead or button is very secure and can't rock before you start felting. Easy to say , but quite hard to achieve on such a small scale.

Here my brooches , which need a little bit of stitching to be finished.

My rings are less successful . I intended to remake two of them , because also they look OK in the photo , I am not happy with the feel of them.

Still some more black and white time available so that should be easy.

 

 

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Wild colour

A number if months ago I made a mixed fabric felt piece threw it in the mx dye bath , and got a very surprising for result .

I received the comment for Kate my tutor that dying animal and vegatable fibres together would not work , except perhaps with natural dyes. I had a book called Wild Color by Jenny Dean and a vision in my head of the piece I want to make so I decided to explore the avenue of natural dying, I have been researching , mordants, modifiers and natural dyes. What a complicated business it is.! I have made up some copper , iron and aluminum mordant solutions and mordanted some silk and cotton fabrics .

What I did not know , was if you mordanted a fabric or fibre and then felt it , is the mordant still active. I decided to do some small experiments because I am conserving my mordanted fabric . I love the effect I have achieved but I am not sure I can answer my own question yet.

Carrots tops from the garden

Ivy from the garden

And on a slightly larger scale onions skins.

I am approaching my vision now and I am going to continue exploring wild color.

 

 

 

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