Felted jewellery

Over the last few months I have quite some surprising success selling my felted jewellery. My pieces have been sold through Box of Beautiful Things, based in Carnforth , UK. I had made two collections , one using some shetland tweed and one based around turquoise beads.

Here's an example of the shetland tweed pieces.

I love the ridged effect you get as the shetland tweed is forced to shrink into the wool fibres.

The turquoise beads were matched simply with black fibres and some turquoise threads.

Now I need to make some replacement pieces. As usual my ideas change and I thought I should try and make something lighter and more summery. I therefore decided to start using some indian silk, I bought in Mumbai in 2013.

Pieces are still being made , but here a glimpse of work so far

 

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An old grey bag

At Woolfest in 2013 I bought some Gotland fibre . Beautiful carded batts in soft grey shades. Just perfect for a sturdy bag. Which I made and actually wrote 2 blog's about !!! Well I have to now be honest, this bag was not so good really as it was very thin across the bottom and a bit floppy.

For 18 months it's hung on my studio door handle , looking sad, and has never been allowed outside. So I decided to revamp it . I soaked it for a couple of days , and started re fulling. In a gentle sympathetic way you understand, not throwing it at the floor. Persuading it to shrink where it wanted it too.

I quickly cured the thin bottom , and then further shrunk the whole bag to give a more sturdy felt, it reduced in size by about another 15% . My records are a big thin but overall it has now shrunk about 40% Which I think is still debatable for a hardwearing felt . What do you think ? It has turned from a shopping size bag to a large handbag sized bag .

I decided to fit magnetic fasteners for security and remodeled it with more curves. A slimmer and firmer version all round. I even gave it a shave before it faced the world again.

Here is the new version.

And just for information here is the old one, looking strangely sepia!

 

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Felting Resolution

In late December I had the very good fortune to attend a workshop at atelier Fiberfusing given by Lisa Klakulak . This was not a workshop about making a wonderful finished piece but a workshop about techniques to make hollow forms. We learned with lots of maths and felting examples.

Here is the tiny piece I made with its three lids. Just waiting for a genie to rub it.

I am now brimming with ideas on ways to improve the felt I make , new things to make and ways to fix previous felt problems.

I also am left realizing the importance of recording what I have done . I knew this and Artybird certainly requires it for all course work , but I do have a tendency to to be a bit slapdash when making things for myself. Progressing my ideas will start in January, tomorrow , and my New Years Felting resolution is going to be better recording of what I am doing.

 

 

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Feedback please

I am a novice at natural dyeing. The chemistry of the reactions with the animal and plant based fibres. The use of mordants. The actual process of the dyeing , of extracting the dye out the plant material and getting it into the fibres to enable them to react. The whole process fascinates me. This is not really surprising as these kind of process have played a large part of my career as an engineer.

So I recklessly decided that my final C&G wall hanging would be naturally dyed. I decided to use madder. I didn't not grow the plant in my garden , although this is possible , I bought ready ground roots. Madder gives orange to red colours depending on the conditions of the dyeing. I determined not to try and be too clever but just dye my two pieces in my madder bath and wait and see what happens.

I am pleased with the results and one of the requirements of the course is to obtain feedback on the pieces. so I am requesting readers of this blog to please give me some feedback on the two pieces below. So I hope you can spare me a little of your time to tell me what you think .

Photographs © courtesy of Dave Mercer.

Thank you

 

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White , at the start but not at the finish

In September 2011 I nervously wrote my first blog , about a piece of white felt I made at the start of my Artybird courses. Very basic !! I was quite happy about the felt but I was nervous about becoming a blogger. Since then I have written another 139 blog posts and I am no longer nervous at all.

This week strangely I return to all white again for my final pieces of course work - two wall hangings.

These have been made from Blue faced Leicester , as was the first piece . But that is were the similarity ends. The first was just BFL , flat felt , these last two have many many additions. First silk fibres and alpaca yarn , followed by scrim , silk chiffon and mulberry bark . Cords made of BFL wrapped in silk fibres were added next and on one piece fibre balls. The final additions were mixed fabric pleated pieces .

Here are all the elements prepared and ready for adding to the fibres before feltIng.

 

The two pieces felted.

All ready for this glorious madder dye bath.

I can't wait to see how they will turn out.

 

 

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Knitting and stitching Show

It used to be an annual event for me to visit this show when it came to Harrogate. That was back in the days when I lived in Yorkshire and I was a knitter, now I live in the Netherlands and I am a felter and a knitter. So I was pleased to be able to combine a visit to the show , now looking also from a felters perspective , with a visit to the UK to help look after my new grandson.

Compared to the equivalent shows I have been to in the Netherlands in the intervening years it was HUGE and incredibly busy - and I went on Thursday. It was great to meet up with Yulia Badian and see her mermaid project. Also to talk to Dionne Swift , and to Alysn Midgelow-Marsden and see their fantastic textiles. I enjoyed seeing the felted work, from the Black Sheep exhibition that I had only see as pictures before.

A piece by Maria Friese.

Amazing fine felted bowls by Gladys Paulus

I was amused by these quirky knitted items , so retro.

And I think this knitted dress is truly fantastic.

I did manged to persuade myself that although cheap, 10 balls of orange wool was not going to help my stash busting targets and was probably not a good colour. But I did buy a few things.

 

Overall it was great to return .

 

 

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Nearly Finished!

Well after nearly three years and an awfull lot of fun and felt I am working on the design of my final City and Guilds project. It will be a natural dyed textured wall hanging. Well actually I am going to make two , so I can made good use of my dye pot !

The inspiration comes from this photograph .

Which has been manipulate many times via collages and photoshop.

Actually I have so many images it really hard to decided which to use but eventually I have chosen these two.

 

I have started sketching parts of these images to be the base for my hangings and so far I think these are my real starting points.

My fabrics are all prepared and mordanted and I am ready to go .

 

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