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.

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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. .

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Quangle Wangle - final details

I think that when I started this piece I had realised how much work was involved in the finishing I might of adopted a different strategy. It probably took 10 times as long to add all the finalizing touches as it did to felt the piece - and I don't even like stitching.

Of course most animals required their eyes to be added that was not really where the time went it was in those animals who required there whole bodies to be embellished.

Here is the blue baboon undergoing a whole body hair removal process as my original attempt at his fur with felted in silk threads looked terrible. Here he is after his make over. Better and I love his orange flute.

The frog just required some definition of his limbs on top of his silky skin.

The orient calf , a famboyant character required his face and some jewel like details adding.

 

He also had a small ribbon used at the wedding ceremony of Laura and Michael added to his plaited tail.

I like the golden touches on the golden grouse. Above are the skinny legs of the stork. Also seen here the Fimble fowl with the corkscrew leg , my favorite character from the whole story.

The finished piece.

I am very proud of it and I hope Abigail Grace Van Gordon will learn to love it and it's story.

 

 

 

 

 

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Quangle wangle felting

Ready to go now after all the testing and preparations.

The crumpetty leaves.

The blue baboon without his flute and the bisky bat.

The orient calf, the golden grouse and the pobble who has no toes, at this point not even any legs!

 

The owl and the artery squash , both completly bald and the dong with the luminous nose.

All placed ontop of a large piece of prefelt with loops on the reverse side for hanging purposes covered in 4 layers of laid out carded merino and silk. I used the prefelt first , to give a flatter finish.

The piece part way through felting , unfortunately the sunlight on my felting table makes for not such a good photograph , but you can make out the stork and the owl, and the pobble.

 

The completed felted piece drying on my washing line. Currently there are 16 animals, some still needing lots of stitching to finish them off. The bee is yet to be added , as I decided it was too small to felt.

Next step adding the details .

 

 

 

 

 

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Quangle wangle preparations

When my sister knew I was to become a grandmother , she suggested to me that I should make a sampler . The thought of making a cross stitch sampler was not very appealing to me , but I thought perhaps I could maybe make something from felt. But what ? I thought of a tree of life ;Noah's ark; the owl and the pussy cat ; but none of them caught my imagination .

Then I remembered the poem of The Quangle Wangle's hat , by Edward Lear. This poem was a favorite bedtime story for me and my two girls when they were very little. We had a copy illustrated by Helen Oxenbury which sadly is long out if print but it is available second hand.

 

The quangle wangle lives in a crumpetty tree and his enormous beaver hat , decorated with ribbons and bibbons, bells, buttons, loops and lace can be seen for miles. But he is very lonely and first Mr & Mrs canary ask if they can build a nest on his hat . Then a series of other magical animals join them living on the beaver hat .

It ends as follows:

And the Quangle Wangle said

To himself on the crumpetty Tree,

"When all these creatures move

What a wonderful noise there'll be !"

And at night by the light of the Mulberry Moon

They danced to the flute of the Blue Baboon

On the broad green leaves of the Crumpetty Tree,

And all were as happy as happy could be, with the Quangle Wangle Quee

 

So I had my sampler theme. I decided to make a wall hanging depicting not the Quangle Wangle or his hat but the moon dance.

First. I did some testing on how to make the crumpetty leaves , tree branches and edging options for my animals. Black edges were out , but the blue ones are OK.

Then I tested the prefelt and fibres for the various animals. There are 17 in total, some will just be felted and some embroidered.

 

This looks totally uninspiring , looking back. But critical really as you can't undo felt.

And I carded the sky , blues and purple merino with white silk fibres for the silvery light.

Next time. Felting the piece.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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What is the right size ?

I recently saw some felted baby boottees with crochet tops. I thought I'd adopt the idea with a twist and convert a pair I made a while ago into having knitted tops, I used variegated sock wool for the knitting. It worked well. But I wondered about the size , they seemed a little large.

I have a knitting friend, Ria , who has knitted more than 300 pairs of new born baby boottees, since 2006. All embroidered with the name of the baby. What a lovely thing to do. Here's the comparison between the expert Ria's boottee and mine.

Clearly mine are rather on the large size.

So I thought I'd try again.

Here's a comparison of the large and small resists used for the two pairs, the smaller pair do have shorter legs to allow for the knitting.

After completion comparison. Neither the right size , I think one is too big and one to small.

 

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this and that....

I have been flitting from one idea to another this week , trying this and that.

I have an assignment on shibori dying felt . This has been fun. It was a bit irritating when the elastic bands I had used , perished totally during the dyeing process. Perhaps that's what you get from using cheap loom band elastic bands ! This altered the finalized result but overall I am pleased with my pieces.

I have made a bracelet, using beads that my daughter made and some kap merino fibre . I have been wearing this to see what it feels like , light and comfortable and I like the look too.

A few weeks ago a took a online class with Carol Ann Waugh on Craftsy called stitch and slash. This is technique aimed at quilters but I though I'd give a tried in felting. So I laminated 4 fabrics ontop of a piece of prefelt , a scrim , a lace and two different colored synthetic chiffons. Prior to laminating I stitched a couple of random shapes into the piece and stitched around the edge as well. After felting it was only totally laminated in parts , which was just what I wanted.

 

I love the wave effect the synthetic chiffon gives.

I then slashed it , right back to the felt in a couple of places , and through different layers on the rest. Leaving some of the slashed fabric in place. I then oversewed and edged it and added a few beads.

A promising outcome I think for a first attempt.

 

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