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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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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Exhibition piece - Part 1

ArtybIrdcarnforth are having a spring exhibition in, not surprisingly , Carnforth UK. All week I have been preparing my piece.

My inspiration is this small part of Far Easedale Gill. The photo was taken on a cold April Day.

My piece will be made all in white and then naturally dyed. Just to be sure I have been doing some more dye tests. I was interested to see what difference pH would make to madder dying .

These results are not quite as different as I expected , but maybe I need a bigger pH change than from 5 to 7 . More work is needed I think!

I have also been preparing all my fabric and fibres which when added to the felt will build the texture and then the colours after dyeing.

Here they are all laid out on my table , not looking much at the moment but after felting and dyeing should be beautiful. I hope !

 

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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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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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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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