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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Collages

Well September has always been the time for me for a restart. The beginning of the new school year. Lovely Autumn mornings , and the sense that anything is possible.

Well as I am still to finished my intermediate C&G felting course, i have had no sense of that new beginning this year. I really don't have much to do to finished the course yet somehow it seems very hard to finished it all off. I can find lots of others things to do instead . Dying , stitching , making jewelry.

My stumbling block with the course is some collage work that I started months ago. I needed an image with a background , mid ground and foreground to make a series of collages. Just one image you understand. I could find three images and I played around switching between them without finishing any thing, I also needed to scan photos into photoshop and manipulate them . I have done that with all my half finished work and made some crazy images of which this is one example.

So this week , in the spirit of the new year , I decided I had to just focus , on one image and complete three different collages.

Here is my rather rocky image.

 

Half finished found objects collage.

Now completed with some old table runner rocks, stitched and printed with acrylic piant. Looking very strange I think.

Half finished low relief collage.

Now completed with some paper sea , sand and rocks.

I had no textile collage in this theme . So I have made one, covered it with Gesso and so now just have some printing and painting to do. Tomorrow's job.

Finally I feel as if I can move on. But what I am going to do with these collage masterpieces I have no idea.

 

 

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