A Grand Day out

This weekend I have paid a visit to Floriade.  A once in 10 years horticultural exhibition. 
No felt in sight apart from a multi-coloured hat on a New Zealand lady. I complimented her on her head-ware , but personally I thought it was a bit too hot a day for a felt hat, but then I am used to the Dutch weather

Situated in the south of holland, Floriade appeared to have got its own new motorway junction, unknown to the navigator, and an extensive efficient park and ride system. 


Inside -  well it was truly huge and in many ways a tribute to the Dutch horticultural legacy, and there was masses to see, flower displays, gardens , willow weaving, a fire breathing dragon, and some amazing video installations.


 I really enjoyed the Huis van de smaak. Cooking for children, aimed at getting them to eat fruit and veg and mushrooms. With lots of free samples to snack or smaak ( taste) on. 


I particularly liked.
The stilt insect girls- how did they stay vertical

This Japanese flower display, using the bamboo roots in such an interesting way




And the urban knitting

Wherever I go I can always find the knitting.





All in all a grand day out.

Beading

I have tried a number of ways of incorporating beads into my felting. 

My earliest experiments just using beads on wool and placing them in the felt were pretty unsuccessful as the threads and beads were not firmly enough attached.

I have stitched beads on top of the felt and that works fine , but requires sewing, which isn't my favorite occupation, and also looks like an add on.  

I have tried placing beads under some scrim , this again had the problem of just too much movement , unless they were attached to a piece of half felt first.

My next attempt was to incorporate some beads into a knitted square out of wool that I knew would felt. This worked well, but involved quite a lot of wool and time knitting for the final effect. There was also a large area of knitted texture incorporated into the felt. 

I think I might have finally solved it. Crochet. 

Thread the beads on to some thin wool that will felt. Use a really big crochet hook and just make a chain. This is actually the limit of my crochet skills. I have tried random spacing and also adding a bead to every stitch. 

The chains can then be laid into top of the fibres and with a few fibres laid on top, are easily secured into the piece. The beads , sit sometimes in the felt , invisible , sometimes half buried and sometimes on the surface. 

I really like the effect , it's as though the beads are a integral part of the felt.

Transformations

In 1882 John Constable painted some cirrus clouds using oils. The original is in the V&A, Heres a link. 

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O82649/oil-painting-study-of-cirrus-clouds

In 2012, only 130 years later,  I attempted to copy this painting using pastels. Not quite my first time using pastels , but I am a real novice.

Then I made a felt picture using merino batts. I have used merino tops many times, but never batts before. They are very fine short fibres randomly mixed,like fluff, rather than lined up neatly as they are in a top. Interesting different, one I need more practice with !!

I then photographed this felt picture and printed this using my ordinary printed onto silk. I never even knew this was possible. 

It is not as clear as it would be as a photograph but recognizably,upside down, I think.

Finally, I felted the silk using some merino tops , yellow , white and blue fibres. I mixed some white and blue fibres together with my carders for the background. The shrinkage of the silk gives a wonderful crimped effect - unfortunately some of the colours have been lost.  

Transformed from oil on canvas,via the V&A website, to pastels on paper, to felt, then via the computer and an inkjet printer to silk and then shrunk into a small silk and felt picture, 130 years after the original was made.  

Bizarrely this small size felted silk is almost the same size as Constables orginal oil!

Found Items

Make a nature chaos collage from found items. What a challenge! 

First I had to determine something that means nature chaos to me. Well there are lots of things, but I decided to use something that I saw whilst walking on a beautifully sunny April 1st. Should it be the rocks, or the ragging streams or the bogs.  No I decided it should be the gnarled and twisted moss covered roots and branches if a very old tree.

Could this be a mistake as there is a lot of chaos !! 

I searched for found texture.
First binder twine picked up in a field, and twigs in various sizes from some spring cleaning in the garden. 

Old, but clean , pan scrubs, and extracted from the recycling some disposable contact lenses packing -  always good to recycle a bit of plastic in my line of business! 

In the midst of my searching I was given a present,  with some squishy packing material,  just the thing I was looking for to make some bark. 

Tooth picks, I thought  would make little twigs as they are quite strong and not likely to disintegrate.

A few ribbons and short cords, cut off some labels. 

So far so good, enough to start gluing?

Here is the work in nearly finished, perhaps I should have waited until I had it all collected, but I quite like the evolutionary aspects of finding something and sticking it on and as currently it looks nothing like the picture,  I have a long way to go!

Felting Fantasies

Have I broken free from the constraints of deluges and sunsets ? 

 I have and I spent a happy day , with a good friend,  just making the felt that I felt like making. Freedom ?  It was not completely spontaneous as I had done a little planning  even making a drawing from my inspiration.

I wanted to incorporate beads in the work through the technique of knitting , so they would nestle in the felt , not sit on the top. I used my wonderful Shetland Tweed yarn from Harris for this. Knitting thin yarn on big needles with random beads  - yes I can do this and talk and watch the TV , as is really does not matter what it looks like.

 I wanted to try combining Shetland fibres with Norwegian fibres. Sherland for the backgound hill and Norwegian for the textures and colours of the hillside. I wanted to use prefelts for the structure and deliberately make a very uneven edge. So I spent a few hours preparing , prefelts and knitting fine Shetland . Not to mention the time dying scrim cotton yarns and silk and stiching textures into them.

Well I really got carried away it must have been the wonderful spring weather.  

Shetland base, knitting with beads , lots of Norwegian wool , and silks on the top.  Heres my inspiration.

And the final felted effect

I am pleased . what do you think.?

Crinklely clouds

The trauma of the missing vivid violet was eventually resolved by a home made and not so vivid purple. After a lot of tracing and transferring of one or two lines at a time I was close to the final intended effect. I am sure it was worth the effect, because after crinkling all defects were well disguised.

The finished and slightly wobbly printed polyester organza had to be felted. I had tried to felt polyester before with no success so I knew be it needed a lot of persuasion to felt.

So I laid out a few purple , to make the point , merino lines and then random white blue face leicester fibres. With lots of cold water and soap I eventually persuaded the odd fibre to struggle its way though the polyester and start to bring the whole thing together. What a lot of hard work.

Eventually it looked kind of laminated and normal felting with warm water could commence. I think it was worth all the effort to laminate it because when it started to felt , I was suprised that all the lines became zigzags surrounded by crinkles. Quite a cloud like texture if not cloud like in colour.

I am quite pleased with it,although its shape is a bit random ,  but I am not sure Constable would recognize it.

The mystery of the vanishing vivid violet

Well spring is here and colour has returned to my life inspired by any one of constable clouds paintings and he painted a lot of them. After trying out with crayons I was ready to progress to using fabric transfer paint for reverse printing onto polyester. Interesting idea,  your painting layers become reversed , when you use a hot iron to transfer from the paper to the fabric. 

Inspired by the clouds and the descriptions on the small dye pots I painted away . It was a bit disconcerting that the colours on the paper were not a very good match to the description on the tins. Vivid violet was more like a dull grey and lemon was more like a dirty mustard. But I was completley confident all would be well after the ironing.

Here is the finished painting laid out ready for the transfer. Not as vibrant as the descriptions would lead you to believe, but I was happy with the composition and my imagined finished effect

Now ironing is definitely not my favorite activity. Still all for a good cause. I ironed away taking great care not to disturb the two layers and smudge the whole effect . Eventually I dared to lift the corner to test if it had worked. Yes and no. I had lemon , red , blue , orange , but no sign at all of the vivid violet

I have no idea why. I am completely at a loss as to how to retrieve the situation. Even if I can discover why there is no possibly that I can line it all up again an complete another marathon ironing session. What a mystery. Here is my rather gappy finished piece.   If you have any suggestion of a solution I be happy to hear your ideas.