Action points

Well my sketch books made the journey safely to the UK, were assessed and are now on their way back. Out of this I have received some action points. The first one is regarding health and safety. Well health and safety has been a huge part of my day job for years , so how did I manage to miss this element. Sadly I think for the reason that most accidents occur , people do no recognize the danger therefore don' t take any actions. I fell into this trap here. Painting , cutting and felting what could be the danger therefore ignore the HSE information. Shame on me.

I also had omitted to write anything on what I had got out of doing all the work.

This wasn't because I had not got anything out it , more that I overlooked the requirement to write it down.

So what have a got out of the first two months of C&G Level 3 Certificate in Design and Craft. 7716-23 Feltmaking.

Well I have a far better understanding of how to mix colours, and have applied it to paint and fibre. I think with this knowledge I will be able to apply it to dyes. I have pushed my painting skills to the limits and probably beyond, and I have enjoyed doing it.

I have tried to learn about colour values , but these are still I bit of a mystery to me. I just hope my instincts hold out and I continue to get this about right.

Mostly I have got out I feeling that my felt making is improving and as that is why I am doing it I am overall very pleased with the process.

So with my improved skills and extra time I have finshed the new bag.

Here it's is improved handles, two pockets, nice shape and flat bottom so it can stand up. I am also very pleased with this.

 

 

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More than a sketch book

Last weekend I sent off the sketch book I have made from the first two months of my course. This is the first sketch book I have ever made , and its got a lot more in it than sketches.

It's the first one of I don't know how many , maybe 5, so I thought it should have an over view. As my theme is river edges , my over view is a river , with photographs of all the inspirations I have used. This is of course only partly complete.

I have some leaves and ferns both painted and prefelted.

This is just one example as there are lots of other paintings and sketches and felt samples.

I had to research and here is a little snapshot into the work of the photographer Joe Cornish.

I have ended this book , with some of my process photographs, This is the part I find the hardest. Record every step sounds quite easy , but I always forget as I just get too carried away to remember to stop and photograph. Here are some of the steps in the making of my Mekong river banks felt

This is all winging its way to Kate in the UK , and I am very interested to see what she thinks of it.

 

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Felting Fridays

Well 2013 is here, and this has meant a new job for me. One of the really good things about my new job is that I will not work on Fridays. What a luxury to be able to do this. All this week , whilst trying to concentrate on my new job I have been dreaming about Friday 11th January 2013. My first felting Friday.

So what shall I do. Well I am going to start the day with a walk , it is particularly grey and miserable here in the Netherlands at the moment , and working I never see the light of day. So first a walk down to the polder, to get some air and get my creative thoughts flowing.

Then I am going to make a felted bag. Last year a made a prototype. I wanted , two good strong handles , so I incorporated cords. I wanted a spacey bag with some pockets and I wanted it zipped. I also wanted it to have a flat bottom so it would stand up.

 

Here it is hanging up, it does stand but the handles droop.

Mostly I am happy with my prototype, but I want to find an alternative way of attaching the cords securely.

 

 

This is a view inside the bag of how it is done now , which works , but is a bit clumsy. I am not sure how to improve this , maybe take the cords right to the base of the bag and secure under the removal base.

The base works well, using the principle of the large supermarket shopping bags you can buy here and even recycling part of oneq

I am not so happy with the zip. I think I should sew it in by hand to make it more invisibly attached and I also think during the felting process I need to make a more definitive top of the side of the bag by forcing the felt together with some stitches.

Finally I will make two pockets in the new bag.

I have some recycled sari silk that it going to from part of the decoration of the and I think I will make a black bag with purple insides and handles.

What I good day making this is going to be.

 

 

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Loose ends

The course I am doing in arranged in three parallel modules design, sampling and making felt . A good blend with a coherent theme. In the process of doing this it is quite easy to forget one element. I thought as I was nearing the end of month two and finishing my final month two piece, I should check if I had forgotten to do anything. I have in fact a have a number of loose ends,

I had forgotten to paint anything using tints and tones. After all my trials without using tint and tones , you would have thought I would enjoy using them and not just forget them. Luckily that is quite easily resolved.

More difficult is that I have forgotten to keep any records of how long it has taken me to do the design work for my final felt piece, If I do not know how long I took me , I have no way of costing this activity. I will have to imagine is again and then assign a realistic time. It is always very debatable I think how much time is allocated to design activities, as in the end you might make more the one final pice from the design work.

I have not competed my research into Pat Sparks method of felting, This was because I could not work it out from anything in the public domain. So I decided she was keeping it secret and bought her book. Now I know and I am not going to reveal the secret but I can now finish the work. I am trying to use elements of her techniques in finishing my final piece.

And finally I have not written anything about the challenge from making a background batt. !!! I think this is extremly tricky to write about. The challenges of a background batt out if the natural shades if BFL were small. The white was too white for my piece , I should not have used it. I should have used the two browns shades. I think this was the only challenge . I am not sure this is quite enough so I will have to think of something else to say

I can during use the holiday period complete these few loose ends and finish month two. This blog is unusually about all about things I haven't done I am sorry there can be no photographs.

 

 

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Density matters

Well I am slowly learning the importance of density. Density differences is what allows oil to be separated from water, allows cyclone vacuum cleaners to work and make sponge cakes light and airy. I never imagined it would come into felting.

When I talk about density. I mean fibres density , measured by me in mg/cm2. Not the same units as you would measure the density of an oil or air. So why does the fibre density matter.? Well first you lay out your fibres before felting , thinly or thickly, two , four or more layers and this is the starting point of the final density. Then you felt , and effectively the gaps between the fibres shrink , the overall area of the felt reduces and the fibre density increases. The more you felt , the denser the final piece is. Exactly the same as boiling a sauce to make it thicker or more dense.

Why am I even discussing this. Well I made a piece of felt to show the migration of dark and light fibres into colours. Sounds simple but I thought it looked terrible. The fibres did not seem to migrate and I felted and felted until I had a stiff inflexible piece of felt, like a small doormaat. I felted another piece testing out a few pieces of prefelt I had made and it was lovely , fibres migrated and piece was soft and flexible.

What was happening?

My first piece started with 36 mg/cm2 of fibre and ended up after 56 % shrinkage with 81mg/ cm2. My second one, started at 20 mg/cm2 and finished at 33mg/cm2, with 40% shrinkage. Less than half the density of the first. The first far to dense , the second if I am honest not dense enough, as it has some very thin patches when you look at it. All these density figures disguise thick and thin patches as they are only averages. Very tetchy I am sorry!

So I designed a third sample. I want it to end at 40 mg/cm2 with 40% shrinkage and a starting size of 30 cm X 30 cm. So I needed 22g of fibre to start . Divide in three layers , the bottom two made out of three different colours and the top one , out of six. Well this is a challenge for the sensitivity of my kitchen scales. So it was all bit approximate, but I think it worked.

Start point mini rainbow door mat

Final flexible Fibre Rainbow

Both samples show if you look carefully the migration of the different coloured fibres from underneath.

You know I think there was a lot of information about this in my course notes, but I guess this is one of those things you have to lean for yourself.

 

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A good boat trip

Oh I do like a good boat trip!. Thinking about river edges and looking for the inspiration for the next month of my course has really brought this home to me. I wonder why do I like boat trips so much?

Well I grew up within sight and sound of the river Mersey . The ferry across the Mersey was a reality for me on many occasions. The most recent time about fifteen years ago, was when I insisted my family accompany on the now commercialized tourist Mersey ferries as part of a family history weekend in Liverpool.

Then there were the many trips on ferries from England to Europe. Dover to Calais, Hull to Zeebruge , Portsmouth to Santander, Ramsgate to Dunkirk, Traveling down the UK over night with two small daughters in the back of the car to catch the first ferry of the day to go camping in France. Today there are the trips home , from Rotterdam to Hull. I get on the Pride of Hull in Rotterdam, with its car decks , cabins, cinema, cafe , bars , shops and karaoke nights, I watch all the lorries loading and I instantly relax.

I have had many wonderful boat trips in Scotland. From KIlchoan to Tomerbory, Oban to Craigmure, and Ardrossan to Brodick. Think about the wonderful Calmac Hopscotch rover trips . Some of their boats are quite rusty and weather worn, but my experiences of Hopscotching around the Outer Hebrides cannot be beaten.

But maybe it can ! Aboard the M.V. Frances Barkley from Port Alberni on Vancouver island, trips on the Mekong in Thailand , Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.... Here are the brick kilns on the edge of the Mekong photographed from yes of course a boat, which will be my inspiration for my next felting assignment , and has started me on this travelogue of watery trips.

Copyright  www.bizonderimage.com

Close to home now in Rotterdam, there is the tourist Speedo boat , with its riverside views of the orange dock, import point for Europe's vast consumption of orange juice, the container terminal and the floating dry docks , the fast ferry to Dordrecht , and the little black and yellow boat taxis , zipping in and out of the barges going up and down the Maas.

Enough enough , I could go on , I think its the wonderful memories that make me like boat trips so much. Please let me know your favorite boat trip.

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Colour blindness

Well I think I am going to have to go colour blind.

I need to make a prefelt picture based on river edges in fully saturated colours. Well such a thing does not exist in the natural world. I have lovely pictures of rocks and Autumn leaves with swirling water, and drippy moss covered rocks with ferns hanging over them. Which need to be depicted in the colours from a rainbow and using colour values instead of shades and tones. I really do not understand the advantages of this colour value approach. I know Henry Mattise used it , but I am not sure I am up to it.


It calls for a radical approach. First I must forget the natural colours.

Orange leaves will become red , browny rocks will become warm yellow with blue to show the texture and the moss. The water needs to stays warm blue with cold blue and cold yellow to give movement.

Here is what is looked like in real life.

A painting , trying to get a grip of my colour blind scheme, and cheating a little bit by using white.

The completed prefelt. For me the beauty of felt is the way it blends together , when only prefelted this has not happened yet. So this is definelty not my favorite piece of felting .

 

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