Milliner ?

I like the word milliner far better than hatter. How did this word come about? According to Wikipedia, it originates from the 1600s and refers to some coming from Milan , a city which was famous for fancy goods, now meaning someone who make and sells ladies hats.

Picture of a millinery shop in Bruges folk museum. Look at all the different hat blocks!
I have been attempting a little millinery over the last few weeks and I love it. There are so many options I have barely scratched the surface . I like the two dimension into three dimensional aspects and I know I have a lot to learn. I have been rescuing old unfinished hats and making new.
My rescues were both previous attempts to make a hat with a sculptured surface and in neither case had I really got a grip with the amount of felt surface needed to do this successfully.
My first attempt has been turned into a beanie style with a slight military flavor.

My second sculpted into some hills and valleys with addition of beads.

Starting from scratch and a like bit wiser I made the beauty below, merino with silk threads incorporated . This is more like it in terms of sculpture , but there could still be more!

I do like the little stalk and the spiral

And for a complete contrast I made a bowler, not black of course but still bowler shape. When it came to making the brim I was not sure a first how to do it . Eventually I thought about pinning it round the cable piping you can buy here in the Netherlands. A bit of a brainwave.

Now I just need to find someone to model them for me, as this white lady does not smile.

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A tale of two bags

I have been trying out felting the same bag design in Shetland fibre and merino fibre.

From these photographs can you tell which is which?

I expected a difference but was surprised at quite how marked it is.

Shetland fibre, is about 30 microns with a staple of 50- 120mm

Merino about 23 microns and has a 30-90mm staple.

Both the fibres I used had been bought from World of Wool. The Shetland was natural grey and the merino I carded white and black to make grey as it did not have enough predyed grey.

I used exactly the same resist and the only modification I made for the merino was to shorten the cord which i used in the design to strengthen the handle.

In terms of weight they weigh.

Shetland 100g. Merino 75g.

The Shetland was really hard to felt even with loads of water and soap, I never got It to shrink as much as I wanted, The decorations disappeared into the bag itself which is very soft and springy to the feel and visually I think quite flat. The merino was a lot easier to felt , has shrunk more and was more easy to shrink and because of the carder fibres I think looks more interesting. The declaration is more obvious as well.

A good bag experiment. Maybe I'll try it again. What shall I try it with?

 

 

 

 

 

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Sculptures 2 of 2

My first attempt at a sculpture was not so successful. I took a large sheet of white card , cut some curved and some straight lines on it with my craft knife and then connected edges together using staples and double sided tape. It looked OK to begin with but keep unravelling itself and collapsing . So I began again. Same idea but now on smaller sheets of thick cartridge paper and using staples instead of tape.

This is more successful I think. The disadvantage of the staples is that they are quite visible, but the advantage is my sculptures are likely to look the same tomorrow as today.

Photographing them is also a challenge for me. White sculpture on white background, gave my a kind of grayish cream blob of a photograph. I am advised this is all to do with the white balance , and a complex colour averaging that our sophisticated cameras perform without us knowing. So I looked up my camera instructions and tried to override the averaging then turned them into black and white. It's not perfect but here my white on white sculptures.

 

Next in this complex process is to draw the sculptures and draw the photographs I made of the sculptures. If you are still following this story you might be wondering the purpose of all this. I think it's purpose is to help me develop good designs for three dimensional objects. I am keen to be able to make better three dimensional felts so I am sticking with it.

So finally I draw my sculptures .

Overall an interesting exercise . Finally here's another interesting living sculpture from the Kroller muller park.

I wonder how many years it will take for the tree to fill the hole in the hammerhead

 

 

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Sculptures 1 of 2

Once I would have never really looked at a sculpture, I'd have walked past with hardly a glance. I think I was missing something. I have realized this as for my last assignment I have had to look at bit more closely in order to draw some.

Where to go ? Well the Kroller Muller museum in the Netherlands is the obviously place. This collection was started by Helene Kroller Muller and contains many Van Gogh's . In 1935 she donated the whole Art collection to the Netherlands. In 1966 a sculpture park was added to the musuem. The especially nice part about it is that you can't drive but have to pick up a white bike and cycle to the museum.

So I needed to draw some sculptures. What a challenge. To sit and draw in public and then to make something recognizable , well maybe.

I browsed around a bit , there are many sculptures , old and also quite new, by people I have heard of and people I haven't.

I particularly liked this one by Barbara Heywood, I liked the way it draws your eye into the vista behind.

Here is my attempt to draw it from the back as I needed to sit in the shade you can see in the photo above.

I also really liked this one by Sorel Etrog. It's is called "complexes of a young women " and I think this title really describes what I see when I look at it.

I tried sketching this too. I hope I captured at least some of the complexes.

Next I have to try my hand at making my own sculptures, photographing them and drawing them. That's going to be fun.

 

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Wild at Woolfest?

One year on , I returned to woolfest. No longer a newbie.

I was far less wild the the previous year, not wild at all in fact. I did not buy a fleece , as I still have loads left of last years, and I did not have to make numerous trips through the rain to store my purchases. Even more bizarrely I did not even buy any knitting wool, just some needles. What has happened to me?

I did buy some Gotland fibre , as I tried a sample last year and liked it so I need more for the dark dismal tree picture I have in my head. I hope there is enough.

I bought some yarns and fibres to dye.

After a great demonstartion by classic carders of a way of making fibres mixes I was treated for my birthday to a finishing brush for my machine.

 

It's resting on a small wooden felting block I want to try out.

Not much colour at all in these purchases. But I did splash out and got some dyed silks ---maybe for a water related item.

I really enjoyed the whole atmosphere and many many stalls.

Here is the Artybird stand with my Shyrdak on display , alongside some other wonderful items.

Here is Kate enthusiastically demonstrating in front of Paula's wedding rug.

So not a wild day just a wooly day!

 

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A present

Last year I visited Fairfield Mill in the wilds of the Pennines . A real old Mill, it is now part museum , part artist workshops and part display area. Here I saw among other things beautiful embroidered pictures. One really spoke to me , it was of Sanna bay , a bay on the north coast of the ardnamurchan peninsular in Scotland. This bay has special place in my sisters heart.

In July my sister celebrates a significant birthday. This made me think of what I could give her and I remembered Fairfield Mill and the Sanna bay embroidery. Unfortunately I could no longer easily find the artist I remembered. So I thought I would take her place and make my own felted picture of Sanna bay

I researched images and I return to Moy Mackay's book on how to make felted images as I thought I would use machine stitching, Here I have to say I had a revelation. I inherited a good sewing machine , but I have never exploited it. Yes I knew it could do free style stitching , but I had never tried it. What I was missing. I did a few experiments and realized the it could add a significant texture and highlighting effect onto felted pictures. How has it taken me three years of felting and >50 years of sewing , to realize this. I cannot explain. A blind spot I guess.

So I practiced and here a peak at the effect I could get.

Finally I made a Sanna bay image , which will have been delivered by the time this blog is published and a hope it has captured a small amount if the magic of the place.

 

 

 

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Miniatures

My current task is to make some minature felts. They can be anything , flat or three dimensional. There are so many options to choose between I have found it really difficult to focus and decide what to make.

I have had a go at some miniature pictures that could be used for cards. First I thought of the biggest picture I could imagine related to my theme. Satelitte images of rivers. They are actually really wonderful colours.

This is part of the Ganges.

 

Converting these images to miniature felts is quite a challenge as the examples below show. I think without the images above no one would know what they are supposed to be. Even with them it's stretching the imagination. But does that matter? I am not sure.

Back to earth I am experimenting with a technique learnt at Feltfull , making jewelry. Here are a some bracelets.

Then I have gone a bit more three dimensional. I experimented with making a small felted sculptures, but I need to explore the technique a lot more before I am happy with it, so I am making bowls. Here again I am experimenting a bit trying out layering colours and cutting holes to give different effects. I have also tried to make two bowls the same - which has worked out reasonably.

I hope by the end of this weekend I will have 12 miniature felts , made up of jewelry and bowls and then I will have finished my miniature assignment . This is my target anyway and then I can go wild with some new ideas at Woolfest next weekend.

 

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