Foil , masking tape and felt

Take an aspect of felt making and explore it with opened experiments. Easy to say difficult to choose what to do. Incorpoartion of fabric , knitting , beads, crochet, dying, laminating and connections by threads.....Just a few of the things I would like to test . Another time. I choose to explore pleats , or really the techniques of incorporation of texture into felt via pleats. Sounds a bit boring really when I write it down , but only time will tell.

So I tried eight different techniques to pleat my fabric. I used stitching , foil, cling film, masking tape and gaffer tape. Good to use all these alternatives as you never know what it going to happen , which after all us the whole idea.

I was a bit constrained as the city and guilds ( bless them ) insists that the experiment all happens together , on one piece of felt , which means all treated the same , not really ideal for these diverse processes and materials.

My starting point .

The final piece with its eight different experiments. It is all white , so that it can be true texture comparison not confused by colour.

Overall I am quite pleased and these are my favorites .

 

Masking tape used to prevent lamination as a way of making pleats.

Foil used to go hold the texture and also prevent laminating.

Unfortunately the gaffer tape although successful will not be taken further for now.

 

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Seams

When asked how to fasten two pieces of felt together I go back to my sewing roots , and think straight seams and French seams. With more thought I realised that with felt the possibilities are enormous. You can of course sew felt in a traditional way and get a traditional effect. But if you sew it at the prefelt stage , well you can either create an stand out seam or you can make the seam almost completley invisible.

Here is an example, a very small sample.

It almost looks like piping.

Then of course you might want an invisible seam , and these example would be almost invisible if I had chosen a more sympathetic thread colour.

My favorites seams are using a fabric or yarn to make the seam , I think this could look really cool , with slightly more exciting colours , and adds a flexibility that could be very wearable in a felted garment.

All I need now is to work out how to make a jacket so I can use my seaming skills.

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City and guilds

The City and Guilds course I am doing , is called Level 3 Certificate in Design and Craft 7716-23 Feltmaking. Design for craft , I quote " provides the means to develop a design reference for craft , through a series of outcomes demonstrated by a body of practical work. For me it is sometimes difficult to document this process and present this body of work ! I have a tendency to just do the design work in my head, or maybe I am kidding myself. This attitude is not acceptable understandably to the C&G . I need a little more discipline. One of the good things is that although the design process can take many directions , in the course , you get asked to try things. Which is good because I have found something's I really like doing , that I have never tried before.

Do to a lack of design documentation I have been rethinking and redoing my documentation for a piece of bark I picked up last summer. The bark is quite big , well about 25 cm long , so first I zoomed in to a small area.

I then attempted to draw the keg elements of this with wax , ink and bleach. I found this collection of media rather difficult. Not least because you cannot see what you have drawn with the wax until you add the ink and then it's too late to go back. Consquently I am not too pleased with my final result.

After this I had to develop the same concept into colours. This required my active imagination and a play with Photoshop as the colours in the bark are pretty muted. I drew with pastels which I do like using.

I had to use some own printed materials for my felted piece and I decided to try for a texture and a smooth effect trying to mirror my drawing above. After adding my texture effects and slashing the printed scrim I started with no longer resemble a rectangle , it was more like a fish. Never mind . After a bit more slashingof my Shetland fibres here is the finished piece.

Except I think it needs some stitching , but that will have to wait for another time.

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5000K

At this time of year I feel I really struggle to take good photographs of my felt. Even waiting until the weekend doesn't really give much improvement. So I was interested when a link to photographing textiles was shared with me.

After reading this I began to start to understand the problem. White balance. The solution was to take control of the lighting by illuminating your pieces with 5000K lights bulbs. So I thought I'd give it a go.

First test , illuminated with natural light on a grey February day.

Retaken under the 5000K bulbs

You will have to take my word for it that these colours are more like reality.

So I also took some photos of my ongoing experiments to make bubbles in laminated fabric.

These piece both use silk , and test interfacing , plastic, iron on fabric print, PVA glue and fabric glue.

One silk and one cotton , mixed successes which is good as it allows for some more experimentation.

 

 

 

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Focus and finish on Friday

Focus and Finish was a slogan from one of my recent work locations and I think this is what I need with regards my felting activities. I have done such a lot of experimenting and have just so many ideas of what I might make incorporating this experiment and that experiment into but I never do it.

So on my first focus and finish friday I set off to finish the felt and Shetland tweed jewellery I started at Christmas.

Done

I stopped talking about my framing ideas and actually finished some felted pictures in box frames.

Might needs some further improving but in reality done.

I also finished my stitching sampler. I have to keep up with my course work !

Great progress , but then yesterday over a coffee with a dear felting friend , Els, who was telling me about the new Fiona Duthie on line class , a whole load of ideas came into my head and today I am again back to the experiments again . But maybe it can work , have focus and finish Fridays and play with felting experiments the rest of the time.

 

 

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Betweens, bodkins and .....

The sewing I have been doing recently has been seriously challenging me. Not so much in terms of the sewing but more in terms in what needle I should be using to do it. I used betweens for years without really even thinking about it . Now as I start to sew with embroidery threads of different thickness onto felt and want to sew beads on, my old trusted friends really don't work.

Firstly the eyes are too small for the embroidery threads and then the eyes and thread are too big for the hole in the beads. So I started randomly choosing from the other needles in my eclectic and very disorganized needle collection. In the end I realized had to get a grip as fighting with the threads and needles was taking just too much time.

So first a stock take., throwing anything rusted away first !, Some of them are more like daggers than needles.

Now perhaps I can understand to the problem. I had loads of bodkins , from all the knitting , and I had my betweens. I had two beading needles , that were incredibly fine and pretty useless. I hardly had anything that might be described as a sharp , or embroidery needle. These needles I have also discovered come , not really surprisingly in a large variety of sizes !. So armed with this knowledge I can go and buy some targeted new needles. If anyone has any advice on this subject I'd love to hear from you.

In the meantime here a bit of the sewing that lead me to this needle clear out.

Hopefully it will be better sewing and more enjoyable with the right needles

 

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Samplers

In my head, samplers are regular organized pices of needlework , usually with a psalm or poem incorporated. A bit like this one , made quite a long time ago.

According to wikepedia they did not start like this. Women used them to record a stitch they had seen and did not want to forget. This was in the 15th and 16th century . The samplers were 6-9 inches wides and were totally covered in stitches. They were highly valued and often passed down through the generations. By the 18th century they became a way of showing skill at stitching and at this point started to incorporate religious or moral quotations.

So I have gone back in time , and I am making a felt sampler to record the effect of stitches, added before felting , at the prefelt stage and after felting. This sampler is currently just about to start the stitching after the final felting stage and Is pretty disorganized affair. I have tried to keep to a purple /pink theme and tested hand stitching and machine stitching. Until I read up about the origin of samplers , I wasn't so happy with my work. But understanding the history has made it all make a lot more sense. Here and some examples of my stitches so far.

Stitching onto pongee and then felting it all in . The transparency of the silk , means the underneath stitches are visible. Not so good. Underneath some stitching at the prefelt stage , I like the couching , but the chain has become too loose as the fibres shrunk.

Stitching on bought prefelt , with my machine and adding it on top of the fibres. Quite effective.

Some stitches made after prefelting. I like the effect of the knots and the pleat, but I am not so sure about the blanket stitch around the eyehole.

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