rosiepink

My felt fish swam out of their bowl!

Lyn

Almost two years ago, I made a felt fish bowl ...

... and I've been very happy with it, however the fish must have been restless because they made a break for freedom - but I managed to catch them all!

When I made the original piece of felt for the fish bowl, I made one side more deeply coloured than the other so the fish above are a nice mix of both deep and paler colours.

My plan was to make a mobile with the fish and a coaster from the bowl's centre.  I showed my idea to my friend Joan and she suggested that I use the bowl's centre as the top of the mobile from which to suspend the fish.  Why hadn't I thought of that?  

So I played around with threads and started to make the mobile, but I wasn't happy with it.  I took a photograph to view on my monitor because sometimes it's easier to see your mistakes that way, and I don't know what made me do it, but I rotated the photo 180 degrees.

And that's how I got the idea for the sculpture.

The fish are firm because I fulled the felt completely then applied free motion stitching so I only needed some lightweight wire on them.  Here's a close-up of the wiring:

I also made a few stitches where necessary to keep the fish together.

I suspended the felt, on a nail in my wall, by using the wire on the back of the fish. It made a lovely wall panel!  

I was reluctant to take it down but I had the bit between my teeth so I pressed on. I added more wire and found that I could fashion the school of fish into various shapes so that I could have made different sculptures had I wanted to.

I made the base by wiring the bowl's centre to a metal jar-lid and my husband helped me to fix a metal rod into it.  

I loved working on this project - it's satisfying when your original idea morphs into something you hadn't set out to make!

 

Felting in the Fauvism style "View From a Window"

'View From a Window'      

Lyn

The current challenge on The Felting and Fiber Forum is to make a felt picture in the style of the Fauvist period - Fauvist paintings have a simplified drawing and an exaggerated use of colour. 

I searched the internet for art from the Fauvist period and found that I quite liked the painting below by Henri Matisse, 'The Open Window', so the felt picture above is my take on it.

My felt picture was made mostly by wet-felting using dyed merino wool, and the glass vase is a little piece of open weave fabric felted in. The flowers, curtain track and opening-window frames are needle-felted in using yarn, then free motion stitching defined the curtains and interior window frame.  The picture measures 50 x 36cm (20" x 14") and I stitched it to a pale blue stretched canvas.

............

Recently Annie and I found a couple of nifty things in 'Ikea' to help with our felting.  We've been using a flat grater to grate hard bars of olive oil soap to make our soap solution, but it's not easy and we often grate our finger nails along with the soap!  We bought a rotary grater for just £4 ($5)...

... and it's brilliant.  It will even grate those annoying little chunks that fall away and are impossible to grate on a flat grater.  We used the fine rotary wheel and found that the resulting soap 'powder' was quick and easy to make and very easy to dissolve in water.  

We also found this airer for £5 ($6.25) - it folds flat for easy storage. The rails are 79cm (31") long and ideal for drying wet-felted pictures. We put cross-stitch plastic canvas on the rails to fully support wet felt...

...and it's useful for drip-drying felt-making equipment!

We find it hard to look at anything without wondering if it could be useful in our craft rooms!