The Messy Middle stage of a felting and fibre experimental process

Mini Woodland - Work in Progress

- By Annie -

A while ago I began a fibre version of an exercise that is popular in painting and drawing where you make a grid in masking tape on paper then randomly create marks and lines in pen, pencil and paint etc, except I did the process with fibres, fabrics, yarns and prefelts.

In the paint and pencil version on removing the masking tape you reveal a set of interesting compositions made without the boundaries of the edge of a piece of paper that can then be worked on further.  This also eliminates blank white paper that can be a problematic starting point for artworks!  With my textile version I decided that however the first part turned out I would cut it into 9 even (ish) squares as if I had masking taped off a grid, and that would force me to use what I ended up with. 

I laid out a square of fibres in whites/blues then added another layer in greens then added prefelts, yarns etc.

In retrospect I probably should have stopped here but carried on anway, possibly adding too much at this stage, but it's an experiment so whatever goes!

I layered on far more than I had intended but went with it anyway. I gridded off the squares with yarn as a cutting line then cut the squares out.  They are a bit wonky but good enough!

The idea was to further work on the squares to create 9 mini woodland pictures from the cut pieces.

I took each one in turn and considered it.

I decided that in retrospect the fibre method on this woodlands idea was quite limiting in that you can only layer so far with fibre and fabrics, unlike with paints and pencils you can just keep going.  e.g. adding a swirl of bright opaque paint to make contrast works better than trying to layer light fibre over a bed of dark.  It does work but it works in different ways in fibre.  In this case I definitely should have stopped and cut it up earlier!

Hmmm……what to do….  I decided to continue with what I had in each square but to dismantle each one a bit and rework the existing layers to bring colours back and forth, before adding more prefelts and yarns and loosely but intentionally began to form into abstract woodland pieces.

The method is a good one though in that it made the process begin and 9 mini woodlands are in progress with a solid starting point rather than wondering how to individually start each one.

Anyway, time has flown by and I haven’t got very far but thought I’d share my progress at the “Messy Middle” halfway point.  It’s an interesting exercise and hopefully I will find time soon to get stuck in properly and complete them!

I’m finding the colours and textures a joy with this, I do enjoy an alternative colour palette!  They all still need a fair bit of work and some fiddling, but no hurry!  I’ve always got lots of ideas on the boil and eventually some make it out the other end!