rosiepink

Making Felt Samples

 

Lyn

Never underestimate the power of experimentation and the making of samples.  It can lead to new ideas - maybe not straight away but perhaps later, when you're rummaging through your samples box for inspiration!

Yesterday I was cutting some shapes from yellow, blue and pink tutu net and the little pile of net scraps were beautiful.  As the scraps layered up the colours changed - for example the pink overlapping the blue made a pretty purple.

I know that a single piece of net will get trapped by wool fibres, but I wondered if the net scraps would get trapped by wool fibres if there were several pieces one on top of the other.  It's at that point that the wondering becomes experimentation.  

I made up four layers of white merino wool and scattered the net scraps on it, but there was a bit of space left so I decided to snip up a scrap of fulled felt and lay the tiny pieces alongside - I wondered if the pieces of felt would sink into the white merino and become flat or if they would stay 'lumpy'.

Here's the experimental layout...

...and in close-up.

Here it is after felting.

I was delighted to see that the white wool fibres did migrate right up through all the layers of net as you can see in the photo below..

...and the resulting 'net-felt' was very pretty.  Below is an angled shot showing the texture.

And the fulled felt scraps didn't sink into the white merino, but made a beautiful texture.

I don't have any immediate plans for using the results of this experiment but I have some pretty felt to look at in my sample box and one day I may get a lightbulb moment from it.

 

some teeny tiny felted and stitched pictures

 

 

Bottoms Up!  Wine....another of my favourite subjects :)

Annie

I made this little picture for my Grandad Roy's birthday card.  He likes his wine (as do I!).

I've had this little sample sitting in my "pile of stuff" for a while - I think it was from when I was trying out different silks and fancy fabrics to make fish with - and it struck me that it looked a bit like a wine bottle.

So I used this idea as the basis for my picture and laid out a small background in merino then snipped some (rather too thick, almost impossible to felt in) sari silk into wine bottle (ish) shapes.

 

I like the way it disintegrated a bit during felting.  It gave it movement. A lot of that was lost when I sewed it unfortunately but I had to stop the bits from coming off as it was for a card not a piece of rarely touched wall art.

 

 After felting, still wet

 

I really love the happy accidents carefully planned details..ahem... of feltmaking - especially in this picture the shape of the champagne bottle sort of appeared on its own then I just decorated it with a bright red labelly scarf.

 

 

I keep thinking I must scale back the detail in my card making - I think this one ended up taking nearly 6 hours. Way too long, but I really really enjoyed it so I don't suppose it matters, the house and stuff can wait :)

 

 

  

 

 

It's approx 13cm x 11cm.

 

I also made a teeny tiny little pic to make my friend's birthday card - it's only 4cm square.

 

And look what happened.  Does this happen to anyone else? Complete chaos for a tiny tiny little picture!  It's a bit like when my friends turn up with a tiny baby and eight great big bags.  Seems excessive!

 

 

I just can't help it.  Maybe I've got toooooo much stuff.  Is that possible?  You can see the tiny picture I was working on to the left (and then the mountain of stuff that spewed out everywhere as I was rummaging for bits n bobs.  And when will I learn to use a bin as I sew?!

 

The timer is for brewing my cups of tea.  When I get engrossed in making things a few minutes turns into hours before I know it.  By setting the timer for 3 minutes I can (almost) guarantee I won't end up with a cup of mud.  Except when I switch it off and forget that it ever beeped.

 

To make the card I cut a piece from this picture...

 

 

I decided to sacrifice it for maybe 5-6 cards or a couple of cards and a smaller picture. Don't really know yet.  It's missing a couple of pieces now though!

 

I painted round the edge with acrylic paint to stop the fibres around the edge from coming loose.  I also crocheted some single chains of single strands of embroidery thread.  Then I pulled them about to make the holes odd sizes and stitched them on.  It's quite a good effect.  I bought the bright pink beads at Ally Pally nearly 2 years ago (just HAD to have them) and now I've finally used a few. Justified purchase!

 

 

 

 

Fancy, Fun, Frivolous, Felted Fishies

Lyn

It would seem that 2015 is the year of the fish for me!  

I wanted to make a felt 'fish bowl' after seeing these ceramic fishies and bubbles that Annie made during her evening classes. 

Annie wanted something simple but slightly quirkly to hang up in the house and being new to ceramics she had a look around for artists she could take inspiration from.  She instantly loved the works of Shirley Vauvelle so she attempted to create something in her style as a starting point.  Annie feels a long way off having her own ceramic style - it's hard enough just learning the basic techniques! The first layer of glaze was painted on then wiped off to leave glaze in the indents and then further colours applied on top.  Do check out Shirley Vauvelle's work on Pinterest, so lovely!  Shirley's Pinterest Page

My handmade felt was stitched with a lot of rayon thread because fish are shiny...

...and each fish is 12cm long (nearly 5").  Twelve of them are nose/tail to a base 10cm in diameter (4").

The underside of the bowl is just as decorated as the topside, so it could be displayed on a glass shelf, but as I don't have a glass shelf in my house, I had to work out a way to show the effect in a photograph.  Husband to the rescue!  He lifted a huge, wooden framed wall mirror from our hallway out into the garden and put it flat down on the lawn.  The weather was perfect - white cloud.  I placed the bowl on a perspex stand on the mirror and you can see both sides at once!

Taking photographs in the garden is not that easy.  Felt is very light and a few times I had to retrieve the bowl after it blew away in the breeze.  I had wanted to have the pond with its waterlillies as a backdrop for the bowl but I didn't fancy fishing it out of the water (pun intended).

I like the way the randomly coloured felt makes a bowl that looks slightly different every time it's turned, even by just an inch.

I really enjoyed making this bowl and I spent many hours on the sewing machine happily seeing it 'come to life'.  I haven't finished with the fishy theme yet - there are so many possiblities to play with when it comes to fishy shapes and colours.

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Felted Flowers Pictures (I never get bored of flowers!)

Annie

A couple of weeks ago I started laying out this picture of flowers but at the time I didn't really know what I wanted to do with it. I had started by carding some yellow and green merino fibres to make a bright yellowy lime colour for a background and then put a few bits 'n' bobs on but decided to leave it while I had a think.  Over the next two weeks every time I walked by I added something to it and just let it grow organically to see what came of it.  Turns out I ended up totally overdoing it, but actually I quite like it so I guess it doesn't matter!  A bit like having lots of birds dropping random seeds in the garden I suppose :)

I put a detail pic in of this because I thought it was interesting - I had been trying to knit a basic skinny scarf with my handspun but didn't like it so I pulled it off the needles and this interesting shape was left.  It felted in really well!  It is easy to recreate - just cast on one short line of knitting, knit the first row then yank it off the needle.  Pull out the first row of stitches and this is what you are left with.  I have felted in single rows of crochet before too - it's great for added texture and felts in easily.

The funny thing is that I took it outside to try to photograph it and several bits blew away - maybe Mother Nature was trying to tell me something!  I thought I was playing safe by placing the fibres at the bottom of a clear plastic storage box so that I could take advantage of the natural daylight to get true colours in the photo.

 

I'm not sure yet but I think it might need a tiny bit (or a lot) of stitching to bring it to life.  I'll stick it on the wall and mull it over.  It is 26cm x 26cm felted.

We do love to make pictures of felted flowers.  It's relaxing because there is no pressure to get it "right".  Anything goes - any colour, any shape, plain or detailed.

This little picture (below) I made a short while ago for a greeting card but didn't send it to anyone.  It's just sat on my pinboard waiting, as inspiration. I'm really pleased with the texture and colour in this.

It was made from a small square cut out from a flowers picture like the pink and yellow one above.  I decided to make the petals raise up by putting really heavy machine stitching on the background between the petals.  It worked really well.  I added more running stitches and french knots by hand to finish it off.  I really like this effect. 

It's another thing in my pile of "ideas to take further" when that elusive spare couple of weeks turns up :)

Lots of felty fluffy stuff! Handmade felt and stitch pictures, fluffy batts and handspun yarns

 

Happy flowers and buzzy bees :)
Card Toppers made from Handmade felt, appliqued silk, free motion stitch and hand embroidery.

Annie

I made the little pictures above for my grandparents birthday cards from one of many little felt samples I've been making recently to try out some of the fabrics and bits and bobs I've been collecting like net, yarns, silk, lace, random shiny things and trims!  

Some things worked well, some didn't but at least I've tried some more things and best I've got another little pile of felty pieces to play with.

Dry Fibres before being wet felted

Wet Felted Samples

I thought this looked pretty with the felt all piled up :)

The two little flowers pictures were made from the smallest sample (pictured on the far right above).  It was just a little square of white merino with a few wisps of pink and green fibres added that I then scattered some bits of trimmings and scraps on to.  Once it was felted (only softly felted) I stitched a row of my (absolute favourite machine stitching exercise) flowers on.  But they were lost and didn't stand out at all.  So then I cut a few small squares of silk and restitched the flower heads over the silk.  Then I cut away the silk to leave the flower shapes.  It worked really well.  Then because I needed two cards - one for grandma and one for grandad (their birthdays are one day after the other) I thought it would be nice to just cut the one picture down the middle and make their cards as two halves of the same picture.  

Then I added some hand stitching and edged them with some bright yellow trimming and stuck them on to folded handmade paper to make them into cards.

Initial stitching before adding silk.

 

Details of flowers pictures

I've also had another go at spinning some yarn.  I got all inspired after visiting "Unravel" fibre festival at Farnham Maltings a couple of weeks ago.  It was mainly lots of gorgeous yarn for sale but there was also some feltmaking and lots of demonstrations and exhibitions from guilds.  A lovely lady called Jan from the West Surrey Guild of Spinners, Weavers and Dyers showed me how to get started with the spinning wheel.  I did have a go a few years ago but didn't persevere with it. When I got home I dusted off my carder and grabbed my box of scrap bits of merino fibres (when I'm making something I always end up discarding odds n ends that I just chuck into a box for later).  It was quite good to use this box of bits because it meant I didn't spend ages mulling over colours! 

Fibres on the carding machine

 


I made 4 batts.  2 of which are above.  Each one is 40g of fibrey goodness (they are approx 22cm long and 40cm round)

Then I had a go at spinning up some yarn from the other two, which I plan to use in feltmaking.  I buy lots of handspun yarn, but how exciting to be able to make my own!

My attempts are not technically good, but then they don't have to be - these are purely for adding texture and colour into handmade felt so they don't have to be strong or perfectly balanced, just pretty and textured :)

I was quite pleased with the outcome.  Now I want to make more for a little scarf or something once I've mastered joins in the yarns a bit better (then I'll also have to remember how to knit although I've only ever done a little bit of knit & purl, nothing fancy! Praps I'll master some lace with my new found enthusiasm!), as well as hopefully creating some really lumpy bumpy yarn for my felt!

A tale of two fishies...

Lyn

 Mackerel on a Plate

(wet felted background with needle felted fish and details)

I enjoyed the 'learn how to use acrylic paints' workshop (previous post) and with a lot of help (and cake) during the day, I achieved a picture that I was pretty pleased with, of two fish on a plate... 

Acrylic painting of fish

... that Annie and I decided would look good in felt, so I had a think about how I could best make it. Paint and wool are very different mediums and each has its merits and its difficulties.

I wanted the fish to be very clear so I used the same technique as when I made the Sea Dragon.

Sea Dragon - felted picture

To make the mackerel picture, I wet felted the background using merino wool.  In the middle of the top layer of fibres I formed a bright yellow oval plate shape then surrounded it with sea colours placed down in a swirly fashion. The plate edges were defined with a boucle-type yarn that felts in easily.

The fish shapes were cut from specially made pieces of white, aqua and turquoise felt, then needle felted onto the background. I needled some blue and pistachio mohair yarn between the joins.  

The dark blue markings, eyes, fine lines and colourings were added with needle felting.

The acrylic painting was very quick to do - only a couple of hours - whereas I estimate that the felted version took ten working hours to complete.  But it wasn't a slog as I really loved the felting processes and seeing it all come together during the needle felting was so satisfying.

The photo at the top of the post shows how the mackerel would look in a frame, like its painted cousin, and here's the uncropped picture with its organic edge.  It measures 50 x 33cm.

Painting is fun, but I'm no Leonardo da Vinci. It's felted art for me!

 

 

Wet Felting, Painting, Playing and .... some rather cool mackerel!

Experimenting in feltmaking, using references to acrylic painting (book in photo is by Flora Bowley)

Annie

We've been enjoying trying out other types of art and craft recently, to feed back into our feltmaking and give us a different perspective on creating artwork.  

A couple of weeks ago me and mum went on two of Jenny Muncaster's wonderful workshops. Highly recommended! The first was an introduction to art - an Art Taster Day - and the second was an acrylic painting day - "Foodie Painting" - where we would be led through making our own masterpiece!  

Neither me nor mum had really done much painting before, mainly just splotches of colour on felt and other fabrics so this was a whole new experience.  I've dabbled with watercolours before but only little sketches, never a proper finished picture.

So we were quite chuffed when at the end of the Foodie Day we both produced finished acrylic paintings of mackerel on a plate...

Here's mum's:

and here's mine (I got a bit carried away with the shimmery blue and green paints so mine look more like rainbow trout than mackerel, but still, pretty pleased with it!):

It was quite amazing how all 8 of the finished pictures were so different given that we were all painting the same thing. Am planning to attempt a felty version at some point, such a lovely composition!

I've hankered after doing some acrylic painting for a while and at Christmas I received the book in the photo at the top of this post, called Brave Intuitive Painting by Flora Bowley, to help remove the fear and begin the process - as she quite rightly says "there is no wrong way".  Jenny showed us that completely on her workshop and instead of me just looking longingly at the paints - we just got on and painted - very liberating! 

First some playing with paints to see how they feel and how they look, then onward to sketching out our fishies

..and so with that extra armoury I plan to do some more painting soon.  Flora's book is great, I haven't read it all, but it is very easy to read and offers lots of lovely quotes and snippets and related things about life as well as painting which make it a bit different.  You really want to just roll your sleeves up and dive in!

But first, some feltmaking! I wanted to see what elements of the approach to acrylic painting I could bring into wet felting because I like the layering effects you can achieve with acrylic paint and the effects you can get with paint spots and splats and so on.

This is just my first experiment - some things worked well, some not so well:

The finished sample

Building up layers

I have an idea in my head to make a really big (not sure how big yet!) piece of work to hang on the wall but I want it to be sort of blocky and defined rather than the softer brush strokes finish I quite often go for. This sample is about 25cm x 35cm and I'll do a few more first to see what works for me and what doesn't.

Photos taken while felt still wet (I'd love to find a way to keep that vibrant colour of the wet fibres!)

I like:

• The effect of the white netting.
• The red/blue layered "flowers" - the circles of silk with blue rings of felt around them worked well.
• The bold prefelt shapes.
• The way the pink silk kept it's pointy shape.
• The way the details really showed through while the felt was wet (but when it dried they disappeared a bit.  But that is to be expected - felt is not paint after all!)

Things to change next time:

• Use thicker felt so it will look more substantial on the wall.
• Use more thoroughly felted "prefelts" so the fibres don't fluff away so much, to give a more defined line.  Although with tiny pieces I suppose fibres will always break away.
• I always like a spot of white in a picture (some nepps or a splash of stitching because it lifts it a bit, as we found spattering white paint on our mackerel really livened it up).  I like the white cut pieces but I don't like the white background showing through, it looks a bit wishy washy in this case.  

 

I also made a little nuno sample recently using an open weave scarf with sparkly bits in. I put blocks of 4 different colours of merino wool under the fabric to see the different effect on the final colour. I also just chucked a couple of extra little bits of fabric on the edges to use the spare space just to see how they worked.

The effect of the different colours of wool was quite dramatic - the blue and the green looked like the fabric was in shade where by contrast the yellow looked like it had a stream of sunlight across it.  I also liked the way the cotton open weave blended with the merino fibres to make a sort of fairisle knitted effect.  It might make some nice little landscapes one day, but really it was just an experiment.  The little scraps were quite interesting too -  they went really wavy as the wool fibres felted.

I'm really enjoying playing and mixing it up a bit at the moment. Some of the painted papers from the play session on the workshop had taken on a kind of fabric feel after lots of layers of paint and water, so I thought I'd quickly stitch a circle of handmade felt on to a piece to see how it felt.  It worked quite well.  Then I stitched another bit of painted paper on.  I am imagining now how this might be used to make another piece of work - all layered up with bits of handmade felt and paper and stitch....so many possibilities - we'll just have to do what we can!

There wouldn't be enough time to do it all even if we didn't have to sleep or go to work, would there?!  :)

The Parsimonious Felter

 Lyn

I'm not mean but I don't like wasting money.  As long as something is serviceable then I am usually happy to keep it.

After all, things often wear out long before I've had enough of looking at them...but that's not the case of a hand felted tea-cosy that I made in 2008.

I've used it daily for over 6 years but it still has many more years of life left in it, and it certainly keeps the pot hot!  However, I've tired of the pattern (it was a picture of a mermaid but I haven't got a photo of her - I didn't think about it before I removed a lot of the details - she had a shiny turquoise fabric tail and curly wensleydale locks for her hair).

Parsimony made me think about things.  It had taken me several hours to make the tea cosy and I'd used over 200g of wool, so I turned it over in my hands while I had a ponder.

The inside is a solid blue colour and is still bright and clean - I had expected it to be several shades of brown after all this time - and although there is a little of the outside colour showing along the bottom, I wondered what it would look like if I just reversed it.

It was a struggle to turn it inside out as it was very set in its ways, but after some vigorous rubbing at the 'seam' where it was formed over a resist, it didn't look too bad.  Another ten minutes with a steam iron and it looked great...but boring.  So I cut some letters from a piece of scrap fabric and pinned them to the cosy ready to machine them on.

It took a frustrating 20 minutes of trying to manoeuvre one side of the thick tea-cosy under and around the sewing machine needle to stitch the 'E' on.  Not possible. I couldn't keep the underside out of the way and under control - I had to unpick a mangled fabric letter from the felt!

So I machine-stitched the letters to a piece of thin white commercial fleece (actually it was part of an old scarf - waste not, want not), cut them out, then hand-stitched them in place.  The stars were hand-stitched with yellow cotton perle.

I'm just wondering whether to put a design on the other side now!

Annie says I should put "EAT" as a play on words on the other side, because a cup of tea is always too wet without a biscuit or cake! :)

 

For all those interested in online learning, The Felting and Fiber Studio has announced a new series of online workshops and classes - pop over and have a look: FELTING AND FIBER STUDIO

 

Colour theory for the fearful

Lyn

Apart from knowing that blue and yellow can make green, the official world of colour theory is a foreign land to me as I tend to just go with my gut, but I'd love to find out more about it all, so I'm taking part in a Colour Challenge by The Felting and Fiber Forum.  The first part is to make a colour wheel using any medium e.g. paint, dye, coloured pencils, whatever you have to hand.

Given that I've got a huge stash of fluffy stuff - here's my first study: a basic colour wheel made from fibres.  All of the colours in this wheel are made from just red, yellow and blue merino wool fibres carded together in different amounts.

You may well know all of this already but red, yellow and blue are called 'primary colours' because they can't be made by combining any other colors, but they can be blended together to make other colours.

So to make the colour wheel I took some bright dyed merino wool tops in the primary colours...

 ...and picked up my hand carders.  I carded together equal amounts of red and yellow to make orange; equal amounts of yellow and blue to make green and equal amounts of blue and red to make purple.

Orange, green and purple are called 'secondary colours'.

If you blend a 'secondary colour' with a 'primary colour' you'll get a 'tertiary colour' that has a double-barrelled name, such as 'blue-green'.

Well, that's as far as I've got and I'm eager to play some more!

If you'd like to mix unique colours to use in your felting, grab some hand carders and give it a go with our free tutorial how to use hand carders.

You can add in silk, angelina fibres and other bits n bobs to snazzy up your carded merino! 

Have a play :)