rosiepink

Handmade Felt Hat

Lyn

The evenings are feeling a bit autumnal now so it won't be long before we need to wrap up against the cold here in the UK!

So I decided to make myself a new warm hat from handmade felt.  I made a large piece of nuno felt from which to cut and stitch my hat. If you'd like to know the story behind it and how it was made, please pop over to The Felting and Fiber Forum Blog 

I like the way the construction of the hat made the top look!

 

Yet again the summer has whizzed by this year but I love autumn just as much and I'm looking forward to going for fresh crisp walks among the colourful trees.  Wearing my new hat of course! :) 

 

 

 

 

 

Some bright and cheerful flowers in a vase (no, it's not a pineapple!)

Annie

I love blue. Blue is often my default colour.  So I challenged myself to complete the layout of these flowers with no blue at all and used more purple and green. I think it worked ok and it makes a nice change, but is possibly still a little uncomfortable for me. I'm not sure!  I do like it though as it feels fresh and colourful.

I added, removed, moved and added more bits over about 3 weeks. I just left it on the table and did something to it most days. At one point I asked my husband his opinion and he enquired about the pineapple in the composition! I have to agree once I saw it it was hard to unsee it but I still think it's an interesting vase so I left it!  Here are some progress pictures of how it evolved:

I didn't pay much attention to layering up fibres to ensure that bits wouldn't fall off during felting but it seems to have faired quite well.  One or two pieces might need a little stitch or a poke with a felting needle but overall it felted really well.  Sometimes the felting process can change the look and texture quite considerably (this can be a good or a bad thing depending on the result you want!) but in this case I like that it hasn't distorted too much or gone fluffy round the details.  Here it is felted:

 

It's about 44-46cm depending on where it's measured.

I now just need to decide at some point whether to experiment on it with machine or hand stitching or acrylic paints. Hmmmm, it could be a disaster but it could be a lot of fun too!

 

Finding Compositions Using Viewfinders (and Scissors!)

Abstract Coastal Picture from Handmade Felt (20cm x 20cm)

Annie

I decided to revisit my coastal photos and pebbles theme from the previous post, but in my usual way I ended up doing something else - still coastal, but not the pebbles....yet. I was trying to find a fresh composition for them so I flicked through some photos for reference and did some very basic sketches on an A3 piece of paper of a variety lines, shapes and motifs from the photos. I used view finders to look over the sketching to find interesting passages and ended up picking one that was unexpected, and then decided to use it exactly as it was, rather than finding a home for the pebbles for now.  This cropped section is only about 6cm x 6cm but I scaled it up to 20cm x 20cm.

I think this method can work for finding compositions because when you crop down, then the lines "go over the edge" of the boundary of the view finder and also in this case the objects are not to relative scale. I find by cropping out a small section to work with it introduces more interest, movement, angles and randomness than I could achieve by intentionally drawing within the boundaries of a piece of paper or square of fibres. So the marks and lines and other inputs are done with intention but the finished thing is helped along a bit by fate and randomness.

To make the piece of felt I laid out two fine layers of natural merino, then a layer of fabric, then some more fibres thinly laid, then some white scrim, then more fibres and finally some details created with fabrics, prefelts and yarn.

It is only a very simple composition but I think it works quite well. Toward the end of the felting process I cut it square (20cm x 20cm) with a rotary cutter then worked it a bit more to finish the edges. It would probably look good with company, maybe in a set of 3 or 9.

I like groups of squares set out together to make an overall display. Recently I painted a picture of some really pretty flowers that I had bought to brighten up my hallway, then immediately took the scissors to it because it was awful and didn't do them justice at all! However, cutting it into squares (4cm x 4cm) and randomly rearranging the pieces improved it no end and made it much more visually appealing!

 

 

 

Here is my inspiration - a collage of the flowers in my hallway:

I think I'll keep these little squares in my sketchbook as they could feed into future work, or at least serve as a reminder of ways to start work when I feel stuck.  I have many ways of working - sometimes I plan, sometimes I use prompts or other methods like those above, and quite often I just dive in headlong and see what happens! How do you plan your felt art? Or do you just jump straight in and make it up as you go along?  

The challenges of working big with feltmaking; pebbles lovely pebbles; so many projects but not enough time - where did January go?!

Choosing colours for a project, great fun! :)

Annie

Back in June I laid out a base of fibres 120cm x 120cm because I liked the idea of attempting to make a great big bit of felt. I mentioned it at the end of this post but in the end I had to roll it up out of the way because I didn't have a plan for it, it was taking up too much of my work space and I also wanted to work on other things.

A couple of weeks ago I got it out again following yet another craft space reorganisation! There still isn't enough room for it really but I want to work on it now. I always crave just one more table (one flat clear surface to do things - but in reality it would just get another project plonked on it!)

Anyway, after much deliberation I decided to revert to my original plan of making this piece into a big vase of (or general splat of) imaginary flowers. I've decided to use it as a test piece to try out various ideas so there is no pressure for it to have a fantastic outcome, this one is just about the process. In the photo at the top I'm holding a bunch of fibres up against the layout trying to decide on the next layer, which I have subsequently laid down, and now moved on to auditioning various colours and weights of fabrics. Nothing is decided yet, this bit is just about moving things about and seeing what happens!

So, anyway, back to the table and the size of the layout. The first issue (aside from it taking up far too much room!) is that when you have a big layout on the go it is hard to see the whole thing as you work. I considered working on the floor so I could see it from above but that would just lead to it getting walked on and scattered across the floor. It would be so much easier if you could layout fibres on an easel so you could stand back from your work. Alas gravity does not agree with that. So for a while I was getting up and down on to a stool but that is exhausting and only helps while you are actually up on the stool. Hmmm.....so I thought I'd try to raise one end of the tables up and see what happened. I won't go into too much detail about trying to find various things to raise the legs up only to remember 30 minutes later when I was trying to prop the table up that the legs were completely adjustable! So I now have one end at 68 cm and the other end at 88cm high.

Ignore the mess :) It's still not quite enough slant but it does help a lot. Trouble is that I think any more than that might put too much pressure on the front legs. If I decide to do more working big I may have to make a proper hinged / tiltable work surface or something. The architects ones you can buy don't seem to be big enough and are rather expensive in many cases. Has anyone else had this issue, or is it just me?!

Another project on a slow burner inspired from a trip last year is one that could lead to many creative projects... In December last year my husband and I had a lovely week in Yorkshire. We hired a little cottage at the edge of a woodland. An hour walk through the woodland came out on a wonderful beach with really big colourful pebbles - indigo blue, pinks, rusty oranges and reds, greens, greys, yellows, all sorts. Plus loads of really interesting mustardy coloured seaweed. I could have spent all day wandering on that beach picking things up and putting them down. Fascinating shapes, colours, textures and patterns, and lots of the pebbles were huge, way bigger than my size 8 walking boots! But after about an hour and a half my husband declared that it was too cold and most definitely time for the pub! Happily that was just a short stroll back up through the woods where we found a lovely open fire, and great home cooked food :)

Anyway, as always I took about a million photos and felt my creative brain tingling!

Oh, and just because they are very cute and could make a nice felt picture one day, here are the seals at Ravenscar down the road from where we were staying

I carded up a couple of test batts to make into prefelts or samples reflecting some of the colours at the beach.  I picked out some of the obvious colours and then some of the less featured colours and magnified them.

I felted both batts quite loosely to give me plenty of options in how I might want to use them later. I'm not sure what my plans are for these yet, more to come later.

I thought it might be effective to cut out some pebble shapes from the felt to use in further work so I cut out a couple of rough stencils just to see.....  Yes, I quite like it, this needs further exploration! :)

I've got so many projects on the go or waiting to get on the go! I still haven't found a perfect way to organise and manage all of my ideas and projects but things filter through eventually and as long as there is regularly some creativity in the day, even if it is a bit chaotic, then that's the important thing!

Season's Greetings!

 

snowpeople diorama by rosiepink 2019

 

Season's Greetings to all readers of our blog!  We wish you Happy Holidays and a very Creative New Year.

Thank you to Bev for her free miniature stripey sock knitting pattern that was used in the snowpeople diorama above - you can find the pattern here

This year's Christmas image was made from handmade felt balls and miniature knitting and crochet - we hope it makes you smile :)

 

Colourscape in handmade felt

The fourth quarter challenge on The Felting and Fiber Forum is 'Colourscapes' - please pop over to The Felting and Fiber blog to see how our piece (above) was made and to see some close up photos of the felt.  

 

It's fun to look for colour in the grey days of November - here's some that we found in Farnham as we walked from the car park to The Maltings for the wonderful Christmas fair.  

Cityscapes - Still a (felting experiment) work in progress... - Part 2

 

Above: The whole cityscape so far plus a detail picture

Annie

This project isn't going quite as planned.  I ended up laying out a far more literal picture than I originally intended and on top of that the white Merino fibres that I used for the background layers didn't want to felt at all!  I think it may have been overprocessed or I was sent superwash by accident.  Either way it presented an interesting problemette.  

Despite not being what I planned I quite liked the layout and it has been a fun process so far.  I'm just looking at it as a big sketchbook page which may get more experimentation done on it or it might not.  It might get the scissors treatment.  It could be "finished" as it is but I would quite like to add the stitching idea that I showed in the previous post on top just to see what happens!

It's very long compared to it's height (approx 22cm by 125cm) and is quite stiff to roll up into the machine space so machine stitching might be tricky. Have toyed with the idea of sewing side on to the machine....hmmmm....

Anyway, despite all my ideas I ended up laying out like this...

But got carried away as always...

After felting close up it looked like this...

....arghhh! The white Merino fibres had failed to felt despite giving it a really good go.  Most of the fabrics hadn't attached properly and the white background had not felted either. 

So while it appeared to be "cooked" at a quick glace, any close inspection revealed that a lot of the fabrics were barely hanging on :( Very disappointing. I had tried for a long time to make it work, slowly and gently reheating and agitating but in the end I had to give up.

So I decided the only thing to do was to use the embellisher on it! I haven't got enough patience to do something this size with a hand needle and even though I risked "mashing it up" with the embellisher it was my preferred option. Happily it worked out OK.

I went from the back first to push the Merino up through the fabrics then back down on the front to flatten it and lose some of the white that had come through. 

However, some shapes stayed standing right out (like the yellow block below) while others disappeared too much...

Had I known I was going to be using the embellisher I would have layered more colour under some of the "buildings" etc so that loops of interesting colours would have poked through. I did get some of this effect with what I had laid out but not much. I supposed I could have just put it on the back but it was too late by the time I thought it through and it would have been a faff anyway!

Most of the best of the loops are on the back annoyingly!

Next I decided to cut round the edge to give some definition to some of the shapes and then I ironed it onto some iron-on stabiliser because it felt a bit flimsy round the edges.

Still it wasn't quite right. I felt like it was a bit pale in some places where a lot of white Merino had come through. What next??.....paint and ink!!  It had all gone wrong by now anyway so it was worth a go.

I added quite a lot of paint mostly in little details but also in some block shapes. I think it looks OK now, but it's hard to see in the photo. I tried to take a panorama photo but it was tricky to get it straight!

Here is a section up a bit closer:

and a section including what I like about feltmaking....an unplanned "river" that appeared...

...and an unplanned "bridge" :)

It's not exactly a fine work of art but it's been a great experiment and like a big "sketchbook page".  It could possibly do with some stitching on top to see what happens - this is not a minimal, less is more situation! But first I'll just let it sit on the pinboard for a while so I can think about it. Meantime I will make some more pieces and try different things. It's refreshing to have had a new subject to work on and it has thrown up some interesting problems and has generated a whole new load of ideas :)

 

Cityscapes - Procrastination, Research, Planning, Sketching - Part 1

Sketching with the sewing machine to try out ideas

Annie

The Felting & Fibre Forum's 3rd Quarter Challenge of "Cityscapes" initially presented me with a bit of an "arghhh" moment. I usually take inspiration from the seaside, countryside, flowers and other natural and organic lines and shapes so this would be a bit different!

So what to do? First of all, procrastinate. Obviously. Now mid September it's getting a bit late so time to start! I started by rummaging through my 1000s of photographs. We've been on lots of city breaks over the years so I figured that was a good place to begin.

I found various photos that I thought I could use but I also knew that I didn't want to be too literal in my interpretation.

Some of the photos I found that appealed to me for the challenge:

Trees in front of buildings in Paris: Trouble was that this could become a bit of a cop out as I might allow myself to focus on the tree! Maybe one for later.

Hong Kong skyline:  decided that these had the potential to just be too literal, so discarded for now. Might come back to this for shapes.

London skyline: same problem:

Hong Kong escalator:  I like this one of a central disappearing point - I like it because of the potential for the interesting star shape composition. Maybe.

Hong Kong bamboo:  bamboo is so strong it is used as scaffolding- it is incredible to see!  I like the patterns. Another possibility.

Also this one of some buildings, taken looking up from the pavement.  Quite an interesting view point:

After some consideration I decided to use the images I had seen for inspiration but would revert to my preferred method of using the shapes, colours and the essence of something with a bit of imagination thrown in. I needed to do something to help me get going, even if I would discard it later. I picked a folder of photos from Paris and just quickly flicked through the photos picking a shape from each one and scribbling it in pencil in my sketchbook.... Zebra stripes, road signs, fencing, traffic lights, chevrons, street lights, topiary etc.  Trying to get the lines and shapes in abstract form, not worrying about portraying a "city" as such.

Then I coloured it in a bit and outlined some shapes, then started using my viewfinder and cutting it up into squares:

Then I assembled the squares and stuck them on a new page.

I still wasn't sure where I was going but I liked the idea of having simple colours and motifs in squares so I thought I would head in that direction. I thought a bunch of generic city abstracts would be more fun, and easier if I'm honest.

So next I looked through some of my felt samples to see what sort of techniques and materials would work well that I had used before. I found this sort of collage piece that I thought would work well if I used squares of fabric for various blocky city shapes:

and then this one which I think was supposed to be fields and sky which I turned upside down and could almost pass as a city running along a river,  if I added some stitching...

and some ideas for stitching:

and this one with printed circles on that could work for all sorts of things in cities, maybe a city ferris wheel or road signs or lights.

I played about with some more very quick sketching using the Hong Kong photos and decided I still liked the idea of squares and rectangles with motifs and small captures of passages from the city:

But suddenly! I was looking at more samples I had made previously and found this and caught a curve ball:

You might think I'm crazy but I decided that it looked a bit like a skyline, only an exciting imaginary one with unrealistic silhouettes and quirky buildings. So for now I've decided that I'm going to stick with pursuing that. It feels like it might be fun, and I can always try something else if it's rubbish!  

I've set up my table with a plan to lay out a piece of felt that is very long compared to it's height, using the above idea as a reference starting point. I can see it in my mind's eye. However, sometimes it works out, sometimes it just doesn't! So I'll give it a go but could end back with the squares and patterns :)  I might do that at some point anyway as I was enjoying the process.

I've dug out some fabrics, odds n ends and my trusty box of scraps:

I've done a couple of free motion embroidery sketches on the sewing machine to get a feel for how the stitching that will embellish the felt might look. I decided to do what I know and treated it like a row of flowers only in sort of building shapes! I used one continuous line of stitch and went fast. Then I went back to the start and did another continuous line over the first adding extra shapes.  So I think it looks city-ish but abstract and a bit quirky.

So far I've quite literally been around the houses (and various other buildings!) to come up with a plan, but hopefully I'm getting somewhere!

 

 

 

 

Book Review: First Time Felting by Ruth Lane

Ruth Lane has already published a successful felting book 'The Complete Photo Guide to Felting'.  It's a well-written comprehensive guide to felting and the text is supported by over 800 photos.

'First Time Felting' by Ruth Lane is a compilation of all the essential information from 'The Complete Photo Guide to Felting' and is aimed at absolute beginners that just want to start felting with minimal outlay on materials and equipment.

'First Time Felting' is well presented with uncluttered pages, making the text and photos easy to read and understand. The book covers Needle, Wet and Nuno Felting and the projects in the book are achievable by absolute beginners.

It is available in the UK here or in the US here.

Playing, Sketching, Experimenting

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Using shells as inspiration for a felt experiment

Annie

We had a blissful few days in Cornwall recently at a lovely quiet hotel right by a secluded beach.

I don't like hot sunny weather, I prefer colder days often with a nice drop of rain. Cosy!  So I was delighted when we only had one sunny day and the other two were overcast and a bit rainy - perfect for my favourite pastime of wandering up and down the beach picking up and putting down every shell and pebble and interesting bit of string or other debris!

That is my happy place.  A few hours on my own, just the sound of the waves and a treasure trove of bits n bobs from the sea.

I found there was a huge patch of these shells

I'm not sure what they are but there were lots of sizes and interesting colours.  Many of them had been worn away creating interesting wobbly circular shapes.  I have to admit I stole a few but I will set them free one day back to the beach.

Circles are one of my favourite motifs in design, and a wobbly, slightly oval one adds a bit of interest.

I decided to make a sample to capture the moment so I can stick it on my pinboard for future reference.  So many of my ideas and photos go unrealised so I'm pleased I did this one, I think it has potential.  Well, not necessarily as it is but I like some of the passages in it.  Also during the making I realised I like it better for various reasons at different stages.

I made it from a fine base of merino fibres then used layers of circles cut from scrim for the first layer then fine prefelts for the rest of the layers.  As always, no idea when to stop so I got layering happy.

The effect was different with every layer.

I also like to crop pieces in several ways to find new compositions:

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While I had the prefelts out I decided to make another piece of felt this time for trying out a new piece of fabric (an old top!) and also to have another piece to cut up to use for making cards or small pictures. I realised halfway through that it was unintentionally looking a little bit like a harbour - must have had images on my brain from Cornwall!  I like the white thread and the bubbly fabric:

I love to get the view finders out and crop pieces out as they always seem more interesting than the bigger piece.  Unplanned passages that become something completely new.

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As well as "sketching" with felt I'm also rediscovering the joy of sketching both on the sewing machine and with pens in a sketchbook.  I seem to go in phases with this but it is something that I know to be valuable to both my sanity and my creative process.  

Just some quick 5-10 minute machine stitched sketches can really set me up for the day...

Or a half hour doodle with felt tips.  The escape is a joy.

I'm fiddling about with small things at the moment partly because my table is covered in this 120cm x 120cm "thing":

I had been wanting to try a massive piece of felt for a while, so back in June I laid out a white square then over a few days added some colours and some yarn thinking that a splotchy background would be easier to work into than a big blank white "page".  However, I keep changing my mind about what to "draw" so it's just been sat there, in the way! I started off with the thought of a big messy vase of flowers but since then I've imagined up all sorts of other things, mainly just big patterns with random geometric shapes in all sorts of colourways.  One day it will happen, but for now it's like a roundabout in the middle of my workroom!