rosiepink

Abstract Felting and Stitching - Suprematist Style

Lyn

This quarter's challenge from Zed on the Felting and Fiber Forum is to make a piece of felt in the style of 'Suprematism'.

No, I hadn't heard of that style of art before either!  So I 'googled' and 'youtubed' but I still don't really understand it. 

However, it seems to be all about placing simple shapes of various colours and textures into a pleasing arrangement!

For my texture and colour I used some of Annie's hand-dyed scrim - I made 5 pieces of nuno felt by placing dyed scrim onto similar coloured merino wool from which to cut the shapes I wanted.

I chose to make the background from white merino wool so that it looked like an artist's stretched canvas.  I carefully placed the shapes, then even more carefully I began the felting process from the reverse side - I hoped that this would preserve the arrangement.

I only rubbed the wool fibres so the felt is still 'soft' but it's firm enough for a piece of art, and the finished size is approx 40 x 26cm (16"x 10").

Some of the shapes went a little wonky - such is the nature of felting - but after a bit of black stitching I'm happy with the result!

 

handmade felt covered pocket-size journals

nuno-felt covered pocket journal      

Lyn

Annie bought a little pocket journal, shown below, at Bovey Tracey Craft Fair in June.  It was made by Louise Cottey (Woven Textiles) and it's delightful!

The covers are made from handwoven material wrapped around boards and inside is a concertina of thick drawing paper. I ooo-ed and ahh-ed over it and I was disappointed when Annie failed to offer it to me!  So I decided to make one for myself.

For the covering, I made a thin piece of nuno felt using two fine layers of hand-blended merino wool from three colours (mustard, gold and spring green) and I topped it with a piece of material cut from an old blouse that was sourced from my favourite fabric shop a.k.a. the charity shop.

I cut two rectangles of white mountboard 10cm x 8cm for the covers ... then I hit a problem.  The thin felt was too thick to fold around the board!  So, using PVA glue, I covered the boards with the nuno felt then trimmed the edges.  I made the raw edges firm with watered down PVA glue.

Shown below are the two covers and a close-up of the lovely texture achieved with the nuno-felt.

To make the inside, I cut two long strips from an A2 size artist's watercolour pad (160gsm).  The strips were cut to 9cm wide to allow for the covers to overhang the paper.  Then I scored each strip at 7cm intervals to make neat concertina folds as shown below.  A special scoring tool isn't necessary - the back of a dinner knife will do just as well.

To join the two strips of paper together, I applied double-sided tape between sides 'A' and 'B' as shown below...

...then I stuck the first and last 'pages' of the concertina to the mountboard covers using double-sided tape.

To finish, I made a cord from 2 lengths of fancy embroidery silk.  Here's a good tutorial for making cords from Textile Arts Now blog.

I'm very pleased with my journal but I wanted to make another without the mountboard edges showing, so I cut two rectangles of felt 9cmx7cm, then using an iron-on adhesive (like 'Heat 'n' Bond'), I stuck each one to a piece of very thin poly/cotton material that would be easy to wrap around the mountboard.

The felt has a scrim base, two very fine layers of white merino and silk tops.  The photo below shows one piece of felt stuck to a piece of thin poly/cotton material.

I used turquoise thread to apply free-motion stitching to them both and I used an embroidery hoop to hold the poly/cotton taut to avoid wrinkles. Then I placed the mountboard underneath each piece of felt so that the felt was central - you can see how thin the poly/cotton is because my ironing board cover is easily seen through it!  

I secured the sides of the poly/cotton onto the backs of the mountboard with double-sided tape, but I left the corners free. 

One by one I pulled the corners taut then ironed them flat - carefully avoiding any contact between the sticky tape and the soleplate of the iron!

I covered the untidiness on the back of the mountboard with pieces of thick stabiliser (as used for making pelmets) but thick card would have worked as well, then I stuck the covers to each end of the paper concertina.  

And here's the finished journal with its handmade silk cord.

 

A mixed bag of experiments...just seeing where it goes!

Felted scape made from long neglected batts once destined to be a skein of yarn!

 

Annie

 

I've been making more prefelts because I think it's nice to have a selection of ready made pieces to hand rather than having to make them all at once when I need them.  

 

I really liked making the fine cloudy pieces last time because they are so quick and easy to do, so I made a couple more of those and then decided to go bigger...  I found some old batts that I'd carded a while back that i didn't spin and thought they'd be perfect to use. They had become a bit matted and I couldn't throw them away!  So I ripped them up into pieces and pulled the pieces out to make a big piece of holey, see through prefelt, but as I was laying it out a sort of landscape / seascape started to appear, so I let it go that way.  I like making felt like this because it is so quick.  It works well as it is or for layering up in to new felt pieces, and gives a nice effect when needle felted or run through the embellisher with a cotton or silk layer.  

 

Laying out the pulled apart batts

 

 

Above is the full piece (it's approx 80cm square) and I'm not sure what will become of it yet but I had a little play with some apertures and I think that although it's quite nice the size it is it might be quite good to cut some smaller pieces from it.  I always want to take the scissors to things!  I thought these 3 crops looked quite good.  Can't decide whether to cut it up or not yet.

 

 

 

At the moment the results of this method of felting feels a bit too grown up and serious so I want to find ways to liven it up or make it a bit more fun.  Maybe some simple bright long stitches, or some tiny stitched details hidden away.  Don't know yet. 

 

I love feltmaking and textiles, I also love to play with paint and paper sometimes. Feltmaking and all things fibre are definitely the thing that I enjoy the most but sometimes I do envy the freedom with which painters and collage artists can layer, change, cover up, sprinkle, dot, spray and dash their work to give such a wide array of pleasing effects, often very quickly.  There is a crispness and a softness, a dark and light achieved with printing and layering paint and collage which is hard to achieve with fibres, so I see it as a challenge and a joy to keep on experimenting and playing with fibres to achieve different effects and combinations and ideas. 

 

Here is what I have started using the samples and prefelts from last time - all just felted with inclusions, no stitching as yet.  Not too much thought or specific design just functional really, but some of them came out well.  I like the blue yarn circle and the layered flower.

 

 

 

 

 

Some of them turned out great, some not so great.   These were all made by layering on to a fine prefelt backing cut into squares, either yellow, white or pink.  I think I'll also try laying down dry fibres, putting all the bits on (maybe in a large sheet) then cutting it up to create the squares.  That would help to keep the colours themed, but different detail in each one.  I was going to trim the edges but I think I like the fibre-y edges in this case.

 

Another thing I tried was using the fine cloudy felt to stitch into then add fabric and silk and use the embellisher on it.

 

 

 

 

 

I think the back was more effective than the front!

 

 

I quite like the displays of the samples as a series of arrangements of squares - it would be a nice way to make work and mount it - it's a way of working small to work big if you want to.  To tie the squares together they could be themed.  You could choose to create perhaps flowers (favourite subject!) - with just the colours, the close up detail, the far away view or abstract.  This is something else to put on the list to think about! :)

Japanese Crane - handmade felt and stitch

Lyn

I've been enjoying the summer holidays and making the most of the garden, but that does mean I haven't spent a lot of time indoors playing with fibres!

However, I can't resist the challenges set by The Felting and Fiber Forum and this quarter the challenge is to make something inspired by Japanese Edo Art.

I searched the internet for examples of this art and I saw some very complicated paintings but also some simple ones often featuring Japanese Red Headed Cranes.

My first planning-drawing was just of a crane, but I wasn't happy with it because it was static and pictures need to tell a 'story', so I changed his posture and added the fish!  

The simple paintings from the Edo Art period have uncluttered backgrounds, so I chose to make an abstract one with yellow and blue yarns felted into off-white merino wool.  I used bright-white merino wool for the crane's body so that it stood out from the background. The picture is mostly wet-felted but I used needle felting to add some details.

He's about 26cm (10") tall and needs a frame.  I think it will have to be a very slim and simple black wooden one to fit in with the Japanese art style.

 

 

Felt Bead Vase Hangers and a Bottle Beachscape

We love having cut flowers indoors but usually only have them on occasions of celebration or illness, so most of the time our vases just sit there looking a tad boring.

Can't have that can we? So we prettied them up a bit!  

We made 40 tiny beads using the finger and thumb method - take just a few fibres of merino wool, mess them up between your fingers, then dry-roll the fibres between thumb and fingertips until it looks like a bead.

Then dip it into some warm water, made soapy with a little dish-soap, and continue rolling it between thumb, fingertips and palm until it's firm but with a little give so that you can push a needle through easily. Leave them in a warm place to dry.

They were then strung onto 180cm (6 feet) of florist's wire, gauge 0.5mm (0.02"), using a needle with an eye large enough to take the wire.

The beads were randomly distributed along the length of the wire, then the wire was wound, alternately over three or four fingers, into a coil then the ends were twisted together and a hook was formed.

The coil slips easily on and off the neck of the vase... 

...and is kept in place with the hook.

A chunky version, with a lot less wire and bigger felt beads, looks good on a glass vase (it's actually a nice whisky bottle!). The felt beads were made as shown in our free tutorial but as we had to use a large needle for the florist's wire, pliers were needed to push and pull the needle through the felt beads.

It's not easy to stop 'playing' when the wool is out, so we made some more felt beads in seascape colours: yellows for sand; pink for seashells; greens for sea and blues for sky.  Then we stripped the glass vase of its pretty hanger and made it into a bottle beachscape.

There are so many ways to decorate with felt beads - cushions, door handles, seasonal garlands, lampshades, baskets....we're eyeing up all the things in our houses now!

 

 

Prepping Prefelts and Knitting Overspun Yarn for Felting

 

Annie

 

In the same way that art journalers make stacks of colourful painted and mixed media papers to use in collage in their journals, I like to do the same for feltmaking when i get time.  The random colours and patterns of the papers really make something special when they are torn and painted over and that works in feltmaking too when pieces are cut up, pulled apart and stitched over.  I've made quite a few felt "collage papers" this week - fairly loose prefelts so they are quite soft and fluffy and delicate but will (hopefully!) look good when felted into new works.

 

The great thing about this is unless you have a specific final piece in mind you can just pick any colours and any fabrics and make anything you fancy.  You don't have to worry about the outcome, in the same way as if you were doodling in a sketchbook, it's about the process, and making supplies and ideas to feed into more work. A couple of them do actually look quite landscapey in an abstract way just as they are (gotta love an accidental landscape!) and some are just colours for cutting up and felting in to give straight edges or layering of colours.

 

 

 

 

 

The photo above shows the laying out of the fibres in progress.  I laid some out in a more traditional horizontal / vertical layers way, and some I laid out using "clouds" of fibres to give variation in thickness and also to leave holes and really thin bits.  It still holds together OK because the fibres are all crisscrossed when pulled out into "clouds" of fibres.

 

I aim to use some of these if I ever get round to creating my interpretation of some of my coastal holiday photos.  Watch this space!  

 

I like to do anything fibre related and you might have previously seen my handspinning attempts.  Well I went for another day of spinning with the lovely ladies of Sway on Sunday and one of the ladies had been given a llama fleece - it was lovely and soft and a beautiful grey colour.  It did look like there was an actual llama sleeping in the corner until you got up close.  I had a go at spinning a few handfuls of the unwashed unprepared fleece and it comes up lovely.  I would like a scarf or jumper made from it.  Unfortunately I only made a small sample of yarn but it is something I will look out for.  I did spin some other bits n bobs including some shetland merino mix.  I also knitted up a sample (in the scruffiest worst knitting ever!) of some multicoloured yarn I spun just trying out various things - it came up sort of thick and thin and had a few odd bits of this n that in it, like silk strands and cotton and there might even be some banana fibre in there! 

 

I told my husband it was the first section of arm for a jumper I was knitting for him - he smiled politely enough but I could see he was worried!  Luckily for him it's just a test piece - I thought I'd knit it, then block it then the next thing is to wash it to see what happens.  I might then cut it up and felt it in to something else if it is not too felted in itself.

 

I tried to knit it straight from the skein but as it was too overspun for unplied yarn, it was like knitting with a long wriggly worm so I wrapped it around a piece of interfacing to stop it tangling up.  It occurred to me that it looked like a huge woolly bead and then that got me thinking about more ideas!  I should finish the little samples from my last post first though really.....

The Magic of Feltmaking

Annie

One of the things I love about flat felting is that even if you approach it really randomly, say when trying out new fibres or fabrics or other inclusions, you quite often end up with something that you can turn into something else like a small picture, greeting card or an interesting bit to chop up and use in the next picture.  The picture above of a cliff top is just a tiny piece cut from a bigger sample that was not intended to be anything except a sample which included using silk under merino.

I hacked together a little wooden frame that I painted white. My woodworking skills are really lacking  - although it probably didn't help that I tried to saw the bits up balanced on the end of my sewing table rather than finding a proper bench or something to hold the wood with. It's quite sweet though I think and you gotta try these things!

I haven't made many big pieces recently but instead I've been enjoying just sampling and experimenting and collecting my thoughts. Probably I have collected too many thoughts (and photographs and sketches and scraps of paper!) but better to have too many than not enough!

I got my rotary cutter out and chopped some shapes from some of the pieces of felt that I had made for various reasons, some that had been to try out fabrics and some just to see what happened. I used a homemade cardboard viewfinder (basically two right angles of white card that you can hold close together or further apart to get a bigger or smaller aperture) to pick out interesting bits. I found several sections from odd pieces that started off as samples with no plan, that could now either be used as they are, maybe as little landscapes in a tiny frame or on a greeting card, or cut up or stitched for further experimentation.  Maybe they are beach scenes, flower pictures, or perhaps backgrounds for stitching practice:

 

Some of them I left whole to play with. Like this bit...

...that I decided looked like a forest of tall trees.  I added lichen and moss with stitching but I haven't finished with it yet (possibly I'll push it with machine embroidery to see what happens).  In this sample I was testing out some new strange yarn and as it looked like a forest of tall thin trees I thought I'd go with that in a sort of abstract way. I've taken lots of photos over the last few years of straight tall trees in the New Forest so they must have been on my mind when I looked at it. I love the colours of all the moss and lichen that spreads across the whole forest. It's impossible to count all of the greens and yellows. I especially love the more acidic ones as they really make a scene or a picture pop.

Maybe this one could be a riverbank? This one I left whole because I liked the fabric hanging off the bottom. I also really like the thin white felt with a hard edge but that is also slightly see through. I might make a big sheet of that for adding highlights and structure to pictures. I had only been trying out ideas like seeing what the dark blue open weave scarf that I had stitched chunky yarn into would turn out like and also if the tropical print fabric from an old top would felt in well.

While stitching the trees picture I remembered how effective couching can be and remembered I had scribbled a page in my sketchbook recently to capture some ideas about different ways to couch. I will have to sample some of those soon. I find hand sewing really relaxing once I let myself get into it.

In the bigger book behind I'd been practicing taking the pen for a walk and at the same time practicing making imaginary flowers with a single pen line as far as possible which is useful once you get on the sewing machine. I wish I would do more in sketchbooks, it's a great way of getting ideas down quickly for textiles. I can't always get ideas down fast enough in fibres.

I recently went on a beginners bookbinding day workshop and now of course I want to make my own sketchbooks / scrapbooks! I haven't progressed with organising my textiles scrapbook yet, but it will come when the time is right.

I want to use some of the photos I've taken over the years to feed into my work too. Periodically I attempt to sort out my digital life although it always seems to be a losing battle! However, I'm currently embarking on another go at it! Has anyone else got thousands of photos of flowers, bits of trees, railings, sea gulls, beaches, beach huts, various interesting looking odds and ends and patterns that they took with the intention of using in their textiles work? My friends have finally got used to turning round to see me still listening to them but crouched down taking a photo of a leaf on the pavement or pondering the sky and looking at the shapes in the clouds or the cover of the trees. One of them recommended a book recently for organising and focusing a creative mind. Maybe I should take the hint! :)

Celtic Spiral Felted Pod

Lyn

My thanks to Rosemary (Tess DB) on the WetCanvas Forum for demonstrating how to draw a quadruple Celtic spiral.

Using her pattern, I placed wool yarn onto both sides of my flat, circular resist before adding the layers of white wool, and the quadruple spiral can clearly be seen on the bottom of the pod ...

... and on the top of the pod, even though I cut out the middle bit during the making ...

 

... but alas, the quadruple spiral isn't visible from the traditional side view of the pod :( 

Still, never mind, I do enjoy making pods and there are lots more decorative ideas to try I'm sure! 

 

'Creating Felt Artwork' (felting & stitching) - now available in paperback!

Click here to find out more :)

Exciting news!  Since we produced our e-book, we've had a lot of requests for a paperback version of 'Creating Felt Artwork' and we're pleased to say that we've found a viable way to produce a printed version with Amazon's Createspace 'print on demand' service. Yay!

Here are some pics of the inside:  

 

We know it's the same as the PDF version (which has been slightly updated), and even though we published it ourselves, it's still an actual real book and we are quite excited about it!

Click here to find out more :)

We've had so much great feedback about our original e-book version over the years so it's good to be able to offer it in paperback.  To everyone who reads our blog and has supported us so far - thank you! :)

A mixed bag of copper & felt flowers, beachy scenes & handspun yarn - variety is good! :)

Annie

I've been enjoying making new craft supplies from deconstructing old things. The flowers in the little picture above are made from coppery bits from an old necklace that had seen better days and the edging is some more copper wire that I rescued from the electricians when they were here last week. Waste not, want not!

For the background I started with a piece of my handmade felt that I've clearly attacked before:

Then I machine stitched on some background stems before adding the jewellery bits and some beads and hand stitches. It's only about a 6cm square but I like making tiny pictures as they are quick and easy to experiment with. It means I can actually finish something in a couple of hours and it's in less danger of becoming an Unfinished Project!

I've also taken to stripping colourful strands of fibre from the fabric samples I had left from years ago to re-use in feltmaking, as many of them are too thick to use as they are but are interesting when deconstructed, and have also found that cutting thin pieces from the arms of a close knit (ruined) cardi and stretching it out produces great lengths of interesting pieces to felt in, not individual strands of yarn but a highly textured, springy cord of 3 or 4 strands. I'll have a go at felting it in and see what happens. It's good to have a play!

  

The pieces of cardi might look good just roughly stitched on too - I auditioned it for the border of my pic but went with the copper wire in the end:

Although there is an abundance of new craft supplies on offer - of which I do buy many! - there is something satisfying about making something new using something old. It adds to the character of the piece too. I probably wouldn't have bought slightly rusty flower beads from a craft shop but somehow getting the pliers out and dismantling an old necklace made me look at it differently.

I've got all sorts in my pile of things to try and also lots of bits on the go that I haven't finished in a kind of "pending further inspiration" pile. Here are some photos of little bits that I started making from felting my handspun yarn on a base of Merino fibres, to which I added scrim and other bits with the embellisher and felting needle:

I love the effect of the fibres but haven't quite decided what to do with it all yet. Some of them do look wonderfully beachy with all of the colourful bits that look like nets and ropes etc that you find washed up. I was rummaging in the pending pile because I've just been on another lovely spinning day and it reminded me what I had started after the last session, and that I hadn't posted since then!

This time I made a little skein of yarn from random odds and ends that I gathered together that morning and took with me. It was great fun. I had no plans for colours or anything I just wanted to chuck in as much stuff as possible to see what happened, and be happy as long as it held together! Here's what I made:

I tried to use some really short staple dyed green Shetland wool to start with and I ended up with lots of little broken bits until I carded it with some longer odds n ends like lime dyed silk and other longer wool fibres and then I ended up with a knobbly random yarn that I plied with a mainly Merino yarn. It's only a tiny skein of about 20 metres but it was fun to make, and it's plenty for using in felting. Productivity wasn't high but we had other things to do too like scoff cake and natter a lot! :)