Recent Work

I mentioned recently that I'm doing a Craft Fair soon. It's this coming Sunday at Victoria Baths on Hathersage Road in Manchester. They also do guided tours that day, so if you're interested, have a look at their website.
In my post last time, I showed a faintly plaid felt piece which I'd started to make into a diary cover. Here is the finished cover:

I also mentioned a piece of silk I got for £3 a metre. I did manage to use it on a felt piece, but i haven't made it into a cover yet. It looked a bit nicer and brighter just before the final fulling, but I wanted to make sure it would stand up to years of handling:

I don't know if you remember a couple of pictures I posted as part of the Felting and Fiber Studio site's Jackson Pollock challenge from a bag I was working on, well, I never did get around to finishing the bag, and when I saw it recently, I thought I could cut it up and turn it into a nice sturdy diary cover. So, I did :)  This is the front:

And, this is the back:

I always forget just how long it takes to do those covers! Also, because I didn't have any coloured threads which I thought would be just right, I 'blended' my own. I took a strand each of Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue and Violet embroidery floss and made a 6 strand rainbow. I had to do that for each part I stitched, and I was starting to regret it by the end :) 

One of the things I wondered after the last fair was whether it was obvious that my stuff was actually handmade felt made from real wool. A lot of my stuff is well felted or nuno felt, so to anyone who doesn't know felt, it could just be commercial fabric I've bought. So I thought I would make some obviously wool natural pieces for book covers. They are made from lots of different breeds of wool and embellished with locks, some mohair boucle from Marilyn, some silk noil, and viscose and bamboo. This one has the most added embellishments:

I did actually use the same size template for these pieces, but with all the different wools and embellishments there was different shrinkage. For this piece, I tried to stick to wools which were more similar: Merino, Bluefaced Leicester, Finn and Corriedale, and there are less embellishments:

If I get chance before the fair, I'll upload the finished covers to ipernity or the forum.http://feltandfiberstudio.proboards.com/

Sewing and Bargains

I'm doing another Craft Fair at the beginning of November so I wanted to make a few diary covers. This usually involves my desk getting covered with embroidery threads, and the only exception this time was that I decided to tidy them up too. I made cardboard 'bobbins' for some of them and spent ages untangling and winding and then putting duplicate spares in a bag. Then a couple of days later I decided to clear some more drawers and spread the threads out a bit, make them even tideier and easy to choose. These are all the drawers:

One of the pieces I'm using for a book cover is a piece I made years ago. I wanted to see if I could make a subtle plaid design by laying out bold stripes of colours on my two layers, it was more subtle than I thought, but I like it. I've cut to size and sewn the inside pocket edges so far:

You might remember this next piece from when I tried some commercial pre-felt from Heidi Feathers. The silk hadn't attached in a couple of places so I added blanket stitch, then decided to add some more simple stitching in the blocks of colour. I'm still working on this, and have added a bit more since I took the photo:

I went in to Manchester city centre this week, which I don't often do, so made the most of it looking for bargains. I found a couple of elasticated summer dresses for £1 each so got them because I liked the pattern, they were only tiny though, so once I cut the top off, the bottom was a bit bigger than a pillow case, but well worth £1!

In the same shop (Primark) I treated myself to a 'scarf' because I liked the pattern, it's actually the size of a door!

I saw this scarf in a bargain shop and thought I'd see if it nuno felts well:

And, I couldn't go to town without a trip to Abakhan fabric shop, where I got some more braiding:

And probably the best bargain of the day, I found a roll of silk fabric, down from £10 a metre to £3, so I had to get some :)

Make Textured Textile Art by Stitching Into Nuno Felt

Over on The Felting and Fiber Studio today, we have a guest post by Lyn from rosiepink about stitching onto nuno felt and how she made this gorgeous work of art:

Felting And Fiber Studio 4th Quarter Challenge

Over on The Felting and Fiber Studio site, we have a challenge every quarter to give us some inspiration and get our creative juices flowing. This year, we have all been choosing artists. So far we have had Jackson Pollock, Stewart Stephenson and Claude Monet. You can see the challenge entries in the 2014 gallery here. It was my turn this quarter and I have chosen 'Land Art'. I was initially going to choose a specific artist for this challenge, but in the end I just couldn't choose just one, the whole 'movement' is so inspiring. In case you haven't heard of it, Land art - according to Wikipedia " is an art movement in which landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked. It is also an art form that is created in nature, using natural materials such as soil, rock (bed rock, boulders, stones), organic media (logs, branches, leaves), and water with introduced materials such as concrete, metal, asphalt, or mineral pigments. Sculptures are not placed in the landscape, rather, the landscape is the means of their creation." (i.e, not Christo)

There are so many inspirational artists, one I really like is Richard Shilling, a flickr search gives you lots of great photos, have a look at this link: https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=richard%20shilling  He has inspired others to create land art too, such as Colleen Proppe, who made the Leaf Flag in the photo above. Andy Goldsworthy is another name many people might recognise. Scott Robinson was inspired by him to make this Leaf art:

I discovered the work of Tom Hare while I was looking up land artists and sculptors, he does some gorgeous work. This is his website: http://www.tomhare.net/portfolio This is a photo of one of his willow sculptures, a Horse Chestnut breaking open, taken by Jodie Brodie:

Have a search on google for Land Art and Land Art Artists, I can guarantee you'll be inspired! Feel free to post your work on the forum, whether it's wet felted, needle felted, knitted, crocheted, woven, mixed media etc, as long as it features some kind of felt, fibre, or fabric, post it in the 4th Quarter Challenge thread: http://feltandfiberstudio.proboards.com/thread/1788/fourth-quarter-challenge-land-art  Have fun!