January Review

January was all about vessels and Textured Felt. At the Well Being centre a few weeks ago, we made coiled pots. Somehow I managed to delete the photos of the process, but you can see it in this blog post. This is how it looked after I finished felting/fulling at home:

You can see from the gap in the pencil roving where the edge of the circular resist was. There's a similar gap on the other side:

Fulling the pot caused migration/fuzziness. It's dulled the silk threads quite a bit, so I'll probably shave it when it's fully dry.

I was looking through my flickr photostream and came across some photos of Textured Felt I made ages ago. I wrote a blog post with some pics on The Felting and Fiber Studio site. And like I say at the end of that post, I also wrote a quick guide on how to make it and listed it on etsy. It's an updated/expanded version of the free tute on flickr, but in a handy PDF. I was inspired by the Textured Felt pics to try the technique for making a vessel.
I used all natural wools, animal fibres and embellishments. For the texture scraps between layers, I used some unravelled wool knitting. I don't know if it's 100% wool. I did two 'regular' thickness layers on each side and two 'half layers', basically 3 layers but split one into 2 for even shrinkage. I didn't put texture between the two 'half' layers. This is the top with a hole cut and the resist taken out:

This is what it looks like when I separate the layers to make it more 3D:

This is how the bottom looks 'flat':

And separated/3D:

I put lots of locks around the edges:

Here are some Bluefaced Leicester locks:

I finished the vessel off on my bead board, fulling it to firm it up. It still isn't quite dry in these photos, it took quite a few days until it was. Here's a photo of it with the balloon still in it:

I couldn't get really good photos of it, it was too bright near the window and the back was in lots of shadow, but here it is without the balloon:

Here's the bottom:

Here are a couple of photos of the side of it.

Fulling the vessel meant that some of the looser locks felted in more, there was also more fuzziness/migration like on the coiled vessel:

I put the vessel around a lightbulb, I like how this one looks

So far, February has been all about trying unusual embellishments, so I'll be blogging about that next time!

Happy New Year!

It's been pretty obvious to the two (three?!) of you who read my blog that I've had difficulty keeping up with it for quite a while now, like I mentioned in a blog post in June. I made a similar post on The Felting and Fiber Studio site in November, and if you read the comments, you'll see that I'm not alone! As I was stressing again this week about how much I've let slide, and worrying about how I'll even 'catch up', let alone stay on top of things, I thought I would start with a look back over the year like we do on the Studio site each year. But instead of making a couple of slide-shows of my work, like I did there, I thought I would pick one project from each month of the past year to share. And this made me realise that if I find it so hard to blog weekly, why don't I blog monthly instead? Seems obvious when you think about it doesn't it!?! I didn't make anything in January, but over the holiday break I tidied up the supplies from the class I do at the Well-Being Centre and in late Jan/early Feb I made lots of batts from all the odds and ends and matted bits of wool tops from the bottoms of boxes:

In March I made a couple of vessels, I used texturey wools on this one and left it to dry without anything inside to shape it and I liked the way it came out:

Having a 'play day' at the well-being centre one day in April, I made this piece using tubes of wool made by wrapping wool wisps around a kebab stick:

In May, I made a nuno felted piece for a challenge on the Studio site. This is one of my favourite photos from while I was making it, I thought it looked like a cow's stomach/tripe!

This is what the finished piece looked like held over a lightbulb:

In June I made a felted painting for a friend. I'd shown him some photos of paintings I'd done and he liked a few in this style:

Originally, I'd planned to do a painting on canvas for him, but the technique I'd used didn't transfer to canvas very well, so instead I thought I'd see how well the idea worked in felt. I have to say, it's one of my favourite pieces I've ever made!

I kind of got hooked on making felt pieces inspired by paintings, I used this painting too for inspiration:

And this is the felt piece I made:

In July, I made a kind of seascape felt piece:

And then used it to make a notebook cover:

In August, I made a few collage pieces for greetings cards, this is one of them:

I did a bit of needlefelting in September, this is a piece I made using various wools dyed with natural dyes:

This is a piece I made in October for another Studio Challenge, I combined wool tubes and twists with nuno felting:

I made a purple and black piece embellished with lots of undyed fibres, in November:

One of the last things I made last year was a case for my best friend's birthday. I made it in one piece over a resist and used silk to line it, I added a button and stitching before I gave it to him, but here it is when it had dried:

I'm grateful for anybody who ever takes the time to read the blog posts and I hope to blog a bit more frequently this year. I hope you have a fibre filled 2019! Happy New Year :)

Felt Bookcovers

I've made a few new felt book covers, recently. First, I made a large seascape in felt:

Then I made it into an A5 bookcover. This is the front:

And the back:

I had a look through my already made felt pieces and found one from a Felting and Fiber Studio challenge which I thought would make a nice A6 cover, so I cut that out:

There's quite a lot of viscose on the orangey yellow part so it has a nice sheen. This is the front:

Not quite so obvious in the photos is the texture near the bottom with silk noil and some cotton fibres. I think I used some dyed cotton nepps too. This is the back:

I'd been making this next notebook cover since January! I had a big clear up and tidied my offcuts, which led to planning the cover. I then sewed some of it in March, and finally finished it last week. Either can be the front or back, so this is side 1:

And side 2:

I used some hand dyed muslin for a backing/lining:

This is how it looks with the front and back opened out:

I still have my offcuts out and plan to make some collage shoulder bags, next.

Experimental Nuno Vessel

Over on the Felting and Fiber Studio site, we have Quarterly Challenges. The 2nd Quarter Challenge for this year was to use fabric as a surface design, and try a technique that you hadn't tried before. Ann made a point of saying I wasn't allowed to make a sample (I do that a lot?!), so I didn't, but it was more of a 'prototype' :) I wanted to combine using 'extreme nuno' that I'd been playing around with a lot, and vessels, so Ann's challenge gave me the push to try it.

I cut out a template, sort of bowl shaped, but not for any reason, I just wanted something big and not square. Then I started adding strips of white fabrics to it: synthetic chiffon, muslin, scrim and cotton gauze. I then added fine layers of Rambouillet. This photo shows it wet down and it's just started to felt:

Once the resist started to curl and I knew it was properly felted, I started to full it on bubble-wrap. It really puffed up!

I removed the resist and carried on fulling, I turned it the right side out, and realised I’d accidentally made a felted cow stomach!

I tested to see if it was fulled enough by inflating a balloon inside, then carried on fulling until I was happy with it. This isn’t the best photo, but you can see the shrinkage, compare it to the first photo - it started out the full height of the netting:

I rinsed it and left on a balloon to shape and dry. This is how it looked finished:

This is another side:

This is some nice ruffley chiffon on the bottom, between some Cotton Gauze and cotton scrim:

And, since the thought behind the idea was that it’d make an interesting lampshade, here it is on a lightbulb:

Close Up:

 And a different angle:

Even though it's just a prototype, I have used it on my little bedroom torch while I've been listening to music before going to sleep!