Design progress

A new love of mine is felt work.  I'm not giving up needlework and textile work to become a felter, but I do see so many possibilities of using felt in creative embroidery.It's soft, pliable, forgiving, colourful and wonderfully inspiring.  I have my spurts of enthusiasm when I spend a day or two making felt, then put it aside until inspiration hits me in the face, which it has done recently. 

This aqua/lilac piece is something I did a few years ago, but have only just mounted it.  Its only about 6cm square and mounted on black trigger cloth with some hand stitching and sequins and beads for embellishment.  At first I was going to insert it into a card for a birthday or such but then decided it would be nicer mounted as a small art piece.

These three designs are the beginning of a whole range of idea's I have for new design work which will appear soon on my website, and are an introduction to expanding design ideas.  

Currently we're in the middle of building a house, and my studio is smack bang in the middle of the construction site, so progress in the studio is slow at the moment, but bear with me - I'm working slowly in the background and intend to have new kits and classes ready to go in the new year.

Paper casts and tiny Ted

I've spent the past two evenings making paper casts for some textile work, and must say its quite therapeutic in front of the tele dabbing bits of paper with a paint brush and water.  These are the first lot I made, and being impatient for them to dry, I took them off their moulds and then they dried all buckled .... lesson learnt in what NOT to do!!

These ones are last nights batch drying slowly.  You can see I raided the kitchen cupboards for anything that could be used for a mould - bottoms of plates, glasses, bowls, along with all the proper moulds you can buy nowadays.

I also used toilet paper as well as water soluble paper - cheaper, dries faster, and smells nice too.  Not sure how well it'll withstand the painting and waxing afterwards, though.

The base of this dessert plate made a great cast using the toilet paper, so I might have a go tonight using the w/s paper and then compare them.  The snowflakes was another attempt with the toilet paper.

So after I'd made those I was itching for something else to do, and found a half made Ted in my UFO bag, so got stuck in, literally, to finishing him.  He's made using the dry needle felting technique, just rolling up balls of wool and stab, stab, stabbing, building up areas, until you get a shape you want.

Okay, he's not the most handsome bear I've ever seen.  No matter how many attempts at making his face smiley and sweet, he ended up looking mean and scary, but he still looks like a bear, albeit one with a bad case of mumps and arm and leg joints that don't line up LOL!!  But he does have a hump and a tail.

I'm sure I can only get better with practice.  I've seen other techniques for doing this too, so might try them later on if I can withstand the stabbed fingers (watching tele whilst doing this could be reason why I stabbed myself so many times).  As happy as I am to finish him another attempt can wait a few months - I think it'll make a good winter craft, but when you're sitting in 40C heat the wool just sticks to your fingers and gets a bit frustrating, then to calm you down you go and get some chocolate and then that melts and gets on your bear and ...... you get the drift.

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Accessories

My set of accessories for Module 11 were a felted hat and woollen shawl.  I'd only ever made one hat before (remember the "brain" hat in a previous post ... or as some thought - a world globe on my head!!) and was a bit nervous about making another but I'm happier with Take 2.

This is my lovely daughter in law, Jess, modelling the accessories for me.

I based my design on Module 2 - Shape.  The requirement for that module was to find industrial shapes, and my favourite was this pile of sea containers. 

Which progressed into this collage .... I do like simplicity!

It took me ages to decide on a set of accessories, as I wanted something I could wear that was artistic and creative, without looking like a Zandra Rhodes look-alike.  I'm not one for outlandish fashion and wanted to make something that was going to be functional and not just an assessment piece that would be shelved after the course.

I found some lovely poly/wool fabric that had a nice drape and feel about it, and appliqued purple and green cotton and spandex fabrics to it, then machine stitched around the squares.

I made tassels in the same way for the edge of the shawl, but wish now I'd appliqued both sides of the tassels.

The hat wasn't as difficult as I'd expected and the shape came out more or less as I'd hoped.  The hardest part was machine stitching the applique pieces over the rounded shape ... a bit awkward.

I needed a model in a hurry to get my instructions typed up, so popped around to our sons house and caught Jess on the hop.  She was a rather reluctant model, but I think she was perfect.

If I were to make the articles again, I think next time I would try and felt the shawl myself, so that both items are made of the same material, but I'm not sure I could manage all that rolling of something so big.

Now I've got to wait 6 months until winter comes around again to be able to wear my pieces.

Felted hat

I had my second attempt at making a felt hat on the weekend.  The first one was so awful I wouldn't dare subject you to it ... this one was a vast improvement, but I know I'm not there yet.  One of my items of accessories for Module 9 is a cloche hat, so I needed to see if I could make one before I submitted my design ideas.

After 2 months of hunting through libraries and the internet I found a few varying ways of doing it, and purchased a foam hat mould to help me.  I sat dry needle felting for about 3 hours one night until I could hardly move my arms, then wet felted it over a rubber ball the following day.  I used a hank of space dyed wool and had the great idea of enhancing the hat with some hand stitching, but I think I've made it look like a brain !!!!!  Like I said .... still room for improvement, but its enough to submit my ideas in my design plan.

We've had another storm come through Perth.  We used to get more rain than we've had in the past few years, but now we seem to have dry months with very cold temperatures and then WHAM - a storm.  As usual there were patios found in neighbouring properties, tree's down, and garden debris everywhere, but luckily we managed to escape the worst, except for another downfall of hail.

It wasn't as severe as the March hail storm, thankfully, but made the day very, very cold.  In fact I heard it was the coldest July day on record.  Good days for sitting and stitching.

That said, we've decided to redecorate the kitchen/dining/lounge, so I'm off to strip wallpaper.  The stitching will have to wait a week or two.

Felt & Silk Paper

Thank you to everyone who sent lovely comments about my wall hanging - when you're riddled with self doubt its very uplifting to have positive feedback, so thank you !

I'm still working like mad on the paperwork side of the module and hope to get it all done by Wednesday so that I can go to Brisbane for the weekend and enjoy the Textile Fair over there (and not forgetting catching up with hubby).

All I have to do now is my samples and designs for the set of accessories.  I spent all day Sunday making silk paper and wool felt, which I hope to be able to use in my design. 

I like the pieces I've created, especially as I'd never made silk paper before.  Its much easier than felt making, but stinks! must be the textile medium I used ... might try a different brand next time.

I thought I had HUGE pieces of felt when I was making them, so its funny to see how small they are when finished, oh well, should be enough to try and work some ideas for the accessory. 

Not sure that I could tackle a wall hanging in felt ... I think you'd end up with arms like Arnold Schwarzenegger after all that rolling!!!