Sweet Little Bag

A small wet felted bag, with added beads and i-cord shoulder strap.

Sweet

Made with 60% merino and 40% hemp, the fabric is very sturdy.  Perfect for a bag.  The straps are made by knitting a 4 stitch i-cord, from hand spun merino/hemp fibre (same as bag).

 A small prefelt heart is placed under the top flap.

Prefelt squares in dark brown, and yarns also decorate both sides.

         Beads are sewn to the lid and to the point of connection for the i-cord strap.

                                 and here is a peek at the layout of the back and flap top.

Gallery Photos

I wanted to place all my favourite art felt in one place.... so enjoy!  Click on Gallery Photos title to see the whole lot!                                                           

 

 Monarch Butterfly Coat, in 2 wearable art shows, and SOLD

Art Gallery of Burlington - recipient of best non-woven entry. Juried Show. SOLD

This photo has me standing beside the green apples, made in felt with beads and embroidery.  The other pieces are different artists as part of the Niagara Region fruit belt exhibit.   On permanent display in Campbell East building of Niagara Region, Schmon Parkway, St. Catharines.

 This one is "Fractured Falls", a large multiple canvas work, depicting a simpler time before instant gratification and stimulation overload of the commercial segment of the Falls.

 Here is a sneak peek at the next work in progress....  wearable art indeed!

New art project and Workshop Photos

Workshops at the Fibre Garden are in full swing, with almost every weekend and some Friday afternoon sessions filling up fast. So I thought I should take a moment to pop up some photos of what we have been doing.
First photo is a peek at my next art gallery project. It involves a big rusty chain, so after a few test runs, here we are!  Six feet and eleven links of merino wool and steel... yes, steel, as in steel wool, actually felted INTO the wool.  It looked grey against the natural white merino, but as it got quite wet during felting (and I left it wrapped in plastic for two days so it would stay wet a while), it rusted quite well, and the rusty water dyed the other areas. Not much pure white let now.

 The rest of the photos are workshop results.  You can see scarves and hats and a teapot cozy.  Nice work from my wonderful students.  Many are starting to felt at home, so the joy is spreading and I could not be more pleased!

Nuno felt, wet felt hat. Tutorial

I remembered to take photos of my latest hat!  Here we go

Starting with a plastic resist, I placed fibre over the edges in all directions, using black merino for the bottom half and medium natural merino for the top. Under the black bottom half I placed some black silk chiffon with gold embroidery (from a vintage sari I had in my stash).  This fabric was placed face down next to the resist, then covered with the black merino top.

When covered with two fairly thin and even layers of merino, I added some fabric (black chiffon with gold embroidery) and some prefelt squares and some black roving and white silk.

After wetting and flipping, the over the edge fibre is folded onto the resist and the second side worked like the first.  Notice the black fabric from the first side is smoothed onto this side, so that it will run from one side of the hat to the other.

Here it is all tucked in and wet.  Now it is rolled up and worked for a while until sturdy enough to full to size in hot, soapy water.  After cutting out the resist, I take time to shrink and stretch and shrink and stretch, to make the hat round where it was flat.  Stretching involves shaping over the hat forms and head forms I have.  (and trying on my head too)

Pins are used to hold the creases until drying is completed.    You can see how the silk embroidered fabric details the brim when it is flipped up.  I cut a cool and asymmetric shape in the brim and put a few pleats there. 

Seamless Coat

My first attempt at making a coat all in one piece with a giant resist.  The first photo shows the resist taped to the wall behind the finished coat.  I made separate pockets, and sewed them on after fulling and drying, and the collar was made to the prefelt stage and sewed on the prefelted coat, then finished through the fulling stage as one.

 Here is the front of the coat with the right front over the left front (thin plastic keeps the sides from sticking together. You can see how it is almost too big for my table!

 Photo of the back ....

 The only thing I would do differently next time is make the sleeve longer.  I would like to have the option of cuffing the end. 

I have a new driver, and it needed a new golf club cover....  So I decided to make a felted  parrot like my sweet little Aspen (photo below)

 The golf club cover was made using a parrot shaped resist, and corriedale wool in two shades of blue and a pale pink.  The "sock" part is the left over wool, hand spun, two plied and knit to match.  The first photo shows the new cover next to the original Wood Hoods on my clubs.  The knit pattern is available for free on my other blog HERE.

The second photo gives you a look at my ancient Eeyore club cover and my cute little crocheted beaver cover (on a utility wood). The beaver pattern is my own, but I don't know how to write crochet patterns.  Sorry about that.

Village at Sunset Art Coat

 It started with a sketch, of a large coat, that could be mounted to the wall with the fronts open to the back to display all the details in a wall mounted art coat.  It also needed to be totally wearable.

Then I set out to make lots of "pre-nuno-felt"... meaning I laid many beds of merino wool roving, covered with fine silk chiffon fabric in many bright colours, sourced from vintage saris.  I worked them until the nuno felt was partially felted, but not near hard felted or shrunk at all....  Then I cut house shapes, and roofs, and windows and doors.  The village was placed on another bed of merino in the form of a wool batt, and the sky, sunset and evening sky were all worked.  The piece was quite huge, big enough to work as the front and back of the coat, from bottom edge to neck.

 Here is a close up of a couple of the houses... after fully felting.

And some of the machine free style stitching to add details to the windows and doors.

The last photo is the completed coat (still needing the detailed top stitching).  You can see that I have added black sleeves with white stars, and just catch a bit of the collar that is black and curly locks in blue.

More photos to follow, after all the stitching is done, hopefully displayed on the wall, and displayed as fashionable wearable art.