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Archive for the ‘Felting’ Category

A Two Meeting Day

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

This morning I attended the quarterly Columbia Fiberarts Guild meeting which included demos by four members and nice catered lunch. It is one of my favorite meetings of the year because we get to socialize and chat and share. In the afternoon, the SAQA area meeting met in the same place. It was almost meeting overload, but I do get energized when I spend time with other creative souls.

I am going to share some photos of the meeting today because I haven’t accomplished much except to unsew the bridges as I plan to start over with them.

This is Maris, our treasurer and felter, extraordinaire. Isn’t that a gorgeous piece of felted silk?

She did the bowls up above. Here is another shot.

Here are some other shots of her table.

Maris called this nebs. They are little loose pieces of wool that she adds to the felting.

Here she demonstrates how she makes a vessel by felting over a ball.

Carla makes amazing scrappy quilts by first stitching all of her scraps into a long strip. You can see a coil of sewn fabric on the table in front of her.

Betty demonstrated how she creates these gorgeous beaded bracelets.

 

At lunch, we were given a plain white paper placemat that we could decorate with these crayons. I should have taken a photo of the very creative work done at my table.

And, now to close, here are the adorable two guys that I live with. Scooter got a hair cut yesterday. He seems to feel more energetic without all that fur.

It Felt Good

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

I have spent most of today felting bars of soap. It is fairly easy to do, but a bit time consuming. I am coordinating the color of felt with the scent of the soap. The purples are lavender and the red/pinks are peppermint.

The green/yellow is citrus and the beige turquoise is honey almond.

I have several more of these to do. I need to redo some of these because I used too much felt or stopped the felting too soon. Still, it is a very relaxing thing to do.

Basically, you lay out roving fibers in layers, alternating the direction. Then wrap the soap in the fibers. Stick it in a nylon stocking and run some hot water on it. The you just start squishing the soap and fibers as if you were washing your hands. You can speed up the process by rubbing the bundle on something like bubble wrap.

So that has been my day.

It is labor day week-end which is usually our anniversary. On Sunday, we will have our 46th wedding anniversary, We are going out to a very special restaurant tomorrow night.

Hope you have a great holiday week-end here in the states.

Deconstructed Lorikeet

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

Here is my Twelve X Twelve quilt in the colors of lorikeets, the color theme selected by Brenda. I didn’t have any fabrics in these colors, but the wool roving fit the bill perfectly. I wanted to do machine felting, but I broke the attachment so I decided to try nuno felting.

Here is the process.  I had a large towel, a piece of bubble wrap, a piece of tulle. I started putting down the roving fibers, starting with black.

Then, I added the colored roving, making some circles and linear sections.

Next, I dampened the piece with wate with a bit of detergent mixed in.

Then, you add another layer of tulle and bubble wrap. This is then wrapped around a rolling pin.

You rock and roll this for 100 times, unroll it, turn it once, roll it up, rock and roll, etc, etc. The piece is then squished and and squeezed in a bowl of hot water, until it is felted and the size you want it to be.

When it was dry, I attached it to a piece of 12 x 12 inch felt as a base. Then I had the fun of stitching and beading. Here is a detail shot.

This was fun, especially for this theme, but I don’t think it will become part of my repertoire! Now, be sure to go over to the Twelve by Twelve blog to see what the others have done.

Aerobic Creativity

Saturday, August 21st, 2010

I was determined to come up with an idea for my next Twelve by Twelve piece. The color way this time is the colors of the Lorikeet which our Australian member, Brenda, sees around her home.

I was in my studio looking at fabric and paint and then saw my wool roving. Bingo! I would felt something. I started by using my felting attachment on my Bernina, but I made an error attaching the needles and sheared off the screw that holds the attachment. I thought, I can do wet felting!

And so I did. It is quite a workout as you have to roll up the piece and rock and roll it. Then you undo it give it a turn, roll it up again, etc. etc. My arms are feeling it tonight.

Here is a sneak peek of what I did.

It is drying. I will do some hand stitching and maybe some embellishment. I am so relieved to have this well on its way. I hope you are having a creative week-end, too.

And the winner is:

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

# 124 — Brooke Atherton! Congratulations. Send me your snail mail via the contact tab at the top of my blog and it will be on the way. For those who missed out, I suggest that you go to Jane’s website — Complex Cloth — order the book, and she will autograph it for you!! Thanks, again, for entertaining me with your comments.

As you know, from my tie dyeing escapade, I am heading out of town next week. My daughter and family are coming to house and Scooter sit. So, I have spent some time today, trying to get the downstairs area cleared of  my messes so that M & M have a place to play. I think they are bringing their Wi with them and they need some space.

Tomorrow, I am going to try to de-clutter my studio. It has reached that stage where I can’t concentrate on anything because of the messes. I need to get the aspen piece done asap. Once I get my leaves cut and everything attached with some final stitching, it will be ready for photography.

My fiber sketch for today was so much fun. I read recently that you can use lutradur for machine felting. So I cut a piece of my leaf fabric and felted with some of my curly dyed roving. It works very well. I like it because I am not starting with much thickness. So I will do more of this.