This weeks makes..

Ooo I've had a wonderfully productive week - I have been a bit of a felt-o-holic to be honest!  It feels so good to of made everything I hoped & planned to at the start of the week..  I havent had much computer time at all & I'm running out of time today I just really wanted to show you what I've been upto :)

As promised.. last weeks witches hat :D

 I played around with vintage silk sarees and nuno felting..

This is an asymetric wrap/scarf with a crinkle silk chiffon.. love the turning leaf colours

This one uses the softest prettiest silk chiffon sari I ever saw!

Just noticed you cant see the sari fabric on this pic - duh! 
It has the same emerald green silk as the skinny scarf below

With emerald green vintage sari with peacocks & deer, dancers & musicians pictured

And 2 pair of boots ready to go!  I felted the blue/white ones last week but finished them off with toggles & ties this week.

The blue & white are Norwegian - super thick & snuggly
Purple & blue with green accents  are Icelandic (am I obsessing with halloween colour combos?) 
I have a lovely customer looking for size 6.5 (UK) as these are both 7s, & I dont really do half sizes, I'm hoping one of them may find their home quickly :)

They have been loooong days this week! 

And now my spare time has gone.. I'm off to bring the washing in before it gets dark.  Have a good weekend folks
xx

Felt and Stitch

My sewing machine is getting a good workout lately! :)  This week has found me felting boots - I have 2 pairs 'on the go' - neither quite finished yet - and making hanging felt hearts for a commission.  I went to town with the stitchery on these.. adding abstract shaped felt appliques & machine embroidery to a nice textural piece of felt. 

Absolutely stuffed full of lovely lavender buds.. these are nice fat hearts :)
This is just 6 of the 11 I made..

I had so much fun applique-ing and embroidering these..
I just LOVE the dimensional effect of stitching into felt!

Working on the heart project got my imagination going.. as soon as I had finished them I stitched a hanging Christmas tree filled with allspice berries and cloves to smell like Christmas :) ...

And then went  off at a tangent thinking about holidays & seasonal stuff - Halloween.  The night before we had watched Batman Begins (Christian Bale is my fave Batman!) and I guess this must of still been in my mind 'cos I suddenly started picturing a felt bat with stitched details & swarovski crystal eyes

You cant really tell in this pic but the eyes GLOW.  They are AB swarovski crystal and sooo irridescent.  He is nice and chunky too - I used 2 layers of felt to stitch into

And THEN following the Halloween vein I felted a witches pointy hat! Hows that for random?  Its still drying at the mo.. pics to follow soon :)

Anyhoo.. time to go rustle up some food for my lot - enjoy the weekend folks

xx

The best kind of collaboration - mother and daughter

September.. the year is turning!  Autumn is definately in the air..  Misty morning fields, bright berries on the trees, cool crisp evenings.. it shall be time for thick soups, hot chocolate and woolen socks soon!

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Well the summer holidays went by in a bit of a blur they were gone so quickly.. and I have been a bad little blogger!  Hopefully things shall be back to normal now.. the children are newly back at school - I am felting again (YAY) and this morning saw the Woolgatherers meet for the first time since July.  I should be hard at work, either working on my newest pair of boot slippers.. or making textural flat felt for a commission.. but my concience is telling me its time to blog :)  but I must be short and sweet and get back to work!
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This is not a new make but a piece from July which I didnt get round to showing you.  Rachael had drawn a picture which I fell in love with.. and immediately imagined it as a felt panel on the wall. 
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This is Rachaels trademark flower.. in year 4 they did a William Morris project and all had to design and make their own wallpaper.. this is the flower Rachael designed - she has been drawing it ever since :)

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I love this picture - its simple.. but I can almost hear the wind singing in the leaves of the tree..making the branches dance.  I thought it lent itself to freemotion machine embroidery - which has really gotten a hold of me I afraid - I'm addicted.  So one day I set about felting the picture (minus the chickens and bunnies :)

Wetted out and just started rubbing

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I used the colours of the fields by our house at that time.. apart from the flower of course (which is imaginery) - Rachael always uses these colours for it so I stayed true to her design :)
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When it was felted and dried I set to with my sewing machine & freemotion foot (which I LIKE) adding in the detail..
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From a distance

I LOVE the textures you can get adding machine embroidery to felt.. 
 the trunk and branches stand proud against the leaves.

Signed with our initials and the date :)

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I just need to mount it now! Which is where I have come to a standstill.. my embroidery frame is too small for the piece of linen fabric that I want to mount it on (it needs to be stretched before I stitch it on - then I stretch the linen over a board & stitch it in place). Im puzzling my way around it, while trying to avoid the need for a bigger frame...  and then it shall be on my wall :)

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So.. NOW I am off to do some felting before collecting the children from school

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Have a good weekend folks

xx

New wall art.. and a week away

I just HAVE to show you this..

My son is 14 and about to start his GCSE subjects in September, one of the subjects he is dropping is art (OMG school with no art class would of been sheer purgatory for me!) as such he brought home a folder with all of the work he has done over the last 3 years.  When we were going through it my heart almost leapt out of my chest when I saw this.. I LOVE it!  It is now mounted and framed and hanging in pride of place in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs :)



'The Blue Ladies'
sorry about the glare across the glass.. really should of brought non-reflective



A3 size, worked in oil pastels.
I love this so much

I cant believe that his art teacher actually marked him down on this piece because he strayed from the red,orange, yellow tones.. isnt art about doing what feels right?  He is getting lots of positive comments from our friends and family who have seen, and I'm hoping this will boost his self confidence (which has been ground out in art class!) and inspire him to keep drawing & painting.

We have just spent a wonderful week camping and ocean kayaking in Cornwall :)  The weather was a bit dodgy, but my goodness did we have some fun!



Gary & Rachael on Daymer Bay

We camped right on the cliff overlooking Polzeath beach (a lovely place to camp).  Polzeath is a great surf beach! The first half of the week, while the weather was not so good, the waves were pretty big on Polzeath - too much for us with the kayak,  so we stayed on Daymer Bay just inside the Camel Estuary.. the water was calmer here.  When the weather changed for the better the sea calmed right down - the surfers were seriously unimpressed - and we could get out there!  So lovely kayaking up close to the sea birds bobbing around & diving, or nesting on the cliffs - they took no notice whatsoever.. if only I had a waterproof camera!  Here are a couple more pics anyway..

 

Polzeath looking out to Pentire Headland

Daymer Bay.. so peaceful

I had an awful head cold for the first few days (I'd had it a week before we went too).  It really fuzzed my poor brain up for a few days!  I did quite a few daft things - most noticable of which was my mishap with hair removal cream..  Night before we went I did my legs (as you do)   and didnt realise I had hair removal cream on the back of my hand when I put my hair up..  I didnt notice until I put my hair up the next day..  luckily its just a short chunk and not a bald patch that I'm left with - and I'm due a hair cut anyway. 

I also managed to fall in a humungous rock pool!  (Blame it on the head cold) Sods law it was on a cold day and we were on a nice long walk so I was all layered up; trousers, t-shirt, fleece, coat, scarf, backback..  I went in upto my armpits and soaked the lot - I've never been so unintentionally wet in all my life.  Amber was swimming across it at the time - she though I had come to join her lol.  It was funny though I must admit.  And it proved the water repellant qualities of felt too!  I had my phone and camera in my felt backpack - both were perfectly dry.

The kids just have 2 weeks of their summer holiday left now - where has the time gone?  Its flown by!

Hope you are all having a good summer too

xx

Not many words today.. just a picture to share :)    My first wallhanging with a little freemotion embroidery on..  Its a reasonable sized wallhanging 22" x 24"  Inspired by photos taken on many wonderful walks along the North Cornwall coastline between Daymer Bay & Polzeath.

Hung from a nice bit of Dorset driftwood.. collected this piece in Feb 2010, it was just perfect for this hanging.

Just a little stitchery in the sea.. to define the horizon and some swirls in the sea. I needlefelted the sailing boat. Did think of hanging a couple of Cornish seashells from the end of the driftwood.. may still add them.

Freemotion grasses

And a freemotion seagull flying high

 My next wallhanging has a LOT more stitching on it :)

Have a good week folks - hope you are enjoying the summer xx

Experimental Felting #3 Going BIGGER

Firstly apologies about any odd spacing in this post, or html type rubbish - blogger is having a mad one and after about 1/2 hour trying to get this look right - I'm giving up and going to cook dinner!

Its been a while.. but continuing the story of my experementation using the tumble drier as a tool to make nuno felting less back breaking..

My most exciting discovery was how brilliantly it worked nuno felting onto synthetic organza!  After the smaller sample piece I jumped right into felting a shawl...

Started by carding some lovely batts.. you cant really see it but theres loads of silk and a good sprinkling of firestar twinkling away in this :)

I laid it out on the floor 'cos it was 3m x 1 m..

Piece of plastic sheeting allowed me to add extra bits for the collar and bottom fringe detail (which I cut out part way through)

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Plastic wrapped & rolled in an old towel - tied up nice and secure. 

 I chucked it in the tumble drier on no-heat for 20 minutes

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After 20 minutes you can already see the organza starting to pucker.  Wrapped & rolled it up & put it in for another tumble

You can see  how well the fibres have come through the organza here - worked a treat!
This was after 50 to 60 minutes tumbling - which is all it took

Just to make doubly sure that the fibres were evenly through I gently ran a rubber-gloved hand over the organza side (this helps the fibres through)

Now it was time to get physical :) Heat, vigorous rolling & throwing you name it - I did it.  To finish I ran the wool side over my well soaped ridged plastic roller tray - this tightens the felt up nicely.

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Finished!

My dear friend & fellow Woolgatherer Brenda found me a torso for displaying shawls on :)  Isnt she a treasure?! 

So there you go thats my final 'Experimental Felting' post ..... until the next time I get curious

xx

Freemotion..

I mentioned that my (long anticipated) freemotion embroidery foot arrived last week :)  I could not wait to try it out!!  After doodling on the kids old school shirts that were destined for the rag-bag, I jumped in to my first little project.  This has been brewing in my mind for a while..  Finally got it out on Sunday :)

I think this might be classed as mixed-media? :)

I cut out a wave shape from cotton fabric - 2 different patterned pieces of fabric (can you see them?)  I used one for the main part of the wave and another for the curling under-part of the wave. 

I positioned the wave on my piece of felt, covered it all with a piece of blue organza and stitched around the outside of the wave.  Then I sniped around the outside of the stitches to remove the excess organza.. and started doodling :)  I covered the raw edges of the organza with tiny swirly movements... indicated movement with lines of stitching... added surf with white cotton thread... tiny little bit of metalic thread for sparkle on top of the wave.

Next I handstitched it to a slightly bigger piece of felt, and added a row of glass seed beeds to the edges of both felt pieces.  Pin back sewn on and a scrap of felt to cover the metal bar.  For fun I embroidered my initials on the back.. then kicked myself because I could of signed it with machine embroidery! lol.. 

I'm happy :)

brooch measures 6cm x 4cm (2.5" x 1.5")

So, there you go.. my first freemotion.. mixed media :) adventure with my new foot! 

Woolgatherers meeting and challenge #3

I'm a little late posting this.. been busy as ever!  Just over a week ago the Woolgatherers met, at Clares new home (thank you for hosting Clare :) ).  We had a lovely morning filled with the usual drooling over fibre.. eating cake.. drinking tea.. (and baby cuddling!)

Sue was unable to join us, and I know that she has felted some flowers for the challenge.. but for now here are the others :)

Challenge #3
' Flowers'

set by Brenda

On the spinning wheel is Clare's challenge piece; thinking laterally about the theme she brought nettle fibre & bamboo fibre to spin.
The beautiful pink flower is Brenda's beaded brooch.
I felted 2 seamless cushions.. which I'm planning to post about soon (guess what - I took process pics :)

Our 4th challenge theme is 'Holidays'.  We are set to meet next right in the middle of the holiday season - Fri 5th August .. anybody in the Birmingham, Worcester, Kidderminster area.. if you fancy coming along give me a shout, we would LOVE to meet you!

I made out like a bandit from the meeting.. Clare gave me a big green wool blanket to do 'as I please' with :)  Great news for me.. I'm planning to make a woolen coat for myself this winter - and I LIKE green.  Brenda has lent me a lovely (and what looks simple) pattern. 

Blanket behind.  I want to make the short green coat

Brenda has also, very kindly, given me a large microwave oven to do my dyeing in! How great is that?! Its living out in the garage too, so my family will be spared the smell in the house lol. 

Funnily enough they don't actually complain about the smell.. possibly because they know I can do MUCH worse things with a microwave :D - like the time I microwaved TRIPE  for Jesse (our oldest dog).  It wasn't long after we had her & she had been raised on tripe.. I had to ween her off it - the smell made me retch.. and this was the only time I gave her cooked tripe!  OMG worst smell I think I've ever come across.. The children were about 5 & 7.. they ran down the garden and wouldnt come back in for 2 hours!  Apart from the smell, it was pretty hilarious.  To add to the farce, our next door neighbour chose that day to lock himself out and ask to come through our house to climb the fence - I dread to think what he thought - it stunk to high heaven! 

And now the kids are just about ready to break up for the summer holidays!  I'm felting like a mad woman trying to get as much done as possible this week..  I have a few projects planned for the holidays.

I have been enjoying my new freemotion embroidery foot on the sewing machine :) and have got a thing or 2 to share with you over the next little while.

xx

Experimental Felting #2

Following on from yesterday, I promised to show you my latest bargain felting tool.. it may not be pretty, but my goodness does it do the job?!

Industrial painters roller tray £4 from B&Q, makes a fantastic alternative to a washerboard!

I have an Ashford wooden washerboard, which I rarely use (the woodgrain swole up on its first use making it far to rough to use without covering it in thick plastic first - a real pain).  Glass washerboards cost about £30, so this alternative is a real bargain.  The ridged part is at just the right angle, and the paint trough is perfect for dipping the felt in while you work - its a washerboard & mini sink all in one :).

I did find a few snaggy bits around the edge which I flattened by heating them briefly with a lighter flame and pressing flat with the back of a teaspoon.

Back to the nuno scarf.. 

Once the fibres had migrated through the silk well I added heat, rolled it by hand for a while, then tossed it to get the lovely nuno texturing of the silk chiffon.

Stood on a towel it doesnt slide around while you rub.
I personally prefer it to a washerboard!

Once I was happy with the texture I ran it over my ridged roller-tray to really tighten up the felt.



All finished. 
When first laid out this measured 7feet x 45cm.. finished it measures 4.5feet x 20cm

This still took quite a few hours to make with the time spent laying out & finishing by hand (not counting drier time) using the tumble drier to replace most of the rolling made it physically a much easier job.  I dont plan to do any more nuno scarves in silk chiffon using this method..simply because I find that wool fibres travel through silk chiffon easily with the normal rolling method, and I like to use as little electricity as possible.

BUT...  my second experiment was with synthetic organza which takes forever for the fibres to catch hold of with the traditional rolling.  I have to say I was very suprised & thrilled to bits with this experiment; using the tumble drier the fibres worked through synthetic organza faster than they did the silk chiffon!

When it came out of the tumbler I treated my sample piece the same as the scarf above, heat + tossing then rubbing on ridged roller-tray.  I was left with a very pretty & sturdy piece of nuno.. that I just HAD to make something from



So, I machine stitched around the flower petals to define them and
turned it into a pretty & ethereal clutch bag

I have been BURSTING for weeks and weeks to do some freemotion embroidery onto my felt.  Actually, its been on my 'to do' list for about 3 years now..ever since I first saw Helen Melvins (Fiery Felts) landscapes.  I would love to go on a workshop with Helen..hopefully one day..

More recently RosiePink's beautiful wallhangings, and the adventures of many blog friends have rekindled the desire.  Just over a month ago I managed to find and order a freemotion foot to fit my machine.. it had to come from Texas USA to the UK, and unfortunately it still hasnt found its way here.  The seller is lovely though and has just refunded me.  I have now found the same foot in the UK and repurchased it (why couldnt I find it a month ago?!).. hope the postman doesnt lose this one.  Until it gets here I am making do with my normal open toe foot for my decorative stitching (my machine missed stitches without a foot).

After making this clutch I was left with a decent sized offcut.. so decided to play some more :)

Normal pin fastner sewn onto the back. 
I originally fancied this as a closure for a shawl..



..but it works much better as a companion for the clutch I think.

Next time.. my experiments got even BIGGER :)

TTFN xx

Experimental felting... #1

I have to confess to being extremely curious!  And just being told that something works is not enough for me.. I have to try it myself - cant settle till I have.  This has led to some funny situations in the past believe me..  This time my curiosity was piqued by reading about people using a tumble drier as a felting tool.  Not something I have ever done before..  The curiosity became unbearable when I heard about it being used to speed up nuno felting! 

... you may recall the large nuno shawls that I made earlier in the year - they took, what seemed, an eternity of rolling (many, many hours over 2 days) to get the fibres to migrate through the fabric.  I had no plans to felt any more of these shawls, even though I LOVE the way they turned out, because they took so darned long - and near killed my back!

Some experimentation was in order.. so I googled and found this excellent tutorial on Treetops Colour Harmonies website.. and followed it :)

For my first experiment I used silk chiffon to make a nuno scarf - using a lot less wool than I usually do:

Used a piece of the silk chiffon I dyed a couple of weeks ago

Didnt have a clear idea of the design when I started.. it just 'grew'.  I got quite carried away and spent 3 or 4 hours in a very zen like state laying out the pattern :) ..only realised how long I had taken because I got hungry - I was 1 1/2 hours late for a meal!

 

Wetted out with cold soapy water





Decorators plastic layed on top



Edges folded in to 'seal the parcel' and rolled around a damp towel

Dry towel rolled around the outside, then tied up nice and tight.

Then into the tumble drier it went - on a no-heat settling, for 15 minutes.  Then, like with normal felting, unroll & straighten, then re-roll from the opposite direction.  Back in the tumble drier for another 15 minutes.  This was repeated rolling from all 4 sides, though for the final 2 sides I only did 10 minute tumbles - this was plenty.

After all this bumping & tumbling the fibres had migrated through the silk beautifully.. and was ready for heat and throwing - this is the bit that I like.. the magic nuno moment when you get the lovely texture. 

I had also prepared a sample sized piece with synthetic organza to see how this behaved & tumbled it at the same time (this only took 3 tumbles!)

I am going to leave it there though for today.. Tomorow I shall show you how it turned out, what became of the synthetic sample piece AND my new bargain must have felting tool!

xx