FAB Felt Made



Busy people of all ages making small felt pieces



Wow, our free felt making workshop in the village was quite an event on Saturday morning!  We had more than 100 people come in and make felt, the majority for the first time.  There were so many people that we kept having to put out more tables for them to work at and then so many more, that the visitors started putting the tables up themselves as we couldn't keep up with showing the tables and demonstrating felt at the same time.  I don't have many pictures, because I didn't get much time to take any -  I was too busy helping people to make felt.  It was lovely to see some many people involved and enjoying making felt.  It really is so tactile and genuinely suitable for all: the youngest person there was only 4 weeks, although she didn't make anything, but a 2 year old did.
Lots of people made small individual pieces, which they took home - I suggested to many it would make a great gift for Mothers Day next Sunday (unfortunately, I was too busy to make any for my own mum - Sorry Mum!), -  many made little felt balls, which could be cut open later to reveal their jewel like colours and lots contributed to a large scale hanging, which is going to be displayed in our local health centre, when I stitch on the hanging mechanism.

Covering the large piece ready to felt

The large piece has an underwater theme and it was great to see adults as well as children contribute, in all the stages of laying out the background, add the fish and the felting.  It is now out of my bath, where I had been washing out the soap and is drying slowly.

Felting on a large scale

To get in the mood for the event, I made my own large piece, which I will be revealing shortly when it is finished.  It is felted, but I still want to stitch on it to complete it.  It was helpful for the big event, even if only to tell me that making it on the floor was a bad and back breaking idea - we used tables for the workshop.  We don't have a big enough table at home, but that may guide the maximum size of felt I am willing to make in the future!
It's been a busy few days as it was also our youngest's 4th birthday on Thursday and we held her birthday party this morning.  We forgot that the clocks went forward today, so it was an early start than anticipated to get things ready for 10.30 (9.30 in the old time is far too early for a Sunday!).  They all had fun painting mugs, decorating cakes and running round the garden.  I'm now exhausted!

FAB Felt

FAB, our new local art group is having its second free art event on Saturday 26th March. We are making felt: large and small pieces and we are trying to organise a place for it to be on permanent display in the village. I'm surrounded by bags of wool tops ready for the workshop and I'm currently felting a large piece to show people how it is made. Pictures of it soon.  Actually, I'm doing this to delay getting back to rolling my felt - it is certainly a good workout for my weak arm muscles!
If you are in the area, please drop in and join us.

Houston article in The Quilter

I was very excited to receive the latest issue of The Quilter magazine last week as it includes an article I wrote about the International Quilt Festival in Houston.  It's the first time I've written for The Quilter, which is the magazine of the Quilters' Guild and although I've written lots of articles over the last eight years, I still get a childish thrill from seeing my words and photographs in print.  It's also lovely to share my enthusiasm for something I have really enjoyed with lots of other people.

The next one

This is the next one in my series of small pieces (samples if they don't work, finished art if they do!). This doesn't have any wadding but two layers of iron-on vilene. I could feel the needle of the sewing machine trying very hard to push through the layers, but it made it. I think it may need a little bit more colour on the person, but nothing too strong as it is meant to be subtle. I need to go and practice my colouring skills before I add it so that it doesn't dominate.

Wave power

Whilst pondering my ideas of forgotten goddesses and looking at ancient statues, I realised I wanted to add in some idea of time passing in my work. How things change and yet they don't. Once we are gone the sea will still be there, crashing the waves onto little changing rocks. For our February half term holiday, we went to the Northumbrian coast, an area of amazing beauty and mesmerising seas. These photos were taken yards from where we stayed - it was even sunny for a few days.  It was a lovely break; very relaxing and we did little except let the children fill their wellies with water each day (how did they manage it?!) and enjoy the wood burning stove at night. I love being by the sea and was already missing the sound of it before we had even reached home. Now I have to work out how to incorporate the waves into this work.

in progress

I'm now well and truly immersed in creating my new work for the Festival of Quilts. I still have a number of variations mulling around and I'm trying some out to see how they work.
These samples were made using scraps of fabric, fabric paint, stitch, paintsticks and stencils, layering and quilting. As well as playing with the designs, I'm also trying out different variations of quilt sandwich to see how they work. These used fusible wadding for the first time and it did hold it together well, but I'm not convinced it would work on my final pieces as this wadding splits a bit and this won't work if I'm not binding the edges.
The stencil took ages to cut and is based on a wave pattern (more about this in my next post or two).

Muses in clay

 

As well as experimenting in fabric, I have been making little plaques of my figures in modelling clay trying out different ideas.

 

Originally I intended to make them 3-D, but I enjoyed making them flat and so have not developed them beyond 2-D.

Much to the children's indignation, I have been using some of their playdough tools to get shapes.  They were placated when I gave up some of my precious clay and let them play with it too.

 

It is a new material for me and lovely and tactile.  Unfortunately, I made some too thin, so this one got decapitated.

I have painted some of them, using siennas and golds, but part of me prefers the plain white.  What do you think?

Chinese New Year at the Nursery

Since the start of the term, I have been helping our local school nursery (kindergarten) with art activities for the children.  The theme was CS Lewis' Voyage of the Dawn Treader, inspired by the film that is out at the moment and using this to introduce the idea of Chinese New Year to the kids, who are all three and four.

 

We made Chinese Lanterns, with an inside of laminated shredded tissue paper for extra colour.  We made little dragons on sticks and a huge 4m long dragon using fabric we snow dyed outside.  The children also made the dragon's head using card, which the cut and stitched together.

We also made hundreds of felt balls and strung them on elastic to make bracelets (and the boys loved being set loose with a sharp needle to do so!).  In the Voyage of the Dawn Treader when Eustace puts on a jewelled bracelet he turns into a dragon, so the kids coloured dragon masks and put them on with their bracelets.

 

The children all seemed to have fun - felting was very popular as was the snow dyeing - and I can't quite believe the mess we managed to make using glitter and glue to decorate dragon scales.  It was an interesting experience for me too and one that has taken up a lot of time and energy.  We had a presentation to the parents last week to show them all that had been going on and so my time at nursery is complete (apart from the next 18 months as a parent).  Back to concentrating on my own work!

Figures set in stone

This week I have been playing with the idea of my figures and how to get them onto fabric.  These have all been made using paintsticks, rubbing plates and self-cut stencils, on different background.  The one at the top is my favourite, although I don't see it going forward as this project progresses - it is a bit too decorative for me and also I think the figure needs some space around it, rather than being on such a busy patched background.  All the others are in order of my making them.

The first two were stencilled onto some old lilac shirting.

 

This was on another patched background.  The lines across are too solid, so this got altered for the next two.

There are no lines across on this one, and the stencilling on the large shape follows the painted shapes on the original figurine I am basing it on.  Not too sure of the colours and for some reason, it makes me think of one of the early 20th century Ballet Russe costume.

This one has the lines across again and no detailing on the figure.  I'm not too sure it still looks like a figure, but this is something I want to play with:  how far can you go in stylising a human figure before it loses the connection to an identifiable person?

This final one was painted with help from my daughter.  I'm really getting into the creative zone, which is great for my work, but I can see issues for the family over the next few weeks/months whilst it continues as I want to keep making rather than cooking/cleaning etc...  K decided she wanted in on the act when I was playing on the other figures when she was around and to have a go with my art materials, rather than her own 'boring' crayons.  I suppose I have to agree that my oil painsticks are probably more fun.



Snow Dyeing - the results

The snow here finally went on Saturday - a full seven weeks after the first snow fall, so it now seems a good time to show you the results of the snow dyed fabric. When I washed out the snow dyed fabric, the end results were a lot softer and more interesting, more crystallised patterns. I really like them. The children wanted to do something with their pieces of fabric and so each of them made a cushion for their Dad as a Christmas present. It was something to do in all the days they missed school due to the snow. More fabric shapes were added using bondaweb and then we quilted the fabric on my Pfaff sewing machine. Rather than making regular shapes, we made the cushions from the fabric pieces: two are small rectangles and the other larger and more square. They are filled with offcuts of wadding - that in itself kept them amused for ages!

Dad was very pleased with the cushions but hasn't much more to say about them just now - he's too busy on crisps and beer and watching TV (I had to say this as it is true at the moment and so stereotypical and so unlike R!)

I was so pleased with the fabrics that we have used this technique for dyeing fabric at our local school nursery/kindergarten.  I'm helping out with their current project which is a cross between Narnia and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Chinese New Year.  The fabric below, which the kids dyed last week is going to be turned into a Chinese dragon's body later today - with a little help from 36 pint sized helpers!