I forgot to include the earlier experiments, which are now in my sketchbook, in my last post – the links are to the images on Flickr.
April TIF Challenge 3
Well, I ran out of time before I ran out of ideas, so I’m going to carry on playing with April’s Take it Further Challenge during May. I think it has some connections into May’s challenge as well so who knows where it will lead?
This, anyway, is where I’ve got to.
The piece at the top left is partly felted. The little balls of yarn are naturally dyed as well – I got them at Soay Studio on the Isle of Harris (that’s the only link I could find, but I’ll go and hunt out a photo in a minute). I’m going to do big woolly embroidery stitches into the pre-felt and then finish felting it.
Next to that is a piece with some other coloured fleece added; and then my woven samples – I overdid the felting, so they’re very hard and small! Below them is a grid with thin strips of the pink roving in one direction and colours laid across it – I want to try this again on a bigger scale.
Bottom right are the samples of knitted fleece after felting – I like the coloured one in stocking stitch and this is another technique I’d like to explore – it was very easy to bring in additional colours exactly where I wanted to.
The middle piece at the bottom is very thin and webby and the piece on the right is the one I nuno felted into muslin. It was quite a dense muslin, and having seen the lovely lacy textures of Monika’s nuno felt, I’d like to experiment with some different fabrics to see how the effects vary.
The piece underneath the nuno felt is ‘just’ plain felt. Warm, soft, comforting – and pink – it has so much in common with the fleece it came from and yet it’s not the same at all. I plan to chop it up into pieces and sandwich each between different translucent layers, to quilt into the layers and watch the subtle changes that will emerge, and the differences between them.
I just love the amazing, endless variety of textures and patterns and colours that we can make with textiles, and their physical, tactile presence.
And this is the gateway into the delightful dyer’s garden at Soay Studio on Harris, which we visited in August 2006.
felt again
well, I now have three felts that I can use for the appliqué hanging – I don’t like the green as much as the first one I made, it lacks some shades of turquoise and some acidy greens that I didn’t have in the merino, but I’m trying not to be perfectionist about this. A layer of coloured silk chiffon is going over it, after all, and everything will be different in the end. Today it has rained endlessly but just about the time I finished there was a lull and I ran out to take a picture.
I can hardly bear to stop making felt now and get on with quilting and drawing and work and those kinds of things.
feltmaking today
I’ve been making felts for the wadding in my wall hanging. The red is prefelted, the green – well, it’s done and the colours are what I wanted but I used some alpaca fibre and it’s very fluffy – I think I’ll probably use it for something else and do another, but first I’ll get the purple made. The fleece is mostly merino, space-dyed by Jan Hicks, with some plain colours (maybe also merino) I got from Reticule here in Kendal, and a little pink and red fleece I still have from a workshop with Jenny Cowern many years ago.
