New video tutorial – how to make a wet felt picture

As you know if you’ve been following my blog, I love making felt paintings.  I have to say though, my life has been so busy with other projects for a few months, that I haven’t made any for ages.

Recently though, I was asked to make a video tutorial, so here it is. The pics don’t really capture the depths of the blues at the top of the painting, but I think you get the idea.

I had immense fun getting all my wool and silk rovings and searching through my yarn box for just the right variegated and also dimensional yarns, and then even more joy as the little painting came together.

I’m getting used to filming the process, and even the editing is taking less time – still a.g.e.s. – but I’m getting the hang of it, and the rendering and Handbraking and uploading to YouTube with the tags and what-have-you, so people who are searching for a felt picture tutorial, actually discover it!

My desire was to make an attractive picture that was easy to demonstrate, and also copy if someone wants to – without too many intricate materials or steps.  I may make a more complex picture later, if I get enough interest.  Or I’ll make another one for the love of it, and may even video it as I make it!

Here are some closeups of the details of the simple little Sea Beach picture:

So what next?

I do have a hankering to make another nuno scarf soon though because I want to do some eco-printing on it.  I have some rose leaves in the freezer from Valentine’s Day, waiting to be put to good use. Or should I say second use – the first being the expression of love. Ahh, soppy. 😉

If you’d like to watch the new video, here is a link.  Do let me know what you think, by writing in the comments. ❤

 

Christmas felt pebbles, brooch & pic

I fancied a change today.  No scarves today, I wanted to do something different. Something cute. Something small.

Felted Christmas pebbles

Wet felted Christmas pebbles approx 5x3cm

So I collected some pebbles from the garden and felted them in Christmas colours;

red with green silk,

white with red silk,

green with red silk,

white with purple silk,

purple with white silk and a touch of sparkly gold Angelina fibre.

Yummy!!

I’ve also covered one pebble in dark blue with lighter blue silks and I think I will be embroidering a star on that one.

I think these will make lovely little stocking fillers, or Christmas table decorations.

Then I made a…

15x15cm Felt picture

This is of an evening nature scene, 15x15cm which I will stick onto a canvas of the same size.

Here are a couple of pics of the layout and the picture itself.  The first one is of the layout, mainly of merino wool, with some silk tops, a little Angelina fibre in the sky, some nepps as stars, some silk noile flowers and a little bit of silk sari for patterning in the foreground.  The photo of the layout was taken in daylight and the one of the finished painting was taken in artificial light this evening, so there’s a bit of a difference with the hues.

Layout for nature evening scene

Wet felted picture 15x15cm of evening nature scene

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Needle felted brooch – country scene

Then, with time to spare, I got out my felting needle and a large button for sizing, and felted a little nature scene with a poppy in the front, which I stuck onto the button, after I’d attached a brooch clasp to the back.  Here are a couple of photos of this.  It is very cute, and only 4cm in diameter.

I thoroughly enjoyed making these different objects and I’ll make some more smaller, and different items, which I’ll be able to display for my customers at the two pre-Christmas markets that I’ll be attending.

Felt brooch back

Brooch: Needle felted scene 4cm diameter

New hemmed silk poppy scarf

Hemmed soft, drapable nuno felted silk scarf with poppies at either end.

I was fortunate enough to meet a textile artist the other day who told me where to source hemmed silk scarves in Australia.

I liked that idea because during our summer months the heat and humidity does make the wool on the edging of even my summer scarves a tad warm.  Using hemmed scarves means I can still felt beautiful details and pictures onto the silk, but without ‘hemming’ with wool along the edges to prevent fraying, as I have done up until now.

Of course, I still love my tissue silk and will continue to purchase that as well, because the effect you can get on this lightweight material is gossamer fine.  The hemmed silk scarves I have just obtained are slightly less open weave than the tissue silk, but when I opened the pack, I blew through one and knew that with a tad more rubbing, I could still felt it.

These scarves are gorgeous, with such a sheer lustre to them, I couldn’t wait to felt onto one.

Hemmed silk scarf with nuno felted poppies

This morning I set about another poppy scarf as I loved the effect of the original one I made recently.  This one is a slightly different design but still uses fine merino wool as well as silk hankies and tops along with a little Angelina fibre to get that glow that brings light-catching properties to the matt of the wool.

Gawd, I love textile art!

Hemmed silk scarf showing 3 poppies nuno felted at one end

I figured wispy merino would probably migrate more through the netting during felting than onto the scarf, so I used prefelt pieces ‘stuck’ down with merino rovings, and with the wool and silk details applied on top.

I was right about needing to work it harder, but I reckon the finished effect is well worth the effort. During the felting, some of the red dye from the hand-dyed wool transferred to the white silk scarf, giving it a delicate hint of palest red, which works very well with the bold reds, black and green of the poppies.

Hemmed silk scarf so sheer you can see my hand through it!

The finished scarf is gorgeous! It’s lightweight, sheer, lustrous and has a lovely tailored look with the hand hemmed edges and the felted poppies at each end have a painted effect that I love.  I will definitely be felting the others in a similar way.

Hemmed silk scarf showing nuno felted single poppy at one end

I reckon this will make someone a delightful Christmas present.  It is one of a kind, and art in textile as well as sumptuous materials, sheer for Australian summer yet warm for winter – that’s the beauty of silk.

Poppies – two felt ‘paintings’

With only 2 sleeps to go to the Art Exhibition at Beerwah Community Hall, my dining area and kitchen look as if there’s been an invasion of the Arty Crafty Brigade!

Not sure that I had enough to display at the exhibition, and spotting a couple of 30x30cm deep canvases locally, then finding some lovely mottled dark grey/black quilting material, I had an idea to make a couple of poppy felt art works.  I have been inspired by stunning poppies on felt dresses by Oprisan Alina who makes beautiful vibrant and incredible works.  Rather than copy what she was doing, which I do not like to do, I took my love of the vibrancy and delicateness of poppies and translated them into my own design.

As you know if you’ve been following my blog, when I do a felt painting, I usually make the whole thing out of wool. However, as I had found the background already, I decided to make the poppies as separate items and stick them to the covered canvases.  Thankfully my handyman neighbour had an industrial staple gun so helped me with the covering.

I won’t even go into my drama on Saturday when I spent five hours felting one of the poppies with some ‘merino wool’ from Spotlight (bought on the spur of the moment in case I didn’t have enough red wool) that is apparently good for needle and wet felting.  After turning the kitchen blue with my swearing and trying all the felting tricks in the book I eventually gave in to the fact that what I was trying to felt may have looked like and felt like red wool rovings must actually be synthetic.

It was originally going to be four petals, two behind separated by a resist.  However, after the felting farce, I got my big sharp scissors and cut the back two off.  These were made solely out of the Spotlight ‘wool’, whereas the top two petals had a large quantity of my other real wool rovings that had been hand dyed in different shades of red, so they had pretty much felted how I wanted them.

Non-felting ‘merino’ wool from back two petals with finished 2-petal poppy using my wool

Leaves and petals all contain high amounts of silk tops and hankies and I liked how they turned out. The second lot of poppies had one flat and one side on flower that opened to see inside.  I sewed in some nice black beads for detail and worked on the layout.

For the buds I used a thicker felt and then fluffed out the felt with a needle to give the fuzzy effect that real buds have.  Actually it was only after researching a good poppy photo, that I discovered how many different varieties of poppy there are, all with different stamen arrangements.

I have finished sticking it all down with good quality fabric glue and have just taken some pics.  Here they are.  Now I’ve got to find some wire and get them ready to hang.

Diptyche of poppies. Wet felted with beading.

Detail of beading inside the smaller poppy.

Library Display

This is a quick post to show a couple of pics of a limited variety of my felting that is on display at Beerwah Library for two weeks.

If you aren’t in the area but would like to visit the library, the address is:

Beerwah Library, 25 Peachester Road, Beerwah Qld 4519. Phone for opening hours: 1300 542 727

It is lovely to have the opportunity to display my work locally.  I am a member of the Glasshouse Country Arts Trail and we have several weeks available to display members’ works.  Ilia Starkovsky is also displaying some of his photographic art, and Bronwyn Hill and/or Melanie Gray Augustin will also be bringing showing some of their work this fortnight.

A variety of my work in the display cabinet at Beerwah Library