Second Quarter Challenge Finnished

My second Quarter challenge is all finished. Better late than never.

After fulling the pot the design was almost completely gone.

I Got out my handy dandy disposable razor and gave it a good shave to get rid of the fuzzies. The design magically reappeared. A tiny bit of sun came out for the pictures. It has been raining and raining and raining here so not great pictures.

 

I finished felting the relief picture. The inside yarn didn’t feel a secure as I wanted so I went all around it with a felting needle before deciding how to reveal the encased yarn. I had originally planed to cut the darker green away but thought it might more like it occurred naturally if I shaved it.

I wanted it to look like a piece of something, a tablet or piece of cloth that had been dug up or found in grave goods.  The colour is closest on the right hand one. the background is dark mass green and the picture is a lichen green. I tried to fix it but it just made it worse. I like it. I think I will frame it as is.

 

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Nuno Felt Bracelet Kit

This is my new nuno felt bracelet kit. It will be for sale at Twist. http://www.festivaltwist.org/en/

kit back kit front

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Working on some felt pictures in the fused glass style

 

A while ago I saw some fused glass pictures and was inspired to make some summer beach pictures. I like the simple style of this type of picture. I spent a few evenings drawing and colouring pictures. I always forget how relaxing and fun colouring is.

coloured picture 1 coloured picture 2 coloured picture 3 coloured picture 4 coloured picture 5

I decided to do a seaside picture first as summer has just started. I used

seaside 1 before

I used all prefelt except for a little silk for the waves. I split the prefelt and cut it so it wouldn’t be too thick where they overlap. I tacked everything down lightly with a felting needle.

spliting prefelt

This is how it looked after felting once.

seaside 1 after firs felting

I forgot to take one after it was finished but I all became flat and slightly blurred. I decided to add some stitching

seaside 1 after sewing

It gives it much more definition. you can see how flat and blurred the house and boat edges are. I was thinking of going around the house pieces and the boats. Maybe add some little grass tufts. and underline the waves in white. What do you think, should I add more stitching?

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Around the Farm this Week

This week we’ve had some new arrivals. first was this lovely red Dexter heifer. born just before dark so the picture is of my son in the dark with my husband holding the flashlight.

Colin and Rosalee

Then we had some lambs.

lamb 1 lamb 3 lamb 2

This morning it was Chrissy’s turn. My hubby was going to feed the bottle lambs when he fount them. Lamb was up and dry. No problem bringing them in till Chrissy saw the bottles lying on the ground and was more interested in trying to get a drink then going in the pen with her lamb.  Once a bottle lamb always a bottle lamb. she was to busy nibbling my coat to get in the picture herself.

lamb 4 chrissy

 

I also washed some wool mostly it is still yucky with to much chaff in it. The brown looks ok and some of the white I can cut the curls from the felted base.   The rest will end up as mulch. Free fleece is seldom usable fleece.

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Second quarter challenge on the Felting and Fiber Forum: Stewart Stephenson

 

As you probably know we have decided to pick a different artists for our quarterly challenges this year. This quarter I have chosen Stewart Stephenson http://www.stewartstephenson.com/home He is a Canadian artist that has a large body of work in a variety of mediums and styles. I think there is something for everyone here.

He has a gallery in Vancouver British Columbia Canada

gallery-img1 stevenson 1 stevenson 3 stevenson 5 stevenson 2stevenson 4

It says he did some sculptures but I couldn’t find any pictures. I even sent them an email asking about them but got no response. If you find some please share them with us. Have fun with this.

Don’t forget there will be a post over on the felting and fiber forum where you can ask questions, discuss and post pictures of what you where inspired to make.

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Felting with friends Weekend- Hats

More on my felting weekend.  We all meat at Maureen’s ( http://www.dreamspinfibres.ca/ ) A great place, she has so much fiber to choose from.

Three of us made hats based on a hat in Judit Pocs video. It seems to be gone from the internet. It was mostly about making a rug.  This is Diane and Susan( http://www.suzannetowns.ca/ ) sizing up a template.

Diane and Susan

They made their hats on the first day. They like a really firm hat so their scaled up the template and added more layers than I do.

laying out fiber laying out fiber 2

more colour and embelishments 3 dianes hat half done 2

Susan added come great colour  and Dian used some resists to reveal some fabric on the layer underneath.

Diane and Susan finnished hats 2

Diane added a string of small felted yarn balls to her hat. The parts that stick down were up to high so the pulled them down and twisted them to get them in a better position.

On the second day I did my hat. I adjusted the pointy parts so they would be lower. and left the pointy top smaller.

my hat ready to felt my hat finished my hat finnished 2

I should have used a different colour yarn for the embellishments. The colour was much to close the hat colour.

Dian made another hat on the second day. I didn’t get any pictures of it in progress. the template was like witches hat.

dianes seconed hat 3 dianes seconed hat 4

I have to give one of these a try. I like the way it is folded in on itself.

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Felting weekend with friends: small bags

 

Last week end a friend Dianne Lemire and I went down to our friends Maureen Harding’s place for a felters weekend. Another friend Susan came on Friday to felt with us. It is so much fun to spend a week end with other people that love to felt.

I wanted to make a new little purse to use at shows. First I did a black one with a nice blue silk inside and a pocket. For the design on the flap I balled up some peices of orange silk and wound them up with thread to keep them in a ball.

silk balls on bag

I used a piece of black prefelt to cover them.  Then some silk roving to make them look more like a swirl. I used a scrap of commercial prefelt but you could make a piece of your own. Once it was dry I cut the tops off the raised  peices to reveal the bright colour underneath.

black bag finnished

This is the inside with the pocket and you can see I added an orange nuno swirl that is hidden by the front flap.

black bag finnished inside

Black is great but I decided I needed something brighter as well so I went with a multi coloured roving in orange.

orange bag layout

I added a pocket to this one too. Here you can see I forgot to add soap to the water and  it sits on the wool in beads. I think its a cool picture.

water on bag pocket

I used the flat glass “marbles” that they sell for decorating instead of silk balls this time. You can really see the out line of the marbles on the inside of the flap

orange bag inside orange bag finished uncut

I made a long snake to use as a strap. It is long enough to wrap around my waist or use as a shoulder bad depending on what I am wearing. I will put some grommets in the ends and 2 on the back to thread the rope through.

orange bag with snake  The holes I cut to reveal the marbles are not very big. I think I will probably enlarge them.  I will post a picture when the grommets are in and the holes are bigger.

I will show you more form our felting weekend in my next post.

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Fingerless Mitt Class in February

I am teaching at the Ottawa Valley Weavers and Spinners Guild
red fingerless mitts 2
 Fingerless Mitts, Cuffs or Wrist Warmers
Feb 22 (Saturday) – Wet Felting—
Description: Learn basic wet-felting techniques while keeping your wrists stylishly warm. Make a pair of wet felted cuffs that can be embellished in many ways. Keep your hands warmer but still allow full mobility for knitting , spinning or weaving or texting.
Your cuffs can be small and discrete or big and bold!
Prerequisite: None
Class Size: not more than 6
Time: 10am-3pm Level: Beginner
Cost: $40 members, $50 non-members Materials fee: $10
please contact the workshop coordinator to register: workshops@ovwsg.comfingerless mitt blue 1 fingerless mitt flowered 1
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Last Show of the Season

Last Saturday and Sunday I did the last show of the season. It is usually a good show but it snowed and there was freezing rain. The driving was terrible. So Not so great a show. It was very slow but some crazy people did come out and I made a little money. On the up side I now have a head start on next years felting so less work for me.

Here is what my booth looked like.

booth one booth three booth two

There were other great booths there too.

ofm 1 ofm 2 ofm 3 ofm 4 ofm 7OFM christmas 1 ofm 6

Christmas day was busy and lots of fun but in the middle of making the gravy my daughter and niece decided I needed more colour for the day.

christmas hairHair is fiber… right?

I hope everyone is having a great holiday and you are enjoying friends, family and fiber. Now I am off to the store to return a broken present.

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The Show

I had a great show. It was busy all weekend. Many people said it was there first time attending.  They really liked it. They liked that it wasn’t a huge show with hundreds of vendors. They were impressed by the quality and variety of the work for sale.

We did have some demo space and they were selling tickets on a raffle that supports our classes.

great wheel selling tickets

There where 3 other felters there. They do mostly needle felting.

nancy

wendoride

Of course there was more than just felt at the sale.

laurie linda and judy rug hooking weavingbrooms

These brooms where beautiful. I think I would have to clean my house before using one though. Might be easier to become Wiccan.

Sadly I did not take a picture of my booth. The fingerless mitts did prove to be popular. So that was my weekend.  My feet where very tired at the end. And then of course we had to pack it up and take it home. My son Colin was a great help both for set up and take down. He is a good packer so everything is packed up the and into the van with room to spare.

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