I’ve been working away on the marsh harriers for the last few days and I’m defnitely getting obsessed. I made the prototype in black to help me see the shape and practice my technique. Then I did it in browns with wire in the wings. If that wasn’t enough I’ve done the female twice more since then. Nothing wrong with the finished items I just couldn’t get the size small enough.
On Saturday, I started the birds again. One of my main worries has been the shade of brown to use, every image I look at seems to show it differently. But, at long last, I decided on the shades and got on with it. I cut the wires, blended the colours and needlefelted the shape ready for wet felting. Yesterday I wet felted and finalised the shape of the birds and left them to dry.
This morning I should be attaching them to gloves ready for presenting tomorrow. So, do you think I’m doing that? NO. Instead I’m needlefelting the male some more as I’m not happy with the head shape. I really hope this works because I don’t want to start again. Any more practice runs and I’ll have a flock. Plus, it really does need to be finished and dried today or I’m up the creek without a paddle. Wish me luck, I’ll show you the pictures later.
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I’ve had various projects in mind for quite a while now, one of which was to use up some of the many pieces of beach glass that I’ve collected on my trips to the seaside. So it was obvious really that I’d be inspired by the colours of the sea and by what else you might find there. In an earlier post I showed you seaquest, an item inspired by the sea and recycling a ceramic ball from my garden. Below you’ll see the spiral.
I don’t know if you can see but some of the glass is ridged, coloured or has other patterns in it. Because glass can’t be rolled up (it’d pierce the felt) the whole piece was created just by rubbing. I laid out four layers of white fibres, put in the glass then laid 2 layers of white over the top plus the final carded layer you see above. It’s a substantial piece which I intend to hang outdoors.
These are just two of the finished pieces, I’m now working on a third one inspired by rusty pieces of metal that I also collected from the beach. I wonder what I’ll be inspired to do with the cones, feathers and shells awaiting my attention?
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I decided to have another go at a Marsh Harrier model with wire in the wings. There was no suitable wire in the house so I went to the local florists and chose from within their stock. It’s not a covered wire so the fibres might have slipped off it whilst I was trying to wrap them around. To counteract this I covered the wire with masking tape after twisting them together, it gives the fibres a little grip.
I used a mix of norwegian and merino fibres. the norwegian is very easy to needlefelt and the merino wet felts well. Ths may be the best combination of fibres for me to use as I intend to use both dry and wet felting techniques. Needlefelting allows me to sculpt the shape and place the markings exactly whilst wet felting will consolidate and strengthen the felt.
The wire in the wings has worked very well and shows no signs of piercing the felt, which had been a concern. I’ve improved the shape and the size is right. I need to fatten the body out and shape the beak more but I believe the next bird might be a finished article.
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I taught a felt picture workshop for the Yorkshire Alpaca Group on Saturday and they made some great pictures. It was a lovely warm and welcoming group, we had a lot of fun.
They all have alpaca fibres for the backgrounds and some are wholly alapca. Others have been decorated with a few merino fibres to experiment with colour.
Some of the pictures also have cotton and wool threads incorporated.The seascape above has silk cocoon added.
Some of the pictures have quite specific shapes on them, which were achieved by laying the fibres on in the correct position or, use of pre-felts which allow you to get nice clean edges to shapes.
Above left was modelled to create a low relief effect and I just love the fantasy bird. Lots of varied pictures for inspiration.
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I don’t know what it is about me and felt birds, remember the Curlew Diaries?, but I now have two more felt birds to make. This time it’s a commission to produce a pair of birds, Marsh Harriers to be exact. They’ll be used as educational aids and I need to ensure they’re the right colourations for the male and female Marsh Harriers. Fortunately they’re not full size, they’re about 1/3 actual size with a wingspan of 14″ (35cm). During the breading season the Marsh Harriers perform an aerial dance and the felt birds I make will be attached to gloves so that the dance can be replicated.
It’s a different technique to felting around a mould as these birds will be solid wool throughout. Some years ago I made a white fantasy bird i.e. it doesn’t look like a specific breed, by wet modelling the fibres. Beside it you can see my first attempt at a Masrh Harrier.
There’s quite a lot wrong with the prototype but the angle of the wings and overall size is quite good. The more observant amongst you will have noticed that the bird is black and Marsh Harriers are not. I made it in black because it allowed me to focus on technique and enables me to see the shape without being distracted by colouration. It was also a good way of practising wet modelling.
One of my concerns over the finished birds is how strong the wings will be. They will need to retain the wing shape in flight and not go droopy. The prototype has poven that the wings will need reinforcement in the form of a hidden wire. The next step is to make a second model wired and with some colour and I’ll show you the results here.
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I’ve had in my mind to create more felt to use outdoors but also for it to be inspired by the outdoors and to incorporate found objects where possible. The first piece (below) I’d been thinking of for quite some time. It’s based on a ceramic ball which I bought 3 or 4 years ago for the garden. It was a little too pale but I thought it would weather in. It didn’t and each time I spotted it I was offended as it always seemed to stick out rather than blend in. What better to do with it then, than to cover it in felt.
It was/is my intention to replace it in the garden. I was inspired by the sea colours of the fibres I recently blended and decided that it would be perfect for this project. Changing the shape slightly and breaking the silhouette was also high on my list so as I ruminated about the sea, I was inspired by thoughts of limpets, sea anemones and waves.
I’ve used different coloured layers of fibres in the felt so that I can cut into it at the end and peal back some leaf shapes. This will further change the shape and reveal a very nice purple and, if memory serves me, a lime green.To create shapes under the felt I made some large felt balls and cut them in half. You can see that I glued them onto the ball with a hot glue gun but as soon as I started to work with the wet felt, they dropped off. In the end, I secured them with a couple of stitches just to hold them in place whilst I worked on the rest.
The wiggly pieces (sea anemones to my mind) on top are just rolls of felt with pipe cleaners in the centre. I decided to use the pipe cleaners for two reasons. Firstly, so I could rebend them into any shape I wanted should I be bored whilst in the garden and secondly, to ensure that if they get soaking wet they won’t just go floppy on me. The waves are represented by the ridges around the ball. Some of the larger ones I stitched in to help me hold them in place, the rest were just moulded in as I went along.
This project has worked out very well, I’m pleased with it and have called it Seaquest. There are still two questions to be answered though:
1. Do I keep it indoors or put it back out in the garden? I really can’t decide
2. Do I cut into it and reveal some of the colours underneath? I might just have to live with it as it is for a while longer.
If you fancy bringing the outdoors into your life, I’m running a workshop on Saturday 24th April where we’ll explore incorporating items like shells, pine cones, pebbles and beach glass. It’ll be a fun day.
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I had a great day yesterday working with some lovely people discovering wet and dry felting techniques for making jewellery. Although there are no pctures, as yet, of the beads made up into necklaces I thought you’d like to see the fabulous range of flowers they made.
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Whenever I teach a workshop I make an item as a way of demonstrating technique. Often, I don’t finish them on the day as I’m busy assisting people, so I recently decided to have a finishing day and thought you’d like to see the results.
As you can see I liked the simple design of this bag so much I repeated it. Rather than a flap I created two rolls to become the fastening. They might be quite interesting beaded as well.
The slippers below are made of Norwegian and hand dyed Swaledale fibres. It’s quite a hairy mix but it works very well for slippers as both fibres are so hard wearing. I enjoyed stitching into them even though they are a slightly difficult shape for that.
I’ve been working on items for my Bringing the Outdoors In workshop which I hope to show you soon.
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I’m not feeling full of sunshine at the moment so imagine my surprise and delight to receive this award from Tracy at Fatcat Felt, it’s brightened up my day. The sunshine award is awarded to bloggers whose positivity & creativity inspires others in the blog world.
The rules for accepting the sunshine award are:
(although you should feel free to ignore these rules and just enjoy the award!)
- - put the logo on your blog or within your post
- - pass the award onto 12 bloggers
- - link the nominees within your post
- - let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog
- - share the love and link to the person from whom you received this award
my 10 nominees (I’ve already ignored one rule) are:
Abigail Thomas Betz White Nicola Brown
Felt Alive Felt by Zed Hawthorntime Lorraine Rigby SewMamaSew Tastykaeru Wildly Woolly
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Workshops February 10th, 2010
The slipper workshop was great fun with some really lovely items made. You can see them on my pages.I taught a small group on Saturday, they made handbags and the youngest participant was only nine but she put a fabulous dog’s face on the bag. Yesterday I taught another felt picture workshop with some really stunning pieces produced. I’ll display pictures as soon as I have them. It seems to have been quite a busy period and it’s always so nice to see what people produce.
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