a life of felt

Archive for March, 2010

Beach glass spiral

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

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?

Tags: beach glass, felt, recycling, wall art
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Harrier’s Progress

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

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.

bird 001

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.

bird6

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.

Tags: 3D, bird, felt, marsh harrier, wet felt
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Alpaca Pictures

Monday, March 1st, 2010

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.