POST ART CAMP - REWORKING FELTED PIECES

Continuing my report of girlfriend art camp......

The more I looked at my felted bowls the more critical I became.  We are in the midst of another snow storm....as good an excuse as any to hunker down in the studio and see if I can improve them.

 Though this photo doesn't really show just how wrinkled and thin the bottom of this bowl was......trust me....it was not good.

 There may be other ways to accomplish a do-over.....however, since I'm a beginner I chose needle felting to slowly add small strands of wool roving....building up the layers inside the bowl as I worked.

 Those fibers migrate through the layers so occasionally I had to needle felt from the bottom side to even it out.

 The piece was now better but rather fuzzy and still not as firm as I believed it could/should be.  So I wet it with hot water, lots of soap and rubbed/scrubbed until it felt and looked better.

 That was followed by a good rinse in hot water, then shocking it in cold.  It's now reshaped and better....though as you may notice....some of the fibers haven't flowed up the sides of the inside.  Without a camera flash, it isn't noticeable. So, now it's drying....

This bowl was also reworked by wet felting.  It is now much firmer and stronger....the shape is better too......  Both will most likely be beaded.

Next came the flat landscape piece which was reworked by needle felting.  

         
The edges still need some reshaping......which I'll do with a bit more wet felting.  Though I had planned to bead it, instead it may just be mounted on a canvas covered frame.

So I guess my 'happy dance' time hasn't quite arrived yet, stay tuned..... 

ART CAMP CONTINUED

Another day we played with wet felting flat pieces using both wool roving and prefelt batting.  Because the batting is thick to start with, the process of developing the layers of wool goes a bit faster.

 I decided to try to create a scenic composition, starting with a base of yellow and blue prefelt batting.  Those layers were topped with various colors of wool roving.

 It's clear the roving strips should have been much narrower.  As you can see, even in this beginning stage of the felting process......it's spreading out way too much.

 This is what I ended up with.   It's about 9" x 11".  For sure I'm going to see if I can rescue it by doing some needle felting, embroidery, and beading.  

 I think this was Sue's....her first try and I love it.

We had a guest join us one day - a neighbor of Nan's who jumped right in and created this fun piece.

Another drying outside with rocks holding it down may have been made by Nan.

 Nan was able to keep some interesting texture on this one during the felting process.

AZ 2015 GIRLFRIEND ART CAMP

A couple of years ago a friend invited me to visit her 'winter' home in AZ.  That short girlfriend visit has evolved into an annual Jan. or Feb. event.  We now call it 'art camp' and a few more friends have been added to the mix.

This year we decided to make felted bowls.  Now, I'm certainly NOT an expert, having made only 2 before, but we dug in and had such an enjoyable time.

 Sue has sandwiched a thin circular plastic resist between layers of wool roving and is beginning the felting process.

 Nan is at the same stage.....netting covering the wet wool as soapy water and friction from bubble wrap slowing mats the fibers together.

 Here's my piece.

 When sufficiently felted, a hole is cut through one side and the resist is removed.

 A LOT more shaping and rubbing is required to obtain a smooth, firm finished vessel.  When satisfied with the look, the bowls are left in the sun to dry.  You may be able to see I have a long way to go to perfect this process.  The inside of this bowl is still more wrinkled than I'd like.  I'm pretty sure I can wet it again and work some more to remove them.  Any felters out there that care to guide me with their thoughts???  It'd be appreciated.

 Nan achieved a really great 'first bowl'!

 Here's the result of our first day.  Each of these bowls were made using identical resist circles.....what a surprising difference in their shapes.

.....and a closer look.  I will probably add further embellishments to mine......perhaps beads and/or decorative threads/yarns.

DESERT COMET

Working on a piece this small....with such a heavy focal embellishment was a bit of a challenge. Physically it required mounting on a canvas covered frame to support the weight.  Visually, there wasn't really room to add other design elements. 

However, there is a need for small pieces to tuck on a stand on a table, or fit onto an odd shaped wall space and I hope to create future designs.

So....here's the completed piece shown in my last post.

DESERT COMET

7" x 5"  © 2015

NFS

Deconstructed screen printed wool, hand embroidered, and bead embellished.

WORKING SMALL

 My stash has numerous smallish pieces of deconstructed screen printed wool (dress quality material that wouldn't felt, but shrunk sufficiently to be sturdy enough to work with.)

 This design was created using a 'stone' pattern kitchen sink mat as the resist and screened with two colors of thickened dye.

 I've talked about this many times....but in case you are a new reader.....I always stabilize my wool felt prior to stitching.  Pellon Lightweight Sew-In Interfacing is my first choice.  Here I've marked two sets of guidelines that will help with the design placement for this piece that will be mounted on a 5" x 7" canvas covered wood frame.

Fast forward a bit.....I've attached a beautiful fused glass cabochon with beads, (a gift from my generous friend Nanette who is a fabulous fiber artist).  Due to the small size of this piece, only simple hand embroidery was added to provide texture.  

An overview:  the screened portion is appx. 15" sq.  I've retained the surrounding wool to make it easier to secure in a QSnap frame for the handwork.

Further embellishing is going to be done on the cabochon, so until that's complete, I'll hold off adding any other motifs.

SUNRISE AT THE MARSH - NEW WORK

In September 2014, our Fiber Junkies group spent a day over-painting completed or half-completed projects using diluted house paint.  The ole' "it can't get any worse approach" for work that wasn't satisfactory the first time around.

We have a tendency not to stick with our designated themes......so when Judy brought out some plain lightweight canvas to share....I created this.  The background is house paint and the reeds were done with metallic acrylic paint.

 It's been a time consuming project....great for someone like me who enjoys evening hand stitching projects.  My plan called for filling the entire background  with simple straight stitches, consisting of two strands of embroidery floss (often different colors) in the needle.

 I blogged about the painting process here and again here.  However, I didn't keep track of how long the stitching took. 

  Does it matter?  However I can say it was quite awhile!  For instance this photo was taken Jan. 10, 2014....but who's counting?!?

 Because I always secure my work in a QSnap frame when hand stitching.....some of the acrylic paint flaked off during the process.

Mixing up a similar color using several paints and reapplying wasn't a big deal.  Because of the weight of all the embroidery....I decided to machine outline stitch the reeds so the work would be securely attached to the backing. The pieced was now quite thick, so rather than mounting onto a canvas frame as I had planned, it was finished with narrow hand-dyed binding. (see below)

SUNRISE AT THE MARSH -  14.5" X 12.5"  © 2015

 AVAILABLE HERE

Hand embroidered painted cotton canvas.

Check out what others have been creating this week:  Off The Wall Friday, Whoop, Whoop Friday, Crazy Mom Quilts, and Richard and Tanya Quilts.

FIBER JUNKIES FEBRUARY MEETING

Our Fiber Junkies meeting day is always one I look forward to each month.

We have made paper-fabric several times and were eager to spend another day playing with paper napkins, tissue paper, and other assorted paper images. It's a simple process.....torn paper is placed onto a fabric base that is 'painted' with diluted white glue.  Another layer of glue is painted over the paper...and left to dry.  Ta-da.....the result is a sheet of rather stiff fabric backed paper that can be utilized in a variety of ways.  Here I've used a wavy rotary cutter to divide several larger sections into various shapes and sizes to decorate a blank note card and some gift tags.

 Denny was working with a 'time' theme...she's in the process of working from the center out....

Here's her completed piece.

Judy incorporated some garment pattern tissue paper into her design....loved that idea.

Kate's purposely designed hers with smaller pieces to achieve a finished product that looks just as great when cut into smaller sections.

This is mine......it ended up looking VERY Easter egg like.  In an effort to reduce the stiffness and bulk of the finished piece, I tried a new approach this time.  Instead of working on cotton fabric, I used 'soil separator cloth'.  I learned about this very thin, but strong plain white material from Judy. She gets it in the plumbing department at Home Depot.  I got mine at Lowe's....which is not the same.  The kind I bought has little dots on it......not very usuable for printing.  BUT...it worked great here..... a very good thing as I have a LOT of this stuff.

 Our show and tell was awesome......here's a edited look.  This is a scarf Denny created in a vat discharge dye workshop.  She was over the moon with this new approach. The technique involves discharging the color of fabric with a design and then replacing with a new color.  (Similar to working with DeColourant)

 And this is where it gets brilliant......she created her design using a wood burning tool - etched into a piece of insulation material (Styrofoam like)...what a great way to make a print block.

Here's Denny's sample piece, made while learning this vat discharge dye method. I'll be sure to share more about this (new to us)....technique when our group has time to explore it.

WARNING - NOT FIBER RELATED

Okay....sorry...here's another fill in post as none of my fiber projects are at a point I can yack about at the moment.  So.....read on or not.....this is another part of my life...(hummmm whether I like it or not....)  'the husband' has a passion for a specific type of car racing.  He doesn't race himself...but follows closely. 

 We've gone to the Rolex 24 Hour Race for probably 14 years in a row......learning the tricks of how to get a good parking place in the Porsche Paddock has helped ME to be more comfortable.  Did I say this race was 24 hours?  So when it gets dark and cold.....I can sit in the car.....even if that means we have to arrive no later than 6:15 AM!!  Thankfully, we do not spend the night in the car.....but I can admit I'd like to go back to the hotel for the night sooner than 'the husband'.

We follow Porsche racing teams and were disappointed to see one of our favorite drivers, Patrick Long (an American....unusual in this sport) standing alongside his car in the garage during the race.  Though the photo doesn't quite show it.....it felt like being at a wake......clearly the mechanical issues were big and likelihood of returning to the race were small.

Fiber process coming real soon.....tx's for sticking with me.

SOY WAX RESIST FABRIC PROJECT....QUIT OR KEEP GOING?

Normally my procedure is to wait until projects are completed before composing a post.  This allows a better overview of the piece.  However, all 3 pieces I've been working on are soooo time consuming that I've found myself 'filling in' with non-fiber related posts.  So, I'm jumping the gun here.  

I RARELY, and I mean rarely do not finish something I start, but this one....I'm just not sure if it's worth continuing.  I'd love to hear your opinion....that is if you can even formulate one with so little of the design developed.

In the fall, Fiber Junkies had a play date using soy wax resist.  If you care to know more.....click here and here to read my posts.  This piece began as an appx. 15" square of solid goldish/yellow silk noil.

A landscape theme seemed to fit the design, so I sketched 3 mountains and began to hand embroider a basket weave pattern on the first.

Good grief....this took a loooonnnng time!  I thought the secondary image of the background lines would be interesting....but I'm now thinking they are distracting.  Two other shades of green have been selected for the remaining mountains.....stitching a different pattern on each.  

I guess I could start one and see how I like it......but maybe I should just reconsider.  Maybe remove all that handwork and perhaps 'scribble' stitch with the sewing machine....or hide it in the closet as is until I forget about the whole thing!?!??  

WHAT SUPER BOWL?!?

Bitter???  Probably....but our hope for the Packers to be in the Super Bowl is now as fuzzy and distant as this helmet.  Of course there is always next year.

ME???  Nope......I couldn't care less which team wins....both have shown such unsportsmanlike behavior!

So....Instead I'm binge watching season 4 of Nurse Jackie......now there's enlightenment for you......