Nuno Differences

Posted on January 28, 2017 by

We’re doing Nuno experiments at the well being centre for the next few weeks. The first week we made pieces with strips of fabric on top of two ‘standard’ layers of Merino tops. There are lots of different fabric strips of various fibres which attach differently. I chose a couple of fabrics I’d used previously-a kind of loopy, open weave scarf with 2 or 3 layers, and a piece of cotton gauze-and a couple of pieces I hadn’t which was a strip of viscose scarf and a strip from a charity shop dress. This is the whole piece:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThey all attached really well. The open weave loopy fabric always has interesting results:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERATop to bottom: Viscose scarf, charity shop dress, cotton gauze. These strips all had similar waves to their edges:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAYou can see on this close up there’s a lot of wool migration, though it’s more visible on the black part of the fabric, and less where the fabric is similar to the wool:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe 2nd piece uses the same sized fabric strips, and a couple are the same: the open weave, loopy scarf, and the purpley viscose scarf. This piece actually started about 50% bigger than the previous one, I laid out the fabric strips first, then added 4 very fine layers of Merino, which probably added up to being finer than 1 ‘standard’ layer of Merino (the average amount that gets pulled off from standard commercial wool tops, laid out you can’t see through it), and not as even. This is the whole piece after felting:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is the back:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe fabric at the top is a piece from a charity shop sari (I showed some dyed recently), it feels like springy crepey chiffon! It created great texture:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe 2nd row is some fabric which was donated, it looks and feels like silk. After felting it looked kind of knitted:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe 4th Row was also a viscose scarf piece, I’ve used it before, but only with thicker layers of Merino. There was one patch which hardly rippled at all:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASo I turned it over to see how the wool was laid out, and there was barely any at all:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI’ve used the pink fabric at the side before too, I don’t know what it is, but it feels very synthetic and looks very 70’s:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIt ripples really nicely though:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe red, yellow, green, black silk I used on the opposite side also rippled really nicely:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERALooking closer you can really see the migration here:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI like this photo, with a little bit of the other 2 silk strips showing, and all looking different:

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Posted in Nuno Felting | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Out of the Box Part 2

Posted on January 26, 2017 by

Last time I showed you a sub set of the Out of the Box Show.  https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2017/01/18/colour-unboxed-by-out-of-the-box/

This time I am going to show you about half of the rest of the show. It was a really big show. Some of the shots are not great but it was so crowded that there were a few that always had someone in front of them and I never got a picture. I made them into a slideshow  so you wouldn’t have to scroll down to far..  If there is any artworks you would like the artist info on let me know I took a picture of all the cards that went with the artworks so I can get the info for you.

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Posted in Fairs and Shows, Inspiration, Mixed Media, Shows, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Stitched Felt Landscape

Posted on January 24, 2017 by

I am a little late this morning in getting this posted. Sorry about that!

Layout

I created a felt landscape last week. I used a variety of fiber from my stash. Many were little bits of leftovers so I’m not sure exactly everything that I used. I did add some of the nylon fiber that Zed sent me into the foreground. It is the really white fiber. I wanted to have different shades of snow and shadow in the foreground.

Stitched Felt Landscape

I then free motion machine stitched a little bit in the background and created the tree in the foreground. It reminds me of a sunrise here in Montana. I love adding the stitching and it really seems to bring the piece to life.

 

Posted in Wet Felting | Tagged | 23 Comments

The Wild Table Runner

Posted on January 22, 2017 by

I have a bin full of yarn.  A lot of it I’ve either dyed or picked up at garage sales or thrift stores.  A majority of it isn’t wool based.  So I thought it would be fun to make something using a variety of these yarns and see how they felted.

It started out to be a pillow cover, but later when I started to lay it out I changed my mind.  Originally, I had a swerving design in mind.  But thought there was too much empty space and the design would probably distort the whole thing. I used two batts of merino and a prefelt over that as a base.

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I added more yarns and moved them apart so they’d have room to create their own design.

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Here are the yarns I used, not necessarily in this order.  Some I used more than once.

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From left to right:

  1. Synthetic ladder yarn
  2.  Synthetic ladder yarn  second color
  3. Decorative synthetic flag yarn
  4. Mohair/metallic
  5. Bamboo
  6. Acrylic yarn
  7. Wool Boucle
  8. Merino slub yarn
  9. Hand dyed thick and thin yarn
  10. Worsted wool
  11. Novelty yarn with nylon, tactel, cotton and lame
  12. Merino slub yarn
  13. Wool roving sold as yarn
  14. Wool/metallic
  15. Peruvian wool
  16. Thick and thin wool yarn commercial
  17. Mohair/metallic novelty yarn

I had some “Riot Eyelash Yarn” I decided to use as an edging.  Which I sewed on using a zigzag stitch after it was felted.  It is aptly named.

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Here it is laid on a white background to show the eyelash edging.

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A few closeups:

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Strangely enough the only one I had to fix after felting was the multicolored acrylic yarn which I’ve used before without a problem.  I had to needle felt it down.  The Peruvian wool also had a few places to tack down, but I think it was because it was so tightly wound the merino prefelt couldn’t grab it as well.  Even the ladder yarn and synthetics seemed to be fairly firm in place.

Here it is on it’s new home a glass coffee table.

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Its fairly dark here and it seems I got a bit of glare from the flash.  What are you working on in the New Year?

 

Posted in Wet Felting | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Orange, Orange, and More Orange

Posted on January 20, 2017 by

After a few more attempts, I managed to get a photograph of the orange piece I’d planned to blog about last time:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI made the piece to sew into a purse/wallet for my friend, but I was concerned some of the fabric wasn’t attached as well as I’d like for something which would get lots of handling, so I made another piece:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI even managed to get a closer pic of this one too:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd this is some of the synthetic embellishments I used:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAInbetween the two large pieces, I made a medium sized piece with the same colour theme, I used less fabric on this piece and more embellishent fibres, especially silk throwster’s waste and silk hankies:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOf course, today is the first bright, sunny day for ages, and I could probably get much better photos now!

Posted in Wet Felting | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

Colour Unboxed by Out of the Box

Posted on January 18, 2017 by

I went to an textile art show this last weekend called Colour Unboxed. It was the works of a group of fiber artists called Out of the Box. Her is a link to their site: www.out-of-the-box.org It is a t a local Textile museum: http://mvtm.ca/exhibitions/  It was a large exhibit so I am going to show it to you in 2 parts. I think the pictures are big enough for you to see them quite well. After each picture is a chart showing which pieces belong to each artist. Each piece is 12 inches x 12 inches.  The group took 3 years to assemble all the colour blocks. If you click the pictures you can see them bigger.  The exhibition runs through Feb 25th 2017.

out-of-the-box-1 out-of-the-box-1a

out-of-the-box-2 out-of-the-box-2a

out-of-the-box-3 out-of-the-box-3a

out-of-the-box-3b This is a close up of part of one of the pieces.

out-of-the-box-4 out-of-the-box-4a

out-of-the-box-5 out-of-the-box-5a

out-of-the-box-6 out-of-the-box-6a

out-of-the-box-7 out-of-the-box-7a out-of-the-box-7b Another close up.

This is just one part of the exhibition, I will show you some more next time. If you are Near Ottawa, Ontario , Canada while it’s on It is well worth the drive out to Almonte.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments

Composition and Design – Focal Point

Posted on January 16, 2017 by

 

Montana Wildflower Wall HangingWe’ve made it through all of the elements of design and today we start with the first principle of design, the focal point. How do you get someone’s attention with your work? Without an audience’s attention, any message or artistic value is lost. To attract the viewer’s eye, a center of interest or focal point is needed. This emphasized element can attract the eye and encourage the viewer to look further.

Ways to achieve emphasis:

form tree sketch

1. By contrast – one element in the design differs from the others – can be contrasting values, contrasting styles within the composition, contrasting shapes or sizes, contrast in color, hard edges vs. soft edges, the actual size of the work itself may draw the eye. This is called emphasis by contrast. The element that contrasts with, rather than continues, the prevailing design scheme becomes the focal point.

star-wars-circle

2. By isolation – one element by being alone, by itself, gets our attention. The contrast is achieved by placement of the focal point in an isolated manner.

value-sample-1

3. By placement – If many elements in a design point to one item, our attention is directed there, and a focal point results.

Bird with Orange Card

4. By content – a human form or any living thing draws the eye, letters or words can give emphasis, the meaning or story behind your work may be the emphasis.

Value Sample 13

5. Absence of focal point – A focal point is not always necessary. You may wish to emphasize the entire surface over individual elements i.e. Andy Warhol or traditional quilts.

The focal Area is roughly 25% of a work of art and should overlap the center of the piece. The placement of this area should be one of the first things you think about when beginning your creation. The rule of thirds says that most designs can be made more interesting by visually dividing the page into thirds vertically and/or horizontally and placing our most important elements within those thirds. Take this concept a step further, especially in photographic composition, by dividing the page into thirds both vertically and horizontally and placing your most important elements at one or more of the four intersections of those lines.

 

Questions to get you started:

Finished Free Motion Stitched Seed Heads

1. How can I use each of the elements of design to create a focal point? Line? Shape? Form? Texture? Color? Value?

2. What happens if the focal point is in the center of the piece? Does this make the piece stronger or weaker? What happens if you crop the piece to move the focal point to a different area?

 

Free Motion Stitching on Felt - Berries

3. After you’ve put in your focal point, stand back and look to see if it catches your eye. Are there other contrasting elements that could enhance your focal point/area?

Fire Painting

4. Looking at other art, ask, where is my eye attracted? What draws it there? What elements did the artist use to develop the focal point?

Painted and Free Motion Stitched Poppy on Felt

5. Can you create a focal point in a composition by contrasting realistic and abstract elements?

Posted in Design | Tagged | 12 Comments