Felted accessories, our Friday workshop with Lyda Rump

Yesterday morning I drove Lyda back to the airport and after a quick call to Ikea, McDonalds (a girl’s got to have some junk food ocassionally doesn’t she??) and the library in Carlow I returned home to Clasheen ready for a hot bath and bed.  I am physically tired but mentally exhilarated after our weekend workshops and I am so looking forward to getting silly household chores out of the way so that I can start laying out some samples for my newest felt project.  I still have to finish fulling my complex felt sculpture but that is on hold for a couple of days until I get the house tidied and the well (STILL no water of my own) back in proper working order.  Now on to the ‘Felted Accessories’ workshop with Lyda on Friday.

We started the morning oohing and aahing over some of Lyda’s beautiful scarves and inventive felt jewellery.  These fun pieces of jewellery gave us the freedom to discover how different colours, fibres and fabrics combined together without the stress of laying out a bigger project and it was very satisfying to have a gorgeous felt accessory at the end of each experiment! 

Gold threaded fabric, turquoise beads and felt necklace strung on rubber cord

Lyda encouraged us to incorporate artifical fabrics into our layout and these had some amazing results in the finished felt, you either loved each piece or you hated it, no middle ground!  During the morning I suddenly remembered that I had a large artificial fabric wrap donated to me by a friend to repurpose and the metallic weaving combined with black was perfect to cut up into pieces to see what the result would be if it were felted into a background of short fibred merino.  As you can see from the picture on the left it formed a good bond with the wool fibres and crinkled nicely during the felting process!  I thought  it was interesting the way the mixed fibres in the weave affected the finished shape.  My lay out of wool and fabric for this piece was square but as I felted them together they shrank very much more in one way than the other.  This ended up as an interesting twisted rectangle shape which I further embellished with turquoise stones and strung on a black rubber tube.  My brief to myself over the weekend was to try our new things, to stitch or bead some work and to complete some projects and not leave them on the long finger for finishing later, whether you like this piece or not it is finished and it is beaded!

Argh, I am so annoyed and frustrated because when I uploaded this post for some reason the second half of my writing and the image to accompany it was deleted.   I don’t know what actually happened and unfortunately I have to rush to the bank so don’t have time to write any more right at this minute.  I will however leave you for the second time, this time with a picture of my merino, stone, fabric and bead pendant minus the longer and more instructive description! 

Beaded felt and stone pendant

 

Wonderful workshops with Lyda Rump underway!

Sorry about the lack of posts since last Tuesday, I am TOTALLY engrossed in Lyda Rump’s visit and our wonderful felting workshops!  Lyda arrived from the airport on Wednesday and Thursday was spent together visiting Cushendale Woolen Mills and Kilkenny city.  In the late afternoon friend and Irish feltmaker Maureen arrived and the rest of the day was spent chatting and having a ’show and tell’ of Lyda’s felt!  The following morning another felting friend Cristina arrived to stay and then we were all set for more friends and participants to come for the felted accessories workshop.

Gerd's glam brooch

Here are just two pictures from the first day’s workshop to tantalise you, full report and loads of pictures to follow over the next few days when I have time to stop and catch my breath! 

Detail from Maureen's neckpiece

Wow, brilliant felting workshop in Mullingar last Sunday!

Thanks to Anna for organising such an artistic and fun group of people for the beginner’s felting workshop in Mullingar on Sunday.  I am going to finish blogging about my large felt sculpture but until I get time to finish shaping and fulling the piece after Lyda Rumps’s vist and workshops this week the next stage of documenting the process will have to go on hold!  For the Mullingar workshop we were lucky enough to be able to use the facilities at the Educate Together primary school, in exchange I facilitated a felting morning for the sixth class pupils on Monday, more about that and a picture later. 

Atsuko's piece prior to wetting out

After I had explained the basic felting principles and shrinkage rates etc. participants decided what flat felt project they wanted to create.  We had several felt wallhangings, two pairs of stitched slippers, one folded and stitched bag to match a new coat, one experimental felt lampshade (which made a stunning but delicate light felt wrap!) and then one interesting felt pod which was designed to be a sun glasses case but could in fact be purly decorative or used to protect a variety of small treasures.

I wanted everyone to work at their own pace and in their own style, the finished work far exceeded my imagination and it was amazing to think that this was actually a beginner’s workshop and not an advanced class!  Anna had said that Sunday’s participants were all artistic, check out the full batch on photos on Flickr and I think we will have to ammend that to VERY artistic!!!

The following morning I was back at the school, the full compliment of 24 sixth class pupils were in attendance and felted an OUTSTANDING wallhanging, there must be something in the water in Mullingar!  This class will be the first to graduate since the school was opened six years ago so for them it was an exciting opportunity to create a lasting memento which will now be embellished and hung for posterity somewhere in the public area of the building.  Each pupil created a beautiful and individual piece of felt to signify something personal and of meaning to them.   They then decided how we would lay out the work and the mammoth task started of laying out a white wool background and felting the whole piece together.  Realistically this was a very ambitious project for anyone nevermind 11 to 13 year olds who had never handled raw wool in their lives before!  Interestingly one of the pupils was from Mongolia and as a younger child had seen her grandmother felting, brilliant to think that she can move to another part of the world and actually participate in the process as a united class activity. 

AMAZING large felt wallhanging!

Because of parental consent etc. I am not going to put up pictures of the pupils actually making the hanging (they will follow if all the parents are happy to give permission), here is the completed hanging however and I am so pleased looking back through the pictures at all we achieved on a cold and frosty Monday morning!  Triona (their class teacher) is now going to work with the pupils embellishing the hanging with stitches, beads and various found objects before adding a pole and hanging the work for all the other staff, pupils and parents to enjoy.  Although we didn’t measure the finished work at a rough estimate is measures 4′ X 6′, each individual pupils work is almost 1′ square!

Pictures of felt sculpture in progress

Not much writing today due to time constraints, plenty of pictures!

Three layers of resist stitched together

 

One side removed to create five sided resist.

Laying and wetting out the various sides

 

Fiddly to lay out at the top and bottom of the stitching.

Opening the felt package to remove the resist

 

I removed the resist from the bottom centre.  This demonstrates why the stitching needs to be secure, you don’t want the resist to have disintegrated by this stage!

Resist removed

 

Now for the hard work fulling and shaping the felt! 

More pictures to follow in the next post!

Mixed results for first day working larger piece

Yesterday I started working on my first larger sculpture of 2010.  As mentioned before I have planned various shapes and sizes over the last few weeks but luckily I didn’t have enough laminate underlay (to use as a resist) to start working on something particularly big yesterday!  I decided to work on a modified shape born out of the sculpture I made last summer in Denmark and set to making the resist and weighing out the wool.  For the type of work that I wanted to create a symmetrical resist shape is best.  You cut your shape several times and then stitch the various layers together down the middle line using strong thread.  For arguments sake just imagine three circles stitched together down the diameter, if you fanned the resulting semicircles out you would have six sides to create your sculpture with.  Next you prepare six dry circles of wool weighing each layer to ensure the felt will be even, then you start laying and wetting your wool flipping the semicircles as you go until all the various surfaces are totally encased.  For my piece yesterday I worked on a modified figure of eight lying sideways, the curves on the bottom edge were a bit extended and there was a small protrusion on the outside top edge.  It took me a while to prepare the stitched resist and as I was working I decided to remove one of the ‘leaves’ to leave me with a five sided template.  I decided to use natural white and apple green Icelandic wool with some green and white silk hankies and throwsters waste to add detail and surface interest.  It took several hours to get the resist stitched and the five layers of wool prepared and dry felted lightly to help the fibres come together, these were then stacked like pancakes in preparation for covering the resist and wetting out the wool.  To be continued …….. with some pictures!

Lyda Rump’s complex bag workshop update

I have had several enquiries about the possibility of participants coming for only one day of the complex bag workshop and not both.  As there are still spaces available on either day I have decided to throw it open and accept people for either Saturday 6th or Sunday 7th February if they so wish. 

Surface detail revealing glass nuggets

Obviously because the bags are complex it will not be possible to plan and complete your bag in just one day but it would be possible to plan, design and get the bag to a stage where you could take it home with you to finish at your leisure.  If anyone would like to take me up on this option please either ring me or email asap, I would really like to get everything sorted out before I head to Mullingar this weekend for my felting workshop with Anna.

Patsy the plumber was here again this morning and the bad news is that I won’t have my own water supply for another couple of days although he has rigged me temporarily from a tap in my neighbour’s yard.  The heat is back in action however and I have been able to run the washing machine at last and fill the water tank in the attic which is a big relief as I can have a bath again this evening!  I can also get back to felting now with a vengeance and although the day is flying by with things to catch up on I hope to make a nuno scarf later in the afternoon and then get stuck into my new large felt sculpture tomorrow.

No heat now and planning a large felt sculpture

Agh, now my heat has gone this morning so no water at all plus no heat today = no felting until services resume on Tuesday with the planned arrival of the plumber yet again!  I did manage to carry up enough water from my neighbours yesterday morning to use in the experimental nuno felting workshop (all went well) but have decided to put some time into planning a LARGE felt sculpture over the next two days and not drag tonnes of water up the hill and wear myself out with all the effort!! 

Small felt sculpture

 

For this large sculptural piece I am going to expand on the technique I learnt from amazing Icelandic felter Anna Gunnarsdottier at the large felt sculpture workshop I attended last July at the Felt in Focus Symposium in Denmark.  As you can see, the small green and maroon sculpture which I made just after Christmas is three sided and by using Anna’s technique of multiple resists stitched together it is possible to get huge finished pieces with multiple sides, the only limit is how large you can visualise the finished sculpture to be!  I want to make a submission for Sculpture in Context again and also work towards something unusual and creative for the Annual RDS Crafts Competition (Royal Dublin Society).  Anna also showed us how it was possible to mend and repair our three dimensional pieces anywhere they were weak, this has opened up loads of avenues because she really appeared to ‘rescue’ work which previously I would have thought was totally beyond redemption.  By applying this repair technique it means that I can be much more adventures with my shapes than I otherwise might have been so over the next few days I want to plot, plan and challenge myself in preparation for Tuesdays resumption of services and my first large felt sculpture of 2010!

Pictures of the nuno felt wrap/banner and NO WATER again

Yesterday morning was extremely wet and windy, this morning was lovely and bright with wisps of mist on the mountains, neither were great for trying to take any sort of photo with a small digital camera.  However, I know from your comments that at least several of you are looking forward to some shots of the nuno felted wrap (which might actually become a banner) so here goes and please bear with me and the quality of the images! 

Nuno felt wrap/banner against the sky

Firstly I had difficulty finding a suitable branch to hang the felt from especially since the sun and shade was so strong and I was trying to get as clear a shot as possible.  Eventually I decided to just do my best and not worry unduly that the felt is kind of draped and the design is probably not the easiest to see, I’m sure you all get the picture!  Note to myself, scrap the leaves at the edges if repeating this experiment as I am not sure that they really add anything to the finished nuno felt at all.

Detail from nuno felt wrap/banner

I love the open texture of the gauze after all my felting and rolling and you can see in this image a ‘leaf’ on the left hand side which was laid out on this side while the main piece of needle felt from which I cut the design out is actually felted through the gauze from the other side.  This gives a nice bubbly effect to the surface and in fact if I was going to make another piece like this I would only lay my design on one side of the gauze and I wouldn’t add any of the loose ‘leaves’ to the sides either but possibly try some other kind of edging.  At the time I thought that they were a good idea (obviously!) but on reflection they are only a distraction if you want to wear the wrap and don’t do a huge amount if you hang the nuno like a light felt banner.  I do have a couple more pictures on Flickr but if the light is better over the next couple of days I may try and photograph the wrap again this time in it’s entirity.

No water again!  I don’t know what is wrong this time because all seemed to be running smoothly when the plumber left on Wednesday.  However, after one long bath, two machine washes and loads of washing up all in the space of a couple of hours this morning no water came out of either tap and I did want to have everywhere nice and clean for tomorrow morning’s nuno felt workshop.  At this stage I am not going to fuss about it as luckily I do have my heat but I will just have to walk down the lane later today and collect some water to heat up for out felting experiments tomorrow.  Unfortunately I gave my mother her large double handled bucket back yesterday morning so small washing up bowls and lots of trips are all that I can see once more on the horizon! 

Speaking of water have you ever shrunk your favourite jumper in the washing machine by mistake?  If so check out Clasheen Uncut where I go through the 20 minute process (I kid you not) of upcycling an old jumper and turning it into an eco chic and practical shopping bag!

Nuno felt experiment

Weather permitting I will take some photos tomorrow morning of the nuno felt wrap I made recently using cotton gauze as the fabric and some commercially produced needle punched merino as the wool.  This was another experiment I tried out at the start of my water difficulties and although the needle punched sheet was merino and the end result does look very pretty it does not appear to be as soft against the skin as my usual merino fibres would be. 

Cutting out shapes in the needle felt

 

From a design perspective it did work quite well however.  I laid the needle felt on my cutting mat and with a rotary cutter sliced out my design.  I wanted it to be reminiscent of foliage and removed leaf shaped pieces which I then added to the reverse of the gauze at both ends and in selected places along the side.  The cotton gauze that I was using was a gorgeous apple green and I decided to add small oval shapes in several places formed from hot orange, pink and plum coloured merino.  Actually felting the wrap took AGES!  The lay out was quick enough but the time saved by using the needle felt was totally eaten up and overshot by the length of rubbing and rolling I had to do to get the fibres to migrate through the gauze. 

Wetting out the gauze and needle felt wrap

 

The ovals of fibre needed a huge amount of rubbing but this was probably because I almost dry felted them in my hands before laying them out on the gauze.  Eventually however everything came together nicely and after a couple of hours rolling the wrap was felted and finished.  When I take the photos you will see how nice this nuno felted piece looks against the light.  In actual fact I think that with a little bit of adjusting it would make a beautiful panel to hang from the trees although with our ongoing weather conditions here in Ireland maybe that would not be the most practical option!

Don’t forget that if you live anywhere within striking distance of me and would like to experiment making nuno felt I have a 2 hour workshop on at Clasheen, Borris, Co. Carlow this coming Saturday morning!  Please contact me asap to reserve your place.

Large experimental landscape felted at last!

Yesterday I was able to finish the large felt landscape that I had started at the beginning of the adverse weather conditions recently.  You may remember that I had been playing around laying out loads of different fibres and broken up pieces of cobweb felt for my design, it had been languishing for the last couple of weeks damp in my bath!  

Landscape prior to reworking

 

Anyway, here is a photo o f the piece yesterday morning before I got down to re-wetting and fulling the felt.  At this stage it measured approx 85cm X 49cm and you can see that the sky area looks slightly pinkish.

I boiled up a couple of kettles (STILL no heat or hot water!) and immersed the felt into a basin of hot soapy water.  It took a bit of dunking and squishing before the fibres totally absorbed the water but once I was sure everything was saturated I soaped heavily and then rolled the piece firmly using my old bamboo blind.  Because I was aiming for a nice textured surface and didn’t want too even a surface I didn’t roll for too long, just enough to totally felt the piece and once finished the completed landscape now measures 77cm X 49cm. 

The finished landscape

As you can see from this picture of the finished landscape the sky now is white with grey wisps for clouds and extremely pale pink strands of gauze streaking it in places.  It is hard to describe how like the mountains surrounding me these colours actually are.  Where my farmhouse is situated at Clasheen the Blackstairs Mountains  almost enclose me and every morning I am woken up to an ever changing view for inspiration! 

Silk threads highlight the hills

 

The finished landscape is now ready for a new home!  To me it is completed as it is and would be a wonderful reminder of Ireland for a special friend.  I do think however that if there are any needle felters, embellishers or stitchers out there it would also make an amazing base to work your magic on!!  I am going to put the landscape up for sale in my Etsy store as soon as I have had a coffee (internet connection permitting) and am happy to include some extra fibres if anyone would like to play around and embellish the surface some more.