BLOG 209

 

Continuing with the felting journey, I many have bags of fibres, threads, wool and ribbon which I have accumulated over the years and rarely used. So I felt that another useful exercise would be to make some reference samples for myself.

                                  Wool tops

                             Needle felting

                   Controlled placement of colour

                   Silk and Angelina fibres on wool

                                 Wool and threads

                            Scrim on velvet

                                 Fibres and silk RS

 

                               Fibres and silk WS

                                       Threads

                                 Working samples

                   Felting with different base layers

 This journey of discovery has been very enlightening. The samples will be stored with the felting machine when not in use, so that I can refresh my memory of the effects that I have and can achieve.   Now I want to am see how detailed I can be when I am creating a felt picture. My first try was by hand but I soon went back to my felting machine.

           Still life on batting and hand felting tool

                   Still life and machine felting

                       Still life with cherries

And what have I learned this week?

Some threads and fibres are much easier to blend than others.

The hand felting tool was useless when working the fibres onto a batting layer as it was too closely woven and the tool wasn’t man enough for the job. So an open-weave base layer is essential if I am going to use one.

I still prefer the WS of a needle-felted item and will need to experiment to see whether it is possible to add fibres to the WS, perhaps with netting placed next to the machine to control the fibres.

In the meantime, I am about to start wet felting. I have read loads of information and watched umpteen tutorials on the computer, watch this space!

 ASIDE: Some of us are wrapped up in the Commonwealth games and are really enjoying the spectacle. My favourite part though was the delight and happiness of the weightlifter from Kiribati in the S. Pacific. He won a gold medal for his nation, the first that had ever been won. And what a delight he was, singing and smiling with pure joy. I lived for 2 years on Tarawa, the main island of Kiribati, when I was 21 and he reminded me just how lucky I was with my VSO placement there and how fortunate I was to be amongst these gentle majestic people.