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Foxgloves inspired by another watercolour artist came next.

 

                      Background

 This time I decided to form the flowers separately as seen below.

 

                              Sample foxglove

 A bit of needle-felting onto a piece of foam followed. It was easy to lift them and drop them into place on the background.

                          Sequence on foam

                    Foxgloves un-felted

I rather liked the picture at the un-felted stage but not after felting. The background appeared to be too fussy and the foxgloves seemed lost. Perhaps some hand/machine stitching would help.

                         Foxgloves felted

As I am still trying to find a method which suits me, I tried another way of working. I made a felted background using a wet-felted method but then decided to work a rooster independently. I have hand needle-felted fibres onto netting before to create flowers and I was able to peel them off and drop them into place before completing the wet-felting process. I decided to use my machine to felt this time and thought I was doing a good job; I liked what I had created.

                      Background with rooster

However, when I tried to peel the fibres off the netting it proved impossible. They were all mashed up together (this comes from the department of the bleeding obvious!!).

                          Reverse of netting

 I positioned the rooster onto the felted background ready to needle-felt more fibres over the top to hide the netting …… and at this stage I began to wonder why I am bothering!! People have wet felted in a particular way for centuries, why is it that I think that I can come up with a method that is entirely different. In my defence, I have said in previous blogs that I much prefer the look of the felt at the fluffy stage; it becomes much flatter and dense after the wet-felting process. So I think I have been trying to create a fluffier foreground (rooster) to go on a flat felted background. It isn’t going to work and takes far longer than the normal wet-felting process but I suppose I needed to satisfy my curiosity. Back to the drawing board!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                  Unfinished picture

And, in the sure and certain knowledge that you can’t keep a good quilter down, here is my next project on the theme of  .… And what do you do with a pile of fabric? …… you make a quilt!! We have just had a room decorated and we have ordered a new bed so I can’t resist making a new quilt to go on it. I like scrap quilts and this one will be more ‘controlled’ in that it will be based on two colours, blue and beige. It is an easily constructed version of the ‘Lady of the Lake’ pattern and I will be showing you how to do it in next week’s blog.

.… And what do you do with a pile of fabric? …… you make a quilt!!

Lady of the Lake

 

 

The curtains and fabric samples

 

 

 

          

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The block