I spent a lovely day on Saturday at my studio in Duckett's Grove helping Andrea felt her first bag with integrated handles and flaps, isn't it wonderful?
While she was working on this I was felting some more beads to combine later in the week with polymer clay pieces, I love the cabbage like swirls in the cut ones.
Yet again I've deleted a post before uploading it from my iPad, I'll get the hang of this Blogsy yet but until then….. darn! What I wanted to share today is a picture of the beautiful felt beads made this morning by my group of parents at the VEC in Carlow. This was our third and penultimate session, next week Nuno felt samples. I'm SO impressed with how productive these ladies have proved to be, our co-ordination Marie has generously allowed participants to bring fibre home to practice with so some amazing pieces have been felted over the last three weeks. After our final session we're going to take pictures of the full body of work, I think that you'll all be amazed how much has been created! For now, here's a picture of todays beautiful swirly beads.
Yesterday was ladies day at the Golf Club and as I only had a couple of hours in the morning to attack a felting project I decided to convert some flat felt samples into smart and colourful Christmas ornaments. Using this great tutorial from Betz White I slashed, manipulated and stitched a large felt ogee. Unfortunately I couldn’t find my tailors chalk (no surprises there!) so it took me a lot longer than it should have to cut the lines. This was a bit frustrating but I didn’t want to make any mistakes and the stitching did compensate somewhat as for once it only took a couple of minutes to get through this dreaded task! The resulting ornament is definitely pretty but until I find my chalk I am just going to string this with some large glass beads and enjoy it hanging in one of the trees in my garden. Any more of these ornaments will just have to wait until I am properly prepared at the slashing stage although I might get inspired to cut a few out from paper as I try and destash my interiors magazines!
I did put up some images of the felt and ceramic necklace on Flickr yesterday forgetting for a minute that they would automatically link through to my Facebook profile so here is a close up for you to see the contrast of felt and ceramic.
Close up of felt, ceramic and organza necklace
Hopefully the intended receipient won’t realise that the necklace is her Christmas present so the surprise will not be spoilt. These large beads are strung on a copper coloured organza and this is an effect that I intend to replicate with a couple more necklaces using some gorgeous vibrant coloured lime ribbon that I brought back from Denmark.
Felt hair bobble
Having routed out some pieces of flat felt my other project yesterday morning was this simple spiky hair bobble. Just get a long piece of felt a couple of inches wide and using a sissors or craft knife cut lines into one long side but not right through to the other side (hope this makes sense!). Starting from one end roll the felt up into a rosette shape stitching a couple of times as you go along. The slashed ends form a funky anenome style design and you could add a brooch back or as I did stitch on an hair elastic to create a fun felt accessory!
As promised here are some pictures of my new style (loosly based on a Lyda Rump design) fabric and felt neckpiece.
Printed silver fabric and black felt bead neckpiece
The scarves that I have used in my first two prototypes are a 20% silk 80% linen mix and the beads are wet felted from some of my gorgeously soft short fibred merino. When I was taking these pictures I thought again how perfect this style would be for anyone who is allergic to wool. The felt beads may be moved around the scarf and never touch the skin therefore anyone finding wool itchy would never come in contact with anything irritable.
Detail of printed fabric and felt bead neckpiece
I formed one long felt bead around a wooden dowel and just before I had finished felting cut the piece into five even pieces. The black beads perfectly compliment the silver printed fabric and I am still deciding if I will add small seed beads to the turquoise neckpiece (pictures on Flickr) or leave it as is, plain and simple. As mentioned before I sewed the ends of the scarf together and covered the join with a felt bead. It would of course be an option not to do this but leave the ends open, this way the scarf could be wound around the neck in the normal manner as many times as wanted leaving the ends free to sit to the front or to the back.
I am off now to have a quick snack for lunch and then set in to a long afternoon felting in preparation for Sunday’s craft fair! Until tomorrow …..
At the end of last week I made two fabric and felt neckpieces, basically a cross between a necklace and a scarf! These were inspired by a piece of Lyda Rump’s that I saw in Denmark this summer and consisted of a long scarf of silk and linen pulled through large felt beads. The two ends of the scarf were sewn together and a felt bead covers them and the whole ensembale may be worn wrapped once, twice or three times (if you have a small head!) around your head. I used my short fibred merino to make the beads so they are exceptionally soft but even if you were actually allergic to wool it would be possible to enjoy the neckpieces as only the silk/linen mix scarf would sit at the back of your neck. As soon as I get a chance I will upload some photos and you can see how simple but effective these are, a perfect present and a great way of combining some artificial fabrics with felt as well!
This week it is all about preparation for the craft fair that I am attending on Sunday. I did mention before that I am only doing the one this year, Carmen is organising it and I really want to support the cause. I have boxed up LOADS of books in my quest to tidy up the house and I am going to bring theses along as well (having of course asked permission) and sell them from beside my stand, hopefully I can make a little extra cash and sort the house out a bit more at the same time! Here are a few details about the event …….
RAHEEN FAMILY RESOURCE CENTE
IS HOLDING OUR 2ND CHRISTMAS FAIR ON SUNDAY
DEC 6 FROM 10 AM TO 16 PM.
Venue: Raheen Community Hall, Raheen,
Clonroche Enniscorthy
This year’s event promises to be bigger and better that last year’s craft fair. The diverse range of stalls include:
Following on from yesterday’s post about Carmen’s great new book ‘Dutch Felt’, I did an internet search this morning and discovered that it is available directly from the publishars Zijdar. When I get a few spare hours (whenever that is!) I am planning on trying out Ria’s ‘Heart rug’ project incorporating raw sheep’s wool, silk fabric and merino fibres amongst others. This looks like the perfect time to try once more some of the gorgeous Jacobs fleece kindly given to me by some neighbours this summer, I will keep you posted!
Orange and grey punched felt necklace
Carmen came over yesterday afternoon and her visit provided an excellent excuse to stop tidying the studio in preparation for the weekend workshop and sit down together and string some felt jewellery. I pulled some of the colourful felt beads that I have made over the last while out of hiding and then spent some time selecting seed beads that would most do the felt justice. I always find it difficult to finish projects like these and definitely it is the little things that make the difference, it was SO much easier to have a drink and a chat while putting some of these items to bed once and for all!
The pictured orange, grey, black, white and hot pink necklace put some of my punched beads to really good use. Normally I would not seperate these type of felt beads with anything, just string them together in a line but for some reason these screamed out to me to use cheery orange seed beads as dividers. I like the effect and went on to make some earrings with the other punched beads that I had in my stash, you can check them out on Flickr and some are already up in my Etsy shop.
Speaking of Etsy, how do you price your work??? I am totally aware of the current financial situation globally and while I don’t want to undervalue what I am making I also definitely don’t want to overprice pieces and make them unaffordable to buy. With this in mind I am constantly comparing dollar prices with euros, hopefully you will agree that $45 (E30.33 at todays exchange rate) is not too expensive for the necklace above, it does have 22 layers of merino in every bead and the felt pad which I punched them from took a full day to make!
Turquoise and coral felt and bead necklace
The other style of necklace that I uploaded today is retailing at $40 (E26.93), I am trying to reflect the time and skill that went into each various piece as well as the artistic merit and uniqueness or sameness of each design. These prices are an online special and only available through my Etsy store. If I am attending a craft fair or other event the prices are a little higher to reflect the extra costs accosiated with participating and travelling to shows.
And finally for today ….. partners are at last assigned for the Clasheen Winter Swap. Many apologies for the week long delay, things are just hectic here and I think that we will extend the posting deadline to accomodate everyone and allay frustrations! There is still plenty of time to get your packages prepared, after all we are trying to destash as well as make a personal gift so hopefully there will not be too much shopping to do.
Punched felt beads
Before I write about the felting I did over the long weekend just let me answer a question that a lot of you have been asking via email. The ridged wooden object pictured beside the washboard in my last post is called a ‘felting mouse’. This is a wonderful hand held tool which I bought from Wollknoll and I find it fantastic for spot fulling all types of felt and great for shaping felt vessels. They sell this hand held style which is so comfortable to use and also a bigger paddle like version with a long wooden handle, I recommend this one!!
Although I didn’t get to felt for as long as I would have liked to over the weekend (things are hotting up for Alan’s local election campaign!) I do have images of a couple of works in progress to show you. One of the pieces that I worked on was the thick felt pad pictured above, I had actually made it at the beginning of last week but only started punching it yesterday evening. I borrowed Carmen’s hollow punch set as it has much bigger punches and so far I have stamped out beads in various different sizes.
These beads will be used in a variety of jewellery projects that I have in mind, unfortunately I need to buy more seed beads as both the yellow and the blue that I have in stock just don’t cut the mustard with the colours of the discs! My main felting project over the weekend was this nuno felted wrap made from some of the gorgeous hand dyed silk chiffon and merino friends from Feltmakers Ireland gave me as a present. The colours are wonderfully subtle, hand dyed graduating shades of golden olive, now I just need to felt a contrasting flower or button to use as a closure. I KNOW that I will wear this a lot! If you check out my Flickr images you can see how textured and subtle this nuno is if you examine the close up image of the wrap.
My arms ache this evening after a long rolling session which seemed to go on forever! I was delighted to get a free day to felt, especially as it was unexpected because I had been meant to play a golf match this morning but my opposition couldn’t make it. Over the last couple of days I have been away attending residential workshops as part of the toursim course I am attending and it was great to get a mental break and back into the creative swing of things! I started the day by ironing and working on the edges of a nuno felt project and then got stuck in to laying out a really thick pad of fibres ‘a la’ Sigrid Bannier. I have spent absolutely hours rolling, heating and rolling again to make sure that the felt is fulled and strong enough to punch into more striped felt beads which I will string over the weekend to make some more fun jewellery. Over the last while I seem never to stay still for very long and I really need to make myself some new accessories that I can wear at all the events that I appear to be going to every week. In the run up to the local elections I only expect this to get more hectic (my partner Alan is running for the Green Party in our local elections which take place at the beginning of June and I am his campaign manager!!) so I better concentrate over the next week or so and get them underway! It is lashing rain at the moment here so hopefully I will get to take some pictures of recent work tomorrow and promise to upload them as soon as I get a minute.
Procrastinator's Challenge!
As a result I have entered Jo-Anne’s give away and Ann’s challenge so here goes with the projects that I want to finish during January ……..
I also placed a large order with Wollknoll this afternoon for the wool that I need for the 2 rug making workshops with Mehmet Girgic. He is making the rug bases in Turkey as we speak and sending the special enormous plastic woven mats that we will be using to roll the rugs in tomorrow. These courses will be such great fun, I am tossing around so many ideas in my head for the two rugs that I intend making (I will be doing both workshops) but have still not settled on any one style yet! We are SO lucky to have a feltmaker with such a worldwide profile travelling here to Ireland that I am amazed more people haven’t confirmed their booking yet, only one week to go!!
Off now to get stuck into those projects!
I ended last night and started this morning by stringing a few more simple but stylish felt necklaces. Some of them were made entirely from felt beads or balls, some were felt and vintage buttons and one was felt with a beautiful hand painted African button as the feature piece. Probably I am putting off starting to tidy my studio but unfortunately (or fortunately as the case may be) I am going to have to get stuck into it in the next half an hour or so. Carmen is arriving just after lunch and I want to do a serious afternoons work, nuno scarves call, so really I need to clear the long table soon if I want to lay the fibres out on it!
I also spent some time setting up a new Flickr group called ‘Clasheen Crafty Swaps’ this morning, check it out and if you have been participating in our Autumn Swap please take the time to join Flickr (if you are not already a member) and upload photos of your swap packages. My image of the amazing painting and other goodies I received from Anna is already there, it is really great fun to see what everybody has sent and received, it just adds another dimension to the swap. For friends who would like to join in the discussions that we will have through the group please feel free to join even if you are not intending getting involved in the swaps. I know that not everybody has the time to engage in the swaps, my only request is that members only post images of their current work if they actually do join the varaious swaps and this way I can moniter the group content without too much difficulty.
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Nicola Brown Fine Art Textiles 