Order of process continued …..

Posted on January 17, 2011 by Nicola

Following on from yesterday’s post the shaping and fulling of the vessel takes a lot of time once the opening is cut and sealed. The steps that I go through are as follows …..

Insert one hand inside the ‘package’ and pressing around the outside where the resist meets the seam work the felt from both sides to even out any potential ridges
Once this is done I then turn the vessel right side out and check the design for loose pieces
For the smaller vessels I had no problems with the design not integrating into the white merino but for the larger ones it seems to be necessary to check each prefelt design and then using a Clover needle felting tool (5 needles in a spring loaded holder) go over each design element to ensure everything is felting together well
Securing loose edges of the design with a Clover needle felting tool
Once I am happy that all the elements are cominging together it is time to apply some pressure and start to rub, roll and felt strongly using whatever method I fancy as I work on different parts of the vessel. At this stage I might roll or rub on bubble wrap, the table or an excellent ridged mat I brought home from America (fridge shelf liner I think!), a great present from one of my students. You could also use a car floor mat although I do find that sometimes they turn pure white merino a nasty grey colour!
I still have soap in the felt at this stage and soon I will blow up a balloon inside the vessel to try and work it into as round a shape as possible. Pouring HOT water from the kettle over the vessel I work it with soapy hands over my washing up bowl in the sink
After a while I take it out of the sink and upend it over a large glass salad bowl. Now I start to stiffen the felt by banging repeatedly all over the surface with a long handled wooden spoon
Periodically I roll the whole balloon encased package on top of the ridged mat and spot full with a felting mouse before plunging it into HOT water again and doing some more rubbing in the sink
Next I rinse it thoroughly in HOT water before turning the vessel inside out, inserting another balloon and repeating the rolling, banging and rubbing process on the other side
Inside out vessel starting to get stiffer and take shape
I keep alternating between banging the vessel into shape now, stretching it with my mouse from the inside and rewetting with extremely HOT water. When I am happy that the vessel is almost shrunk to size I turn it right side out for a last rinse before putting it in my washing machine and turning on the drain and spin cycle. Now I don’t have any balloon inside the vessel as I want to spin out as much water as possible using the machine
Once the vessel comes out of the machine I inflate another balloon inside it before the final session of banging and stiffening
When I am finally happy with the strength of the felt and the final shape I leave the vessel on the balloon to dry fully sitting once more inside my large glass salad bowl

Today I have spent about 4 hours banging and rolling this latest vessel and at last it is resting around its balloon to dry. As soon as I am happy that the felt is totally dry (probably a few days because it is a big piece) I will burst the balloon and take some pictures. I don’t like my surface decoration as much as the last vessel I felted but I was concentrating more on the size and shape of the piece and wanted to use up the prefelt I had from a previous one last week. Tomorrow is my sister’s birthday so I am having a felt free day but on Wednesday morning I will start my largest vessel hopefully using Cathy’s yoga ball for the shaping and shrinking, watch this space!

As you can read from the process above I am stiffening these vessels by shrinking and fulling the felt to the degree that they are strong and hold their shape without the use of any additional stiffeners. My next post will examine some of the ways in which to add different solutions (PVA, artists medium etc.) to aid the stiffening process and it would be great to stimulate debate about this process, thanks to all of you who have already commented on the topic here and on Facebook!

Felt vessels and great swap package

Posted on June 17, 2009 by Nicola

I have now uploaded some images of the felt vessels that I made for the Blueprint exhibition to my Flickr account. With the exception of one bowl I decided to use all undyed fibres and keep the theme simple and stylish. Probably the vessel that I am most satisfied with is a grey and white bowl with three oval pebbles stitched on as embellishment.

Natural wool, stone and linen vessel

Carmen gave me some raw linen thread to use for the stitching and I must say it does lend to the overall effect. It really reinforces the thought that I have to get a bit more comfortable with a needle, judicious stitching can really enhance the style and feel of an item particularly when the thread has been chosen with care to complement or contrast.

The Clasheen Crafty Swap for Summer is well underway now, currently we have 98 members in our group and the numbers are growing weekly! Swapping is a brilliant way to make friends and swap goodies with partners from all around the world, my most recent and wonderful swap package arrived on Monday afternoon from krobin in the Ravelry Cowl Swap. In this secret swap we had to knit or crochet a cowl for our partner, send yarn and another cowl pattern and also include a few little extras taking into account the likes and dislikes of our swap buddy.

: Fantastic swap package

My brilliant package included the hand knitted cowl, 3 crochet hooks, chocolate, yarn, pattern, pretzels, incense, my favourite ginger and orange bath lotion, ginger soap and some tasty chai tea!!! Need I say more, EVERYTHING is me to a tee!

For my secret partner I crocheted a cowl in a silk/merino mix and finished it off with three buttons from my stash, hopefully my buddy will like it as it is in her favourite autumn colours! I have bought some locally produced yarn from Cushendale Wollen Mill and yesterday got some chocolate and little extra goodies when I was in Carlow to complete my package. Hopefully I will get it all together this afternoon (in between some dreaded cleaning in prep for Alan’s arrival home!) and it will be winging it’s way to the States tomorrow morning.

Still recovering from frenetic felting sessions!

Posted on March 13, 2009 by Nicola

Design laid out and ready to fill in on our wall hanging

Gosh, we had some action packed sessions in Drumlea this week! I am still recovering and expect it is going to take a couple more days before I fully recharge!! Our game plan had been to divide the pupils up into 3 different groups, one to start work on the collaborative wall hanging, the second to make vessels and the third to work on felt balls. The idea behind this was that I would never cope with all 26 pupils working on their first 3-d project at the same time and obviously we needed to get working on the wall hanging or else we would never get it finished! Well the vessels went very well, so did the balls but we nearly had a mutiny about the subject matter for the wall hanging. At the beginning of the session we had taken the top 5 suggestions from everybody, I wrote them down on a sheet of paper and then every pupil voted for their favourite 3 items. Problems, problems, problems. I had already explained that in order for the design to stand out when felted in the landscape format that the pupils preferred (taking account of how much the base we were using would shrink) I only wanted to incorporate the top 4 items from the wish list. In order of preference these were the name Drumlea, the school crest, a football and in joint fourth place either a sun or a rainbow. Discussion ensued about how we would make our descision and it was agreed by the pupils that everyone’s name would go into a hat, one name would be drawn out and that this pupil could choose the final item to be depicted on the wall hanging. The name was drawn, the pupil was choosen and he in turn choose the rainbow (or was it the sun), mayhem ensued! The pupils who were actually meant to start laying out the design didn’t want the rainbow (or sun) and pretty much stuck in their heels. Eventually after a lot of discussion I showed them how we could incorporate both items if we changed the layout of the hanging from landscape to portrait, agreement at last! The school crest morphed into a leafless tree, the rainbow is huge and the whole thing looks great now that the colours have been filled in. Clare should be emailing me some pictures of the next stage and I will post them here as soon as they arrive. Next time I go to Drumlea we are going to add a date to the piece, wet it out and then roll for several hours wrapping it tightly in the large plastic woven mat that I got from Mehmet. Happy hours!

Over the weekend I will write a little bit about our 3-d work and post images of some of the super vessels the pupils created, check out my Flickr account if you simply can’t wait!

Prefelt frenzy and thanks!

Posted on November 16, 2008 by Nicola

Thanks to all my friends and family who attended the opening of the Winter Exhibition at Kozo Gallery in Thomastown yesterday. Special thanks to my mother Lynette, my sisters Suzanne and Lizzy, my partner Alan and my friends Cathy, Martin, Eileen, Remmy, Duncan and Helena who all make the effort to attend, a great turnout! The exhibition continues until 31st January and as work is sold I can replace it with newer pieces. A second opening has also been organised for 6th December and another 5 artists are joining us then in the run up to Christmas. This was the first time that Kozo have invited artists to participate in an open selection and the work seemed to be very favourably received by both the public and the press.

With all the coming and going over the last few days I decided to felt something simple and quick this morning, prefelts seemed the obvious choice. I had promised my students that I would have some prepared for their next lesson and of course as soon as I started making them I have been having all sorts of wild ideas of what I myself would like to use them for. Now I want to spend all my time preparing some funky colour schemes and know that I will be in a frenzy over the next few days to prepare a wide selection of colours! For those of you not sure what I mean by prefelt it is a piece of felt in the making which you stop fulling and shrinking as soon as the fibres are holding together into an obvious piece of fabric. This lightly felted piece can then be cut into any shape and laid on top of loose wool roving or batts, wet out and felted fully as normal. The big advantage of using prefelt in a design is that because it has already started to mesh together into a fabric your design edges will be very clean cut and sometimes this is exactly what you require. Anyway, I am having fun making quite large pieces in solid colours (so far!) and embellishing part of each prefelt heavily with either tussah or mulberry silk. Tomorrow I will continue making some more pieces and on Tuesday or Wednesday start cutting some of them up to use in some vessels I have been brooding over!!

Felt vessels and Autumn swap reminder

Posted on October 18, 2008 by Nicola

Yesterday I made two more felt vessels, one tall and one a kind of funky shape, it was inspired by a pumpkin! I took a few photos of them and hopefully will upload them here tomorrow if the uploading tool decides to work OK. The fibre that I used was Bheda wool from De Witte Engel and both of them were decorated with silk, the tall one with mulberry silk and the pumpkin one with tussah silk. I think that I definitely have an Autumn theme going colourwise at the moment with these new vessels as you will see when the images are posted!

Today I shaved the vessels from yesterday and then I made a felt picture/small wall hanging using the mountains outside as inspiration. A friend had said that she would love a felt picture with mountains hence the trial run for her Christmas present! I used a backdrop of green prefelt (which I had made a couple of weeks ago) and laid out merino, bheda wool and torn up prefelt over the top in a design of sky, mountains and fields. Wanting texture and an uneveness of the piece to play an integral part of the picture I decided not to actually felt and full the work as much as normal. Firstly I sanded the design as laid out (could I becoming addicted to the sander, by the way thanks Joni for the interesting tip via the comments section and welcome back to blogging!) and then I cut up some scraps of wool and prefelts and sprinkled them on top of the mountains and fields to add depth. I think that this worked although I will reserve judgment until the morning. The picture is now drying on top of the Rayburn and tomorrow I shall get the camera out and take some shots weather permitting.

SWAP REMINDER The deadline for posting our Autumn Swap packages is 21st October, only 3 days away! Mine are just about ready to go but if you are having any problems meeting the deadline you need to let me know and also your swap buddy. I really want this to work and it needs everyone to pull together to have a bit of fun, enjoy the last few days and wait ’till your swap arrives for you!! Remember we are sending one item made by you, one seasonal receipe and one little extra.

Funky felt neckpieces, button magic, interesting poll

Posted on October 16, 2008 by Nicola

Enjoyed a busy but fun couple of days and still only 15.53 Irish time! Carmen and I drove to Dublin yesterday morning to join in the Feltmakers Ireland Wednesday session, my first time actually managing to attend. It was great to catch up with old friends and meet new like-minded people who all love their felting. Because we were helping with some paperwork in preparation for our stand at the 2008 Knitting and Stitching Show not much actual felting was created. Elenor did make a beautiful bowl to demonstrate what we might be asked to do on the stand, why not come along between Thursday 30th October and Sunday 2nd November to check out the Feltmakers stand and stock up on all the goodies on offer at the show? It takes place at the RDS in Dublin and if you click here you can get all the details and information about the wonderful demos and workshops that are on offer. I will be doing my bit on the stand from 12.30 until 3 o’clock on Thursday and would love if you called over to introduce yourselves!

Once we said our goodbyes to the rest of the gang Carmen and I had a wander around a few of the shops in Blanchardstown. Coming from the country I have to say that although I prefer shopping locally in a more boutique type setting it is nice once in a while to catch a few of the larger chains. We browsed a couple of the bigger stores, had a bite to eat and then hit Borders book shop! First we had an after dinner coffee upstairs in Starbucks, then we headed downstairs to look at the magazines and explore the craft and textile sections. Carmen bought a book with some crocheting patterns and I found an absolute darling book called ‘A Passion for Buttons’!! One of my biggest problems with felting is that although I enjoy looking at other peoples embellished work I find that for me it is the felt that counts. Obviously other people might want a bit more embellishment and I do have a great stash of beautiful vintage buttons so I am going to do my best adding a few to some select pieces for Christmas. Visit my Flickr account to see the necklace I made last night copied from an idea in the book, for some reason I am having problems uploading images directly to the blog this afternoon.

Today I got up early and I had the whole morning to work on some funky new styles of neckpieces and also to make two vessels. I actually made 4 neckpieces, 2 lattice type and 2 from an idea that I saw in a book recently, any of them would make very nice presents for a friend or even yourselves! This weekend I intend putting a new page up on this blog showing images of work for sale or else linking to the same work on my Flickr account. Because I am still waiting for my Etsy shop to be operational I think that this is the simplest way of allowing everyone to see what I have for sale at any given time and if you then see an item that you like but would prefer another colour scheme than all you have to do is ask! If I have the fibre available then I will be able to make a commissioned piece for the same price.

Vessels and seamless bags are my absolute favourite items to make along with anything in nuno felt. Why not take the poll below and let me know what you are most interested in?

Scrim ready to nuno felt

Posted on July 7, 2008 by Nicola

I am really looking forward to experimenting with the scrim that I batiked (is that a word?!) last week during the course that I participated in at the Grennan Craft Mill, Thomastown. The fabric took the dyes brilliantly and I intend to make a couple of vessels or bags tomorrow when Polly and Carmen call over for an afternoon of felting. The batik was really great fun and has given me a whole lot of new ideas for experimentation, will keep you updated as to how I progress. I will also post some images here showing a couple of the finished pieces I completed, also a bag or two when I get them felted with the scrim. Some of my clothes are still at the Mill as I took the opportunity on the last day of the course to wax and dye a couple of items! I will be picking them up next week when Alex is there and hope that they boil out well.

This coming weekend I have been luck enough to be picked by lottery to attend a sculptural weekend course in Dublin with Australian feltmaker Anita Larkin. This weekend is organised by the Feltmakers Federation and should be a really fun time, as well as a great opportunity to pick up some new skills.

Free to Felt!

Posted on June 9, 2008 by Nicola

After months of hard work for the Green Energy Fair I am almost free to concentrate on a series of small sculptural vessels incorporating silk and wool. I just arrived back from Dublin today and was too exhausted to face in to any paperwork until the morning. Carmen gave me a call to see if I was around as she wanted to use my long table and make a baby’s blanket as a present for one of her friends. Great excuse to do a little felting myself and very theraputic!!! I promise that over the next few weeks I am going to create and photograph some of my work in progress and publish it to this blog.

As mentioned in my last post I created a necklace for Cathy (director of Artlinks) and thanks to Martin her husband for forwarding me on some great images, hope you like them. Here is one and you can check out the other on my Gallery page.

Nicola Brown Fine Art Textiles

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