House portrait in felt!

This is a new experience for me. I have made lots of commissioned pieces but recently was asked if I would make a felt picture of someone's house. I agreed and the lady sent me photos to work from. It took a while to work out the best view point to work from but I decided that it would be nice to view the house from her woodland and she agreed so here is the finished piece.

If anyone else wants a special picture of their own house you know where to find me!

Poppy pictures!

I've had a rush on poppy pictures this week. I just thought I'd show you the two which have new homes to go to.

The first one was a custom order for a lady in S. Wales and the second one was sold to an art trail visitor. I'm sure they will both be well looked after.

One more week to go of the Ceredigion Art Trail where you can visit artists in their studios, look at their work and find out more about the processes used in their creations.

Unexpected inspiration.

Inspiration for art can come from many places but my latest felt came from a few splodges! Many of you will know that I enjoy playing with art journals. I usually decorate the blank pages in some way before journalling. This often simply involves splodging paint on a page and letting it do what it wants. Last week I looked at a page which had been given this treatment and 'saw' a landscape. I drew over the important lines and placed a house in the middle and liked what I saw.

It's strange how our brains work isn't it?

Anyway I decided to see how it would translate in to felt and ended up with this.

Can you see the resemblance?

felt paintings, adding linear embellishment.

I always add stitching to my felts but decided I would like to add some kind of raised linear embellishment to show the lie of the land. I intentionally left some areas of my felt uncluttered so I would be able to add them without making the finished art work too fussy. Th

is is the felt with no stitching. I think you will agree, it looks a little flat. Next I added my usual free machine stitching to add tree branches etc. I took a photograph of the back of the work so you can clearly see the amount of stitching added by machine.

Next came the tricky bit. I knew what I wanted the raised lines to look like but didn't know how to achieve them. I did some experimentation on felt scraps. Here they are in my fabric art journal.

In the end I decided I liked bullion knots and couched yarns. One small problem. I didn't know how to stitch bullion knots. I spent Friday evening practising and finally got the hang of it. I used bullion knots with couched yarn in between them  as well as on their own. Here is the finished piece.

And a close up of some of the hand stitching.

Abstract felt art challenge.

This month's art team challenge was 'abstract'. This is a little out of my comfort zone and took many hours of thought before I got started. Mostly I dislike art that is just unidentified blobs of colour so decided to go with representational abstract. I came up with this.

I decided that I wanted a simple image and for some reason I had the title 'clear blue' in my head. I went for 3 dimensional pebbles with a suggestion of  shallow water running over and around them. Just because an image is simple it doesn't have to be boring. Simple images give you the opportunity to go wild with texture. In this piece I have the 3D pebbles as well as two different types of  silk, wool neps, soya bean fibres, yarn and hand stitching. It took some time to put together and had to be felted very firmly but I am quite pleased with the result. Here is a close up which shows the textures better.

free machine stitching on felt.

Over the years my felt pictures have slowly developed and I have been adding more and more stitching to them. I wondered what would happen if I completely cvered one with stitching and this is what happened.

First I made a very simple felt picture. I wanted to be able to concentrate on the stitching and not a complicated design. This is the felt

Next I covered the felt with a layer of zig zag stitch in colours to match the felt.

I continued by adding layers of straight stitch . I overlapped some of the colours to blend everything together. When there were just tiny bits of felt visible I stopped stitching. The end result was a more crisp and defined image and I preferred it to the original.

The drawbacks are it uses a LOT of thread, takes a lot of time and the stitching distorts the felt fabric. This picture started out in a landscape format and ended up as portrait.

As you can see as well as changing shape the stitching had cause rippling at the edges. After careful pressing on the back I got rid of the ripples but how should it be finished and presented? I scoured my reference books and the internet which all gave different advise. I looked at images of stitched pictures and saw that some had been edged with yarn. After rummaging through my stash I found some novelty yarn in black, grey and white which I thought would bring out the colours in the rock. It was very thin so I made a cord with it which thickens the yarn x 4. I trimmed the edges of the felt and stitched the cord on to it. It  worked.

I was going to put this in my textile sample book but my husband liked it so much he wanted it displayed so I mounted on to black card and put it in a box frame. I like the way it seems to 'float', It now lives in our lounge. 

I will be exploring this further and hope to have some in my etsy shop soon.

Textile book

When browsing through Pinterest I came across a book made from fabric. I had a light bulb moment and decided that a textile artist should have a textile book. It makes sense because I can stitch my samples and trial pieces in it for further reference.
If you want to make one here is what I did.
I made the pages from muslin. Mine took 3 metres but yours may take more or less depending on the book size and thickness.
Cut muslin in to manageable sizes and paint with a runny PVA and water mix. I think Modge Podge would also work. This will stiffen the muslin and make it easier to handle. Lay it out on greaseproof paper to dry overnight.
Decide on the size of your book and make a cover to size. My book is 10 inches square. I decided to make my cover from felt but also needle felted other fabrics in to it with my embellishing machine. I added some hand dyed muslin, silk carrier rods, silk fibres, yarn and some scraps of chiffon. Next I added some hand stitching in concentric circles to give it texture. I made my cover 11 inches square but underestimated how much smaller it would become after stitching. If you intend to add lots of stitching I would recommend an extra 2 inches instead of one.

I decided to use the coptic method of binding but other methods would work as well. 

Your pages are made from the stiffened muslin. Do remember to cut each piece twice the size of each page when making your signatures. For a book 10 inches square the muslin should be cut 10 x 20 inches. Instead of folding with a bone folder I ironed the fabric. I found it much harder to stitch the pages together than it is with paper because even when stiffened the muslin moves around more.

Instead of using tapes or ribbon for the coptic binding I decided to get strips of muslin and twist them in to a cord. This worked quite well.

I have started to use my book to keep track of experiments that I've tried. It's always useful to keep them even if you feel that they haven't worked. Sometimes when looking back at a 'failure' it will spark off a new idea. My first page was a 'failure'. It started life as a hare, somehow turned in to a kangaroo but then my face book followers voted it to be a Jack Rabbit!

The second page is more promising. I have layered lots of fabrics, added machine stitching, blasted with a heat gun and then added hand stitching. The design started off inspired by tiles but now reminds me of little jewellery boxes or maybe a stained glass window. I think I will explore this technique some more.