Blog - Page 11 of 12 - Jane Mercer Felt Artist

Masham Merino Mixes

I am trying slowly to use more and more British or at least European fibre in my felt and dyeing work. In pursuit of this aim , I bought some Masham fibre from Adelaide Walker at Woolfest. Creamy white and beautiful brown. Although I have this aim I do have a large stash of coloured merino. I decided to try working with the coloured merino and the natural Masham together. I did not physically mix them , but have used them together to make a number of pieces. The Masham is slightly more coarse than the merino , but they blend together beautifully and I love the mix of natural colors in the Masham with the bright colours of the merino. Here are my finished mixed pieces. and here is a small one, actually made with left overs before stitching. This post has been reissued due to problems with the…

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13/08/2015

Boring but ……

Over the last few months I have made quite a number of wet felted small vessels. These vessels have been made out of different white fibers and then dyed. At the time I made them I knew exactly what I had done , but coming back to them a few weeks later and I began to get seriously muddled up . I was no longer sure which was the nettled dyed BFL , or the nettled dyed Polwarth ( Thanks to Teri Berry for these fibers they are great) Time to take control and keep on track before I was totally confused. Better admin was an urgent necessity? So I gave each vessel a reference number and a small label with the critical information. And I started I vessel register on a spreadsheet. This feels a bit like work But I know that the key to being able to reproduce…

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01/08/2015

Eco Dyeing / Natural dyeing / Wet felting

Blackberry pink

Beautiful juicy blackberries growing in all the hedgerows. Good for eating and also good for dyeing. I have to admit I am not a big fan of eating them straight of the plant , but I do like them stewed with some apples. But today I could not waste them by eating them as I wanted to check out the results of using them as an dye. I first made a tiny little wet felted vessel, with six points , which I stupidly did not photograph ! I then did some simple stitching on it with cotton yarn. After soaking for an hour or too, it was plunged straight into the dye pot. Just a few hours later a sweet little pink pointed vessel emerged. I love both its smallness, it's pointedness and its pinkness. Now I have heard that you can freeze blackberries and then dye with them , so…

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01/08/2015

jewellery / Wet felting

Brooches

I have discovered that of all the felt I make, I sell more jewellery than anything else. Maybe it's because its small and relatively cheap and can be given as a present ? But I don't really know why it sells better. This fact frustrated me for quite some time , but now I have decided to embrace it. I find making jewellery relatively easy . More to the point is very portable and with my increasingly nomadic, two country, lifestyle that brings loads of opportunities. Slowly as I travel I have been making the odd extra pieces. The pieces were never all together until this week . When I stopped and counted and realized I had 40 pieces !! How did that happen ? Most of them are brooches . This one is my favorite . I also have quite a few necklaces and have been experimenting with making…

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01/08/2015

Eco Dyeing / Mordant / Natural dyeing

Stocking up

Over the last few months I have been foraging and collecting and stocking up on materials I can use for dyeing in the future. Whilst walking I have been picking up lichen that has been washed off the trees by the rain and now have a small collection of two varieties. I have still to research what colours these will yield. I found some fallen down tree branches and collected some silver birch bark . I am hoping this will give a beautiful pink colours. Both in the UK and in the Netherlands , I have found is very easy to collect alder cones especially after all the heavy rain we have been having. These can be used as a mordant , or a dye. Only a few months ago I don't think I really knew what these were. ! I harvested some young bracken shoots and some dock leaves , which…

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30/07/2015

Textile art / Wet felting

Work in progress

Slightly delayed post due to problems uploading photographs when away from home !. I recently went on a workshop , lead by Jeanette Appleton at the lovely Art van Go studios in Knepworth. We looked at mark marking in felt and the effects of different densities of lots of different fibres. I was introduced to Soy which I had never used and liked particularly the effect of flax. The workshop was so relaxed , no pressure , unlike many of the other workshops I have been on there was space to experiment and ask questions. I made a few a samples. And two pieces that need finishing off. I thoroughly enjoyed the great location and the workshop. Lots of individual attention and encouragement to take it easy and let the felt do the talking.

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21/07/2015

British wool fibres / Eco Dyeing / Natural dyeing / Wet felting

Why is small best ?

For the last few months I have been struggling to make large felted vessels using Shetland and BFL fibres. I thought I had tracked down the problem to the resist I was using. It was a slightly improved laminate floor underlay with a green backing full of tiny indentations. My side by side experiments showed that this resist slowed down the felting process and resulted in a bigger final piece. Strange but true as these two vases below show. Identical in all respects the one on the left is made with the green resist and is larger and has poorer quality felt. So armed with what I thought was the solution and a new cheaper slipperier resist I tried again. Worse than ever !! Full of holes. Poor quality felt. Some of this I put down to the Shetland fibre I was using which seems repel water and soap not…

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12/07/2015

Fibres / Wool

Counting Sheep

The book called "Counting Sheep" by Philip Walling is a fascinating read for anyone like me who has an interest in wool. Based on some of the 60 native wool breeds that live in the UK it charts their development , their history , and the realities of sheep farming today. Although I cannot convince my family of the fact it is a really interesting read , I recommend it - there is even a chapter on different kinds of sheepdogs . Historically sheep were kept for their wool. Wool was the mainstay of the UK economy for four centuries. Fortunes were made on wool production and export of the wool to Europe. As the demand for meat grew , new breeds were developed , often with an impact on the quality of the wool. Today sheep are almost exclusively bred for meat and the value of the wool although…

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05/07/2015

Fibres / Wool

A rainbow of fibres

For the last two days I have been at Woolfest , soaking up all things related to sheep , wool and fibres , meeting old friends and making new friends and buying a few things too.! One thing that really struck me was the beautiful displays really showing both fibres and colour in all their glory. Here are a few examples: Great event to visit , well organized by the wool clip. I will be back next year. 🐏🐏🐏🐏🐏🐏🐏🐏🐏🐏

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27/06/2015

Drawing / Textile art

Drawing for Textiles

For the last two weeks I have been taking an on-line course called Drawing for Textiles D4T by the wonderful textile artist Dionne Swift. In the first week I had fun drawing some small objects , really enlarged , using a variety of techniques. My objects ( some family heirlooms here) and examples of the large crazy drawings I made are below. I say crazy , because of the fun drawing techniques and because they felt to have little connection with the objects by the time I had finished - I think that was the idea really. We then had to seek out gems in the masses of lines. I found quite a few I liked and cut them out, making a little book for future reference. Then came the textile part. Using sewing and embellishing to make textile lines , in order to repaint the gems. Great fun even…

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21/06/2015