Wet felting Archives - Page 7 of 9 - Jane Mercer Felt Artist

Side by side

Multicolored steenwol and Blue Faced Leicester. Two vessels in the making. One destined for the dye pot. The other just for fun. Exactly the same amount of fibre and exactly the same resist. If I make two vessels at the same time I find it saves a lot of time. I don't normally make such a contrasting pair. I am trying to get ahead and have lots of prepared felt for dyeing when the weather warms up, and I wanted to test out the Steenwol, as I love it's bouncy texture but I have not much experience in using it. I did wonder if I would get fibres from the Steenwol migrating into the natural vessel , but this did not happen. Once the resists have been removed the vessels need to be treated as individuals. The BFL vessel has been hand stitched in silk and cotton which should give a lovely…

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07/02/2016

Artybird Carnforth / Wet felting

Taking my time

I am coming to realize that it can take me a very long time to finished a felted piece. In July 2015 I made a piece based on some photographs I had taken in 2014. The inspiration was wet lichen covered rocks. Then I looked at this felted piece and thought what on earth will I do with this now ! For those of you who read this blog , might remember I eventually cut it up. A radical move , but I still could not finish it ! I loved the dark brown Masham surround and wanted to find away to bring it all together. So I took it to a master class with Artybird and asked ," what shall I do now". Various suggestions were made mostly involving bringing it together as a piece. I thought about this , alongside the original inspiration for the piece and suddenly…

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31/01/2016

Wet felting

New website and Blog is nearly ready

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19/01/2016

machine stitching / Wet felting

Finishing

I have had a good week , finishing, or at least seeing the way forward to finishing a number of pieces. I have got my sewing machine back in action and stitched these two brooches, they both remind me of ice . Out walking today there was lots of snow and ice at one of my favorite places Easedale tarn. I found some nice simple wooden frames in Hobbycraft which fit my stitched felt squares perfectly. I only bought two as a trial , but they are perfect , I will be back for more soon. I have also been hand stitching . This little beauty contains a vintage button and now has some lines of beads to finish it. All in all a good week , some wonderful walking and lots of felt finishing .

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17/01/2016

Artybird Carnforth / Wet felting

Alpaca

My use of alpaca to date has been as a yarn for texture. I like to do this as it takes up natural dyes slightly differently than wool adding both texture and shades simultaneously. You can see this in the madder dyed piece below , where the alpaca yarn is at the top and slightly lighter than the surrounding wool I was therefore interested to see how the fibre itself felted during a day this week at Artybird in Carnforth. The fibre I had to felt was one year old alpaca , the youngest and softest . It has less scales and less crimp than wool fibre. Perhaps it would be very hard to felt. With four thin layers laid out I just used my normal techniques and only cold water and found I could easily and quickly make a small sample. I had embellished the piece with…

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10/01/2016

Artybird Carnforth / Wet felting

How to restart ?

Well after a successful move back to the UK , followed by two weeks unpacking , and a family Christmas and New Year, I need to start felting again. In truth we are far from unpacked but the essentials are sorted and now is mostly just a question of time before some modifications to the house can be organized and its dry enough to tackle the jungle of the garden I have temporarily installed my sewing machine on a small table in the study and put a felting table in the conservatory so nothing is stopping me - except I am not sure what to do ! Before I left the Netherlands I put in my pop up felting studio, some jewellery making partial felt and some beads , but I am not inspired to make any jewellery right now. I have in my stash of fibres some beautiful fibres that…

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03/01/2016

Wet felting

Packing up

In late 2010 having decided that I needed somewhere to felt , my husband did a makeover on our seldom used spare room in the attic. For Christmas that year I cut the ribbon on my felting and fitness studio with its new lights , tables and because I was trying to keep fit a stepper. It did not take long before the stepper had to go to make room for the growing stash of fibres and fabrics. This week we are relocating back to the UK and so I been packing up my felt studio. Here's my small fibre collection. Thank goodness for Ikea boxes. My equipment all boxed up. I shall miss this lovely studio ? I don't know when I will have another felting studio , and unpacking is going to take me weeks! . So I am not sure when I will be able to felt again,…

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29/11/2015

machine stitching / Wet felting

Ripples

I am fascinated by light and water and I am always taking photographs of streams. Here is one series that I took , a few miles walk up Far Easedale, in the Lake District , UK. I decided after numerous attempts to draw this photograph which were really unsuccessful to try felting using prefelts incorporating various fibres using just yellow and black merino . First step , so far so good , but it needed more Here I am testing the idea of couching some yellow wool onto the piece. I choose not to go down this route but to machine embroider with some variegated yellow thread and then hand stitch in black. Finally I added some orange highlights. To me the finished piece contains some elements of my sunny stream and I think looks great in a black IKEA frame but the glass is so reflective it does not make a…

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08/11/2015

Artybird Carnforth / British wool fibres / Wet felting

Memories of Artybird

Over the last weeks I have been doing a lot of sorting out and clearing out the mountains of felting I have accumulated. Some things have headed to the recycling but I have also come across some treasured pieces from my first Artybird felting course. Sunsets featured prominently in my first course and here are my beginners attempts at dyeing with some very tentative sunset stitching. One of the great things about the courses was the design work , but there was felting as well Two different techniques to felt a sunset ! My first experience of natural fibres , using Shetland , which I have really grown to love. Making an embroidered piece, again all hand dyed which if I remember correctly I was told to go back and stitch some more . All these pieces are a wonderful reminder of the journey I embarked upon about 5 years ago. I…

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01/11/2015

Natural dyeing / Wet felting

Remembering my first felting lesson

In 2008 when I moved to Rotterdam I joined the local Stitch and Bitch group of knitters. There I found lots of knitting friends and I also found felters, weavers and spinners. I am not sure exactly when it was but I remember being giving the options of learning to spin or to felt. I chose felting. Looking back that was a pretty momentous decision. The lady that taught me to felt , Els , has become a really wonderful friend. In a few weeks I will leave the Netherlands and move back to the UK , although I am really looking forward to this move, there are things I will miss and seeing Els on a regular basis is one of them. As my move approached I felt (no pun intended) that I should give Els a piece of felt as a thankyou for changing my life in so many ways.…

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25/10/2015