Monday 21 September 2015

Nuno joy

I love, love, love nuno felting!

It's such a joy to fuse fabric with wool, it's such a magical process. Just a few pics of the crinkles and distortions that form...





'Nuno' is the Japanese word for cloth.

More felted clouds....



The clouds at the top were felted using merino wool while the white fluffy clouds in the bottom picture are a different non-wool fibre which doesn't actually felt. It's worth experimenting with alternative fibres to wool in the felting process, you may get some interesting effects. The non-wool fibre was held in place with a very fine layer of  merino. I love how it doesn't flatten out and gives a more realistic effect. More cloud experiments to come I feel......


Some real ones.


Tasman with his felted cloud spotter's hat on........
(that's where all the mini demo pieces go from my workshops)




Clouds.......

I just love clouds, so I thought I'd have a go at felting some.....




Thursday 17 September 2015

Felt tutorial plus Felting tips: number 1

I'd love to make the world a fluffier place so here's my contribution: a free basic felt tutorial click here.     No excuses now, get felting!


I'd like to begin a series of random felting tips, here's number 1: 

More efficient rolling out

This is something I discovered recently while felting a large and heavy project. Understandably, when you roll out a large piece of felt it can get quite tiring by the end. I wondered how to reduce some of this effort required by my wrists and arms. 

With a heavier project, it is possible to use the momentum of it's own weight, as you roll it. 

How:
Tie some light fabric or strong cord around the securing ties that hold the towel in place around the felt (see below). Take hold of the ends of the fabric/cord with both hands and with one hand give the project a push away from you across the work surface. As it reaches the maximum distance it can go pull it back with a tug using the momentum created by the initial push forward. Keep repeating this and you will soon create a good rhythm and soon feel that you are putting less effort into the rolling through the wrists. I played some dancey music and had real fun with this. It was really quite amazing, the project rolled across the table many, many times more using this technique than the usual method of stoically rolling just with your hands and arms (without the cord). Have fun!

Things I'm loving right now....

There's so much inspiration for textiles right on the doorstep, sometime in a future textile I'm sure these colours and patterns will emerge again out of my sub-conscious.......


 This is what I'm working on at the moment in preparation for a felt landscape workshop I'm running in October, I love how right now, the clouds do look like fluffy clouds, but the thing is, with the felting process that will change as the fibres entangle and the clouds will look flatter after the wool has shrunk. Anyone got any hairspray?........

Below are the curls I laid out during the building up of this piece, ooh I do love curls, here you can see some BFL(blue-faced leicester) & Wensleydale, yum.

Tuesday 15 September 2015

Welcome

This will be a blog about all kinds of stuff but mainly I'll be warbling on about felt-making, landscapes that inspire the felt, patterns, textiles, and who knows what else may appear......
I live in the stunning Tywi (pron. toe-y) valley  in Carmarthenshire, West Wales, UK. I was very lucky this evening to photograph a stunning sunset over Dinefwr Park, Llandeilo.