Busy Dyeing

Colorful swashes of silk gauze. I hand painted the dye on each piece of fabric and then steamed them for 20 minutes so the colors develop. As with felting, the dyeing process also ends with a delightful surprise as the colors deepen and merge to create new colors. These will be used as the bases for the scarves. Can't decide on which one I like best!

"Mosaic" Felted Table Runner

Alison Byers, the creative director at the the brand new, magnificent Beach CITE Studios in Orange Beach, mentioned "mermaid colors" in conversation the other day, so blues, greens, teals, turquoise, purple and gold began to swirl around in my head. I rushed home and immediately laid the fibers out...


and worked until it was finished at 1:30 a.m. Such is the life of a crazed feltmaker!



I really let go of all logical planning with this one and had a great time creating it. There are a dozen little experiments, and all of them came out successfully. Here's an example of one: little flakes of gold composition leaf are captured among the fibers. Oh, yeah, you'll be seeing more of this.

Fun Felted Collars

Made these felted collars from wool and strips of silk chiffon and gauze that I had hand dyed. When they were felted, I added beads. They really add pizazz to a plain, inexpensive t-shirt!

New Work - Blazing Azaleas

Last spring I was in awe of the riot of color from the azaleas where I live along the Gulf Coast of Alabama. So, I went on colorlovers.com and created this pallet and saved it to my account.


This spring, in anticipation of the azaleas blooming again, I looked up the palette I had saved and hand dyed this swath of silk gauze.


Next, I blended some fibers - bottle green merino wool with golden bamboo on a drum carder. See the shimmering bamboo? I am hooked on bamboo because it adds loft, softness and SHIMMER!


Then I made some prefelts.


Fibers were laid out. Petals and leaves were cut from the prefelts.


The scarf is rolled up, ready to felt.



Finished...