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!
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.
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!
A woman came to felt with me recently. I don't know her story, but I'd guess that life has been hard. But now, she is on a path to rebuilding her life into something better. So, she comes to felt with me and have a little "girl time," a little fun and distraction from the enormous obstacles that still must overcome. She arrives at the workshop, nervous, tense, not believing she can create something beautiful. Her face is grim as she selects her base scarf color and wool to "paint" it with. It does not look like she is having fun. I know the feeling, that is how I was in the beginning.She obediently does as instructed. Lay the silk scarf out on a length of bubble wrap, lay the wool out, wet it down, lay a sheet of plastic over the work, roll everything up around a pool noodle. Roll the "jelly roll" 100 times, unwrap, check your work, roll it back up, starting at the opposite end. Wow, she sees how the fibers and colors are starting to melt into one another!
She repeats the rolling and unrolling procedure 4-6 times, for a total of 400-600 rolls. When she sees the fibers coming through to the back side of the fabric, it is time to throw the scarf in the sink until she starts to feel it firm up in your hands. Yes, she can feel it changing!
Next she rubs the scarf and felts it some more by hand, then rinses it out, gives it a vinegar bath, rinses again, blots it dry in a towel. We wrap it around her neck and take her before the mirror. Voila... the finished piece... a smiling face and a sparkle in her eye from a job well done. She made something beautiful.
She walks out the door looking radiant, her scarf wrapped gracefully around her neck.
(Note this story could be about any number of women who came to felt with me recently.)
This is the scarf that started out as a concept, a palette inspired by a peacock feather, as described in the previous post.A hard day's work? Not really. Yes, it took large portions of several days, but it didn't seem like work at all. I think the reason I love Nuno felting is that it forces me to not concentrate. Creating these designs takes more feeling, intuition, than thinking.
Playing with color, fiber and texture.
Scroll down to the previous post to see a photo of this scarf before it was felted.
