Felted Fibres

I've been experimenting of late, with small 2D works. Kind of like little abstract paintings, but with felted wool and other fibres.

It's been interesting playing around with colour and composition and not having to take into consideration what size it will be and whether it will fit after its shrunk in the felting process.
It has also been fun to see how that composition changes with the felting process.

So, I'm having a little online exhibition which starts on 12 June and finishes on 1 July 2012. I would love it if you would take the time to have a look and leave some feedback. Either here or on my FB page.

To get to the exhibition, just click on the Beljays Felt Online Store button on the right.

Making a Nunofelt Jacket with Lizzie Houghton

The second workshop I attended at TAFTA's Contextart Forum was a nunofelting workshop with Lizzie Houghton. Lizzie is a phenominal felter (and wonderful woman) from England and very well known internationally, so it was a special experience being able to attend one of her workshops.

Twelve of us gathered in the canteen and gym area of our venue and over the next four days achieved nothing short of a miracle under Lizzie's patient direction.

We began with 5 or so metres of silk. I hand-dyed mine some weeks before.

After cutting out the pieces and laying out the wool and surface decoration we began to see something taking shape.

A bit of prefelting

and drying, not easy with the torrential downpour we experienced for 2 days but the sun did finally come out, and we had the makings of some very interesting fabric.

But when we stitched it up and tried it on, it was hard to believe that we hadn't got something wrong. Lizzie assured us it would be okay.

I wasn't until another day of hard work felting and fulling that we saw the wonderful results of this fascinating technique. Who would have believed the shapeless thing in the picture above could turn into the beautifully fitting jacket below.

Shibori Workshop

I have just returned from 6 days of textile workshops in Springwood, Blue Mountains, Australia. Run by TAFTA, (click here www.tafta.org.au for more info about this great organisation )this was a phenominal schedule of 2 day and 4 day workshops by wonderful Australian and international textile artists. There were so many areas covered it was hard to choose which ones to attend.

I decided to go to Cathy Moon's 2 day shibori workshop and Lizzie Houghton's 4 day nunofelting workshop (more on that next time). Cathy is a fantastic shibori artist based in Brisbane, QLD. She has many years of experience with textiles and dyeing techniques and was a fabulous teacher, happy to share her wealth of knowledge.

We worked hard over the two days, learning a number of different ways to create stitch resists, clamp resists and tyeing techniques. Cathy oversaw the dye-baths, as we were all busy stitching things in or taking them out.

At the end we hung our beautiful silk pieces up on ferns in the quadrangle to make our shibori tree.

Amazing outcomes, don't you think?

A few shawls for cooler nights

I have been a little busy rearranging my life of late and now I have time to do more here. So here are a few of the things I've been up to...

I used some of the inspiration gained from the Sketchbook Project 2012 for this shawl.

The texture of the silk is sumptuous. And I love the way the silk threads have wriggled and wrinkled during the felting process.

These are a few other accessories I've put together.

The strong design on this black red and maroon shawl is also a result of the excercise of putting together my entry to the Sketchbook Project 2012.

You can find the last two items in my Etsy Store but the top shawl is on its way to Sydney for a show.

The Sketchbook Project 2012

I've been participating in this fabulous international project co-ordinated by the Art House Co-op and the Brooklyn Art Library called the Sketchbook Project 2012.

When you join the project, you pick a theme and the organizers send you a blank sketchbook. You can fill its pages with whatever you like. The only provisos being that it stays within the specified dimensions and that the materials are able to travel safely ie dry and stable, not sharp, not hanging off and likely to break etc. You can completely remake the book if you want.

And I did.

My chosen theme was "It's Winter Where You Are" and my subplot was 'but not over here'. Because, well, the project is based in the US, and when it is cold and snowing there, it is usually hot and steamy here in the Queensland subtropics of Australia.

I used a medium weight artists paper for some pages because I wanted to use both sides without the paints and pens showing through. And the other pages... of course these are made from hand dyed fabrics and felt. And I bound it with a hand-dyed silk cover. I've not done much book binding before so this was a steep learning curve for me.

I've tried to show how the beautiful, vibrant things in my garden inspire me in my textile work. So the sketchbook contains images from my garden and samples of hand-dyed cottons and silks and how felting them changes the surface into a rich conglomerate of colour and texture.

Over the next few months I'll be posting some pictures of finished items that this process inspired. So keep popping in for updates.

Click this link to find out more about the Sketchbook Project 2012 .
Or if you would like to see more of the pages of my sketchbook go here to my project profile

Faeries, fairies gardens and wizards

I was having one of those quiet, post-christmas days. The garden is looking, well, pretty green and lush, especially after a little summer rain. So the cat and I went for a wander through it.

We found some new flowers had blossomed and others had faded. Some tiny little white ones, you would miss if you weren't looking carefully, and the great big hydrangas in their multitude of shades.

And a little ring of mushrooms (shame the photo didn't turn out).

It got me thinking about who has been tending this garden, 'cause I know it hasn't been me. And then it came to me, I must have garden faeires!

Nunofelt Collars

Have you ever had trouble working out what to wear with the changable weather as the seasons change. You know, too warm one moment, too cool the next. Do you dress in layers so you can take things off and put them back on as things change. Then there is the problem of what to do with the things you've taken off if it's too warm.

Well this is the problem I had with my big scarves. I'd put one on in the early morning because the morning breeze was a bit chill. But by the time I got to work, the sun was out and I'd be too warm, so off the scarf would come... and now to try to fit it into the handbag without bits trailing out.

So I came up with these new items. Nuno felt collars or scarflettes. They are big enough to keep your neck, decolletage and lower ears warm, but are small enough to roll up and easily fit into the handbag.

They don't need a brooch to secure them because one end threads through the other, making it very quick to put on or take off.

And you can wear each one a number of different ways. Turned up to get as much warmth as possible, turned down to just take the chill of the shoulders. Twist the ends around to make a big flourishy flower or just pull it straight through to make a scarf look.

I am listing these on my etsy store
BeljaysFeltnArt
so please take a look at these or any of the other wonderful winter warmers I have listed. They make great gifts.