I figured it out! Landscape felting...and other needle feltings

I am almost done with that demo for the LYS down the street. I got inspired to work on it last night so now I am on a creative streak. I decided to needle felt a blue bird onto the corner, just to make it more personal. I have a stash of dozens of different dyed wools in the closet from my dyeing experiments so I dug all that out. Now my work area is a mess again. LOL All in the day of a creative mind I guess.

Landscape felting!! I finally figured it out after reading on how to make a sheet of felt from roving at this here website
of which I am constantly going back to read. Then I pondered a bit and grabbed some dyed wool.
First I cut a random shape out of some commercial felt material. I have a lot of it from my days of making moccasin templates. I filled the sink with about an inch of hot water, got the piece of commercial felt (CF for short from here on)wet and laid it on one of those sushi roller mat thingys. I found a bunch at the local Big Lots a couple months ago for a buck each. Then I fluffed up some of the dyed wool I have laying around, and placed it onto the wet CF piece in the water and patted it down till it was completely wet. I did this until the wool covered the felt piece and then some.

Then I took some Dawn soap and poured a good portion over the piece and began PATTING at it. Just patting it down into the water was enough to get the felting action going without disturbing the fibers so much that they came apart or clumped up. After the water cooled some, I picked up the whole thing (mat and all) and added fresh hot water. (BTW this I did in the kitchen sink) After the felting had started I was able to lightly rub the wool in a circular motion. Then, since I did not have any bubble wrap, I grabbed a plastic grocery bag, wadded that up and used that to rub even more. WOW! It worked!!! It didn't stick too well to the CF so I was able to peel it off of that. So the commercial felt is a good felting template. Who'd -a-thunk? Next time I think I will make a white base of felted wool before adding the colored wool, just to bring out the color more when it is finished.

So as I looked at the finished piece (which oddly enough looks like the state of Indiana, my home state....go fig!), I got one of those flashes in my head with an image. So I set to work on it. I added silk across the piece because I wanted to add a little sparkle to it. Then I kept getting more and more images of what to put on this piece so I continued to work on it. I worked on this a total of almost 3 hours start to finished. The first picture with the yellow figure was when I thought I was done, but I looked away and I was hit with another image, this time with arms connecting to the silk.

Who or what this is I have no idea. Oddly enough again, the silk looks like lightening. FREAKY!! You can't see it in these pictures but the Mysterious Figure's body is not flat but 2-D. The head comes out from the piece and it looks like, if stare at it, there are eyes and a mouth of which I did not add at all. I figured it was an OOAK, a spirit piece. Now I need a shadow box frame to frame it in because of the 2-D-ness of it. But WOW....I think one of the BF's Creative Bugs crawled over and bit me, bit me BIG TIME!!

Until next time...






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