Taking inspiration

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Where do the ideas for your felt projects come from? I find inspiration in a whole range of sources, sometimes it’s photos of flora or fauna I’ve taken on holiday or just stumbled across on the web, sometimes it is scrappy little samples from playing in the studio that spark an idea for a bigger project and sometimes it’s other artists’ work.

Potters are a favourite source for this last group, as a part-time potter myself I am probably exposed to other potters work more than most and I love the technical challenge of thinking how my favourite shapes and forms made in clay can be translated into a completely different medium like wet felt.

My interest was piqued by a post in the Sculptural Wet Felting group on Facebook (if you aren’t a member I recommend joining, there are some very clever people doing amazing things with felt in there!). The post introduced Ursula Morley Price’s incredible ceramic artworks, her name is definitely worth Googling and her incredible work appears to be for sale in galleries all over the world.

The post on FB set us a challenge, to interpret Ursula’s work in wet felt…. Challenge accepted!

Labour weekend was the second of our annual Auckland Fun Felter’s retreats, my (probably overly-ambitious) plans to make a 2 storey cat cave and a felted origami footstool were pushed aside so I could play with felted “fins” instead.

I confess, I had made similar pieces in felt before, these I called my “flappy vessels”. Most have been sold or gifted but I still have these two, my “helter-skelter vessel”:

and a hanging light:

But seeing Ursula’s work inspired me to go all-out adding fins to my “vessels”.

The first attempt was a hat, using my current favourite “Dragon’s Breath” merino and silk blend:

It reminds me of an erupting volcano, it doesn’t have a name yet but my thoughts are headed in that direction. Any ideas for a name?

I was pleased with how the hat turned out so set myself an extra challenge of making a vessel that could stand aloft on its fins, I think this one will be called “levitate”:

I am tempted to trim some more of the base fins so it is left standing on just a handful and make it appear more like it is floating.

Are you feeling inspired? I’d love to see what you create!

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

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One of my best customers for my 3D-printed felting tools, a fellow felt teacher in the US, asked if I could make a smaller version of the wand tool for making jewellery. I had previously investigated making the wand longer and narrower towards the tip but the tips kept breaking, I don’t make a lot of jewellery or small items so the idea was abandoned.

I mentioned the request to Mr TB who suggested a couple of possible solutions for the fragile tips. He printed 2 of them for me and I have been testing them this week. I may be biased but think they are pretty good, I have been using them quite aggressively and they are still in tact and working as I had hoped.

For the tests I decided to make set of felted rings. Normally I use a bundle of pencils held together with an elastic band but this maker pen with a tapered barrel came to hand first. Pencils / pens are ideal because you can alter the size of your ring by adding more pencils to the bundle, then remove them one by one as the felt fulls and the ring shrinks down.

Wrapping wool around the pen before adding soapy water and gently rubbing
Once the felt was starting to shrink I transferred the ring to the tool and fulled the inside of the ring
This is how much the ring shrank, the inside of the ring was wide enough to stretch around the widest part of the pen at the start
Looking for more pens to make a larger ring I came across this beaker instead…

I made a small felted ball to finish the set and make a pendant, which layout do you like best?

The fulling tool just needs a couple of minor tweaks and a name (any ideas?), another round of testing and it will be ready to join the others.

Apologies for the poor quality of these photos, they were taken in my current studio (the garage) and the light in there is awful. The new studio is coming along well though. Another month and the floor will be tiled, the kitchenette and shelving installed and all my fluff moved from the garage to its new home 🙂

The rest of the reno is progressing too, our new kitchen is half installed, the bathrooms and deck are nearly finished and this week the builders are putting in a retaining wall.

The house and garden 2 years ago
The house and garden this week – spot the difference?
The studio with new deck

In between painting and moving garden plants I have not had much time for felting so have been getting my “fix” through teaching…

A private, beginners bag class…

These ladies know how to felt in style – home made G&Ts! 🙂

Mosaic felting at the Auckland Creative Fibre retreat…

I also had the pleasure of teaching a felted pod class in collaboration with Deaf Aotearoa last month but I’m afraid I forgot to take any photos. This was a wonderful experience and I have no hesitation in recommending teaching this way if you get the opportunity, most of the participants could lip read but we also had a sign language interpreter with us. The hardest part for me, was trying not to talk while demonstrating, I am so used to explaining what I am doing with my hands I had to keep checking myself to explain first, so everyone could watch the interpreter and then demonstrate with the wool.

I’d better get back to painting…. happy felting!