Geisha Figure

 

I started off with a wooden meat hammer, a toilet roll tube and some masking tape.

Next I attached one of the Geisha Powertex heads onto the end of the handle.

I coated a piece of t-shirt fabric in white powertex and draped it over the structure.

Next I coated a piece of green silk in transparent powertex.  It didn't quite turn out how I expected, but it was still salvageable. Once dry I added the lighter green around the middle and neck.  I also wanted bigger hair so I made some stoneart clay and added some beads on cocktails sticks.

Then I painted the hair with black powertex and I also gave her a face.

And this is how she looks from the back.

And a bit of a close up of the front.

And a closer close up of the face and hair.

#rusteffects #powertex #upcyclingchallenge

Wet Felting Workshop - Spikes and Craters

So today I attended a wet felting workshop with felt maker, Jenny Pepper. It was a lovely day, which was lucky, as I travelled to Scarborough for it.

The first thing we did was laid out three layers of Merino wool and created a pre-felt.

This is Liz creating her prefelt.

This one belongs to Jenny who came all the way from Cumbria, somewhere near Hadrians Wall.

Jenny (the tutor) helping Liz out with her prefelt as it was quite thick and she needed to add more soapy water.

This was one of Jennys samples showing a few different techniques that I wanted to try.

We each created a base and then stopped for a bite of lunch. I just went with a plain cream. Jenny gave us a demo of how to create the different craters and spikes and flaps and then we had a play on our own pieces using the previously made prefelt.

We used the prefelt as it has still got some felting life left in it, so it will adhere easily to the background piece which was just laid down (3 layers), wetted and left until we needed to use it.

The after much rubbing and rolling and more rubbing and rolling and hot and cold water shocks x2 finishing with cold and rinsing out and cutting and sealing the cuts, this is what I ended up with.

I love how it came out, I forgot to say about the spikes on the bottom, they were the last thing to be felted after everything else had been wetted out and rubbed.

 

And this is how Carols turned out. I didn't get a photo of Jenny's and Liz's finished pieces as they left pronto, as their lifts had arrived before I got chance.

Had such a lovely day and my piece is now drying in the airing cupboard.

Felt United - Textures

Over on the Living Felt Facebook page, Marie is asking for contributions to the above. There are certain rules you have to follow, but not many. Has to be square or rectangular, no side bigger than 16" or smaller than 4". One colour family and has to have texture, as that is the theme.

As it can be wet felted, I decided to see what I could do. I rummaged through all my boxes of stuff and pulled a few things out to try.

About two hours later I ended up with this. I wasn't that happy with it to start with, but once it had started to dry a bit the textures started to appear. It ended up being 15" by 9" approx.

The silk really ruckled up when it was drying out creating some great texture.

This was a long lock that I twizzled round and stuck in a heap.

This was cotton scrim, which again eventually created some ruffles.

Another piece of silk.

Not really sure what this is but it's like big baubles of wool on a string.

And this is piece of textured material, it's like the mulberry bark paper, but it's a material.

Shall be posting it off to the USA this weekend.

Wet Felting Incorporating Other Materials

So moving on from my sample piece, I decided to go for it. This time I did things slightly differently, hopefully learning from the first piece. I laid out the materials as above. I just kept going until I was happy with how it looked as I wasn't actually aiming to make anything from the finished piece.

This is what I ended up with once I I'd finished felting and shrinking it. I was much happier with what happened this time, however, it's not dry yet!

This is the piece of silk fabric that all puckered up with a piece of the silk throw underneath.

This is another piece of farbic, not sure what it is, some sort of polyester or viscose, but it puckered up nicely too.

And this is the piece of cotton fabric, again love how it's puckered and grabbed the other fibres.

This is the silk throwster waste.

This is the silk spectrum, it reminds me of slub, but thicker.

This is the silk throwster dyed waste.

I also used some dyed silk tops and some angelina fibres.

All the above photos were taken whilst it was still wet.

This is how it looks now it's fully dried and I'm really pleased with it.

This is a close up of the cotton scrim, love how it's all puckered up.

This is a close up of the silk, again it puckered up really nicely and has left a fabulous texture.

This is the piece of viscose/polyester and it's puckered up lovely too.

The green, blue and patch of purple is the silk throwster waste.

This has the silk spectrum clump middle left, the darker patch, and it's quite soft considering what it starts off as.

The purple area is silk tops and there is also some angelina fibre in there too.

I not only love the end product, but really enjoyed the process.

Sample Wet Felting Piece

I've been watching a Youtube tutorial (from Living Felt) about adding silk and other fabrics into pieces of wool and felting them, so I decided to try it out and made a sample.

And this is the back. You can see one of the silk pieces bottom left and the other more or less in the centre.

This is a close up of the piece with the silk throws and the angelina fibre which is what gives the metalic effect.

This section has a piece of green cotton, two pieces of green silk, silk throws, bamboo fibres and silk throwsters waste. I have no idea what any of the latter are, I bought them from the Knit & Stitch show seven years ago but I wanted to see how they would felt.

And if you look very closely, top middle you can just see the piece of cotton. The very light green whisps on the left and the right is the bamboo fibres.

I learnt lots from making this sample piece. Mostly that I didn't put a big enough piece of fabric on and I used too much wool to pin it down with. It's also best to use contrasting colours. Also I didn't rub it enough to get some textures into the fabrics. But it was a very good exercise.

Eco Print Workshop

Today I attended an Eco Print workshop with the lovely Joelle Harris and I had no idea what to expect.

This is the other side of the table. I sat in about the middle.

Ready for our very first experiment on linen with a cotton iron blanket.

First thing to do was to choose some foliage and greenery.

This was one that Joelle had made earlier and was explaining how the leaves work differently and give different effects.

Then we had a go, so I placed my leaves and onion skins on the dampened linen (spritzed with half white vinegar/water mix). 

A piece of cotton was then placed into the iron rust mixture (things that will rust ie nails, placed in water and left for two weeks) to act as a blanket and then everything was rolled around a dowel and tied tightly with string.

As one of the ladies had to leave early, Joelle had us all chose something to put on the silk scarf and then she demonstrated it as above.

She proceeded to fold it and wrap it ready to roll and tie tightly around the dowel.

Our next experiment was on a piece of silk.

This is the linen piece after it's come out of the steamer for 20 minutes and been left to cool down.

The next fabric we played with was a piece of cotton which had a light blue tinge to it.

Claire who was to my right decided to lay her cotton layer out in a symmetrical pattern.

Karen and Sue at the other end of the table again on their cotton layers.

Linen layer started to be unrolled.

On the left is the cotton blanket and the right is the linen layer (I think!!). It's a bit like the gelli plate, often the ghost print is better than the original. 

This is the silk one unrolled after being steamed and cooled. It had been wrapped around a piece of rusty metal as opposed to a dowel.

This is the cotton blanket from the silk print.

And this is the piece of silk fabric.

This is the blue tinged cotton fabric with a cotton blanket after it has been steamed for 20 minutes and is just cooling down.

And the unveiling of the blue tinged cotton.

And the print on the blue cotton tinge.

 

And the cotton blanket from the blue cotton tinge wrap.

Everyone working away whilst I went to check the steamer. We then broke for a spot of lunch.

After lunch we went for it with the 'proper' silk scarf!! This was some of the reason for all of our experiments because some of the items work better than others. Some leave a print and some just leave colour, some leave both and some leave nothing, it's just a case of trying and seeing what you get.

This was Pam's who was opposite me, she decided to use a light blue coloured silk scarf.

You can just see Janet taking a photo of her masterpiece and Claire already has her iron blanket over her scarf and next to Claire's is Sharrons.

And at the other end of the table L-R, Coleen, Sue and Karen and their silk scarves.

Teamwork, Heather helping Pam out whilst she rolls and wraps.

And for our last expermient we used a piece of wool fabric. It's a bit like felt but much thicker and more robust.

Silk scarf unwrapped and reveiled. The top is the silk scarf, the impressions came out very subtle indeed. The iron blanket is at the bottom and I was very impressed with this print. Wonderful images with lots of intricate detail and great, strong colours.

The woollen price of fabric cooling down after being steamed.

The left is the woollen fabric and the right is the iron blanket. This is the only print where I actually like the original better that the blanket piece!!

Had an absolutely fab day, was amazed how much we produced and I love all the pieces I created. 

A huge thank you to Sharron for the organising and Joelle for the teaching.