Needle Felted Landscape

I wanted to start a quick little project, so I got my needle felting machine out from under the table. It is a Pffaf, Smart Embellisher, I have hardly ever used it. We are gong to be working with wool in the Fyber Cafe group, for the next couple of months, so I wanted a sample to show them. At our May meeting,click here we did some hand needle felting, with one needle or the hand held multi needle tools. We are going to be dyeing some wool at our August meeting, then have a wet felting Play Day.

I had my handy helper sleep test the piece as I worked on it. She said it was soft enough for a nap, but needed some black fur felted into it.

Note the box of colored wool roving behind my assistant. I also have some silk, silk blends, mohair, mohair curls, and some blends with Angelina fibers in it.

I began with some felted wool, from machine felted sweaters, that I got from an artist at a garage sale, I wish I had gotten it all, she had felted tons of sweaters. I needle felted the two pieces together, and started adding blue sky colors, some light teal, and some bits of purple. The background blue was fairly dark and it gave it great depth where it showed through.

I added some green wool balls for trees, added little brown twists for trunks, and made two red barns as a focal point. Various shades of green layered the hill side, I did not have a plan as I went along, maybe a plan would have helped the layout a bit. At the bottom right I added "nepps" little balls of waste wool, I had to cover them with loose fibers to get them to stick down, otherwise they just stuck to the shaft of the needle. I have lime green and lavender, they created lots of texture.

I added hand embroidery with vintage rayon threads, gold on the left for tufts of grass, and pink, lavender and lime green French knots on the right. I have an old Whitman's Chocolate Sampler box jammed full of vintage Rayon embroidery floss. It is a bit of a rat's nest, but I pull out individual strands of thread to embroider with.

I used rayon thread to machine free motion quilt the entire piece, the shine adds texture to the soft wool. I added a third barn on the far left, and some gray silk for smoke from the chimney. I think it came out lovely, it's about 8" x 10" and now it needs a name. I will probably add a yarn to hang it from a branch.

The finished piece. I am linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click on the badge in the right hand column to see what other talented textile artists are doing this week.