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.

Version II, To Nurture & Protect

close up of felted mountains and sky

close up of felting

finished felting yarns onto muslin

Wool and yarn selections

Felted wool sweaters

I've started a new quilt for the Fyber Cafe challenge. It is similar to the previous one, 18" diameter circle of layered bands of color, sky, mountains, greenery, soil/rust, water and polar white. It is all done with needle felting on a muslin background. I cut strips of felted wool, most I had bought at a garage sale, a lady had felted a BUNCH of sweaters! But some I used commercial felt from my crafty days. I added strips of wool tufts, yarns, dyed cheesecloth, NO Angelina. I had gotten a NEW needle felting machine at Fabric Depot, last time I drove to Seattle, it was my first time using it, WOW, it felted beautifully, all the different textures, of yarn and felt. I also had a little bit of shimmery silky white fabric, I tore into strips for the polar areas. I broke at least 5 needles, moving too fast, I am sure glad I thought to get extra needles. I am now adding beads in swoosh bands across each color layer. Each is a mix of different size seed beads, bugles, and larger beads. It adds a lot of sparkle to a natural fiber textural background.

Fiber Play Day

Our textile arts group, "Fyber Cafe" had a fiber fun play day, at Vera's house in Days Creek. Up on top of the valley with a great view of the pastures. Good friends and new ones. We started with types of fibers, silk, wool, merino, alpaca, rayon, angora and mohair. We discussed their properties and felt them all up. Next was trying to use the drop spindles to learn to spin yarn, good luck, most people couldn't get the coordination to pull the wool and pinch off the twist of the yarn. Several ladies tried to use the spinning wheels, and Pat W. caught the hang of it, and Vera was getting along good with the spindle, but everyone else said, "Not for me!" It is like patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time. We had a nice break for a fabulous potluck lunch. After lunch we played with more fibers to do needle felting, we piled a whole lot of wool, yarns, threads, Angelina fibers and hand dyed cheesecloth onto the table. It was a dazzling mound of colors!!! We used hand held needle felting tools, or individual needles and used felted wool for the background. We started with the wool and added yarns and cheesecloth for texture. We never did play with the chiffons, silkies and polyester fabrics that I had brought. Playing with color and texture was the key to the small felted pieces we did. Nobody really knows what to do with what we made, just samples I guess, but I might add beads and frame one or two of the pieces. Also glasses cases, small purses, and pincushions were discussed. They also might benefit from some free motion quilting to add more detail and texture, and to stabilize everything. Corrienne brought a big bag of "thrums" the end pieces from her weaving, that we all pawed through, going ooh and ahh! Mostly pearl cottons, but also chenille yarns and wool yarns, we took what we wanted and she'll bring the rest to the next meeting for people to go through. A fun time was had by all, thank you for attending and the delicious lunch.

making progress

oops wrong pic again, the upper one is the landscape, before quilting, it goes left to right - tropical, forest, woodland, mountains, desert.

The Fyber Cafe challenge is making progress, I have gotten the major portion finished. The landscape section across the middle was the main focal point. I started with needle felting some pine trees on wool felt, I used various types of yarn, but they were all too lime green, and too high a contrast. I didn't have much selection in darker greens. I ended up using a medium green wool sliver and some dark green yarn with a sparkly core. I made rounder lollipop shaped trees with the felt also, but they look real clunky, they stitched down ok, but they are not my favorite part. On the left I made a palm tree, with a double layer of olive green fabric with fusible between. This allowed me to cut fringe on the palm fronds that won't come apart. When stitched down I curved the branch and this made it pop off the background in a good 3-D fringe effect. On the right side I added mountains, a mesa and cactus. The cactus are made with a light green felt, stitched with light green rayon threads, and then I hand stitched spines on them with darker green cotton thread. It is very delicate looking, and I added pink vintage rayon embroidered french knots, and yellow chain stitch flowers. Across the bottom I added rocks, sand, pebbles and some greenery, flowers and tufts of grass. I machine stitched it all with matching rayon threads to applique and quilt it.