Wednesday, July 15, 2015

On Tap This Week

While I've been pondering exactly how to block out "Rhapsody", I've turned this week to alternate activities.

1. The kitchen walls now have two coats of primer on them, and are ready to paint.

View of the west wall...

2. I put the third piano-key border on the king-sized quilt under construction as a commission from my daughter (yes, she found more gold batik fabric!)

Just one corner...

3. I spent most of Saturday working through exercises in felting for my Whisper Felting class with Lily Kerns at the Academy of Quilting (4 lessons, able to take my time).  It focuses on needle felting, and as I've been meaning to get back to this -- with my embellisher as well as by hand -- when it cropped up, I was compelled!

There was a bit of playing at wet felting in miniature -- starting with layers of bubble wrap and roving in a small bowl of very warm, slightly soapy water:



And ending up with a wee round of pre-felt:


Then there were various exercises in needle felting.  I don't own a Clover (R) hand-felting tool, just used single felting needles and a block of foam that came in a beginner felting kit I bought a few years ago.  I used this sort of thing in the MAIWA class I took last fall, too, so these exercises were more of a refresher.

For example, I needle felted some roving in light layers, and added some ribbon yarn:


I compared light layers on two different backgrounds - high and low contrast:

Merino roving and synthetic fibres on (L) batting
and (R) acrylic felt backgrounds
And I created felted shapes on a wool felt background, using merino roving:


My favourite exercise though was a bit of practice on the embellisher (needle felting machine), which I finally did without breaking any of the needles!

Experimental landscape - machine needle felted
Materials: wool felt backing, wool roving, synthetic yarn

And a detail:


This gets to the heart of what I really want to do when I master this process: add needle-felting, whether by hand or machine, to my landscapes and/or create a needle-felted substrate into which I can work embroidery and/or quilting.

4. And despite the heat, there's been some knitting.  I've enjoyed knitting the July Socks-from-Stash challenge -- using a favourite purchased pattern.  Sock #1 was finished in a quiet moment at The Shop yesterday:


Here it is on the hoof:

Pattern: Hummingbird by Sandi Rosner
from Clara Parkes' The Knitter's Book of Socks
Yarn: Celestial Merino (discontinued) from
Lucy Neatby

Today?  Linking up to WIP Wednesday on The Needle and Thread Network...and focusing on "Rhythm" and "Rhapsody".

A bientot!

3 comments:

Laurel's Stitches said...

Great description and photos about your felting process, Margaret! Thank you. I love your socks; you are quite the knitter!

Thanks for posting to TN&TN's WIP Wednesday!

elle said...

All I can remember to reply to your various photos is wow, you are a very neat painter. ;^) why two coats?

Maggi said...

Love your felting and I'm sure that you'll find a way to use it effectively in your landscapes. Great socks.