HomeWork

The first of the winter fair applications came in the mail today. Our neighborhood community center has a very well attended event with a reputation for well-crafted items. The jury selecting applicants requires two pages of photos documenting the scope of work the artist will have for sale.

As I approach the first anniversary of this business venture, it was an interesting process to put together two mosaics that represent SpiderFelt. The spring was so busy, I realize some of these pieces weren’t chronicled here. Some are personal items I’ve kept for myself, others were custom orders that went out the door as soon as they were made and some are waiting for the next fair.

This signals the end of a cycle and an extended blog break. Thanks for visiting, looking and commenting. It has been an exhilarating year, but now it is time to put my feet up. I’ll be back late in August.

Phew. Deep breath. A whole lot of activity, a whole lot of sleep and then a rush again. School ended a week ago, and as I prepared to leave for the Black Sheep Gathering, ready the house for my father who was going to stay with my son and finish some custom orders, I was struck down by an acute sore throat. It left me speechless and gasping in pain. Needless to say, we had to cancel the trip to Oregon and I was forced to sleep for the better part of four days until my strep culture finally came back positive.

My parents stepped in as the heroes of the day, taking over caring for the house and for me without skipping a beat. As soon as the youngest returned from a birthday party, they whisked the children north of the border so I could continue my convalescence and catch up with last minute business details before shutting down my production for the summer.

First thing on my list was to post the rest of the nunofelt scarves I photographed in early June. There are still two more nunofelt scarves in the rosewood series not photographed, and a couple more turquoise scarves, but they will have to wait until fall.

Two custom orders for purple collars prompted me to begin a new series unexpectedly in late June. I was trying unsuccessfully to make a small crescent of felt lay flat on my neck. When it refused to cooperate, I cut little points to give it some ease and voila!

In addition to the pink collar, I made four larger purple collars and a few pieces of fabric using a merino/tencel roving blend - a total of twelve pieces for two custom orders. Unfortunately the delicate nature and the beautiful drape of the merino/tencel fabric made it too fine to hold up for this form. The buttons would have ripped a hole in the fabric, even with a reinforced buttonhole. I’ll have some experimenting to do with those pieces later.

With a custom order for four felt boxes left, and a tutorial to photograph for a new kit, I’m just about ready to clear out. Maybe Saturday if all goes well in the next two days. In the meantime, I’ve photographed most of my current inventory and posted it in my etsy shop. There are still a few more pieces, but I really hate photographing myself, and as the clouds started to clear this morning, the battery on my camera died, so I called an end to the photo session.

Just because Sue asked, here is the reveal: I’ve created a new category in my etsy shop. It is kind of like gift wrapping, if you treat your face like an asset.

These are not for the curly haired alone, but a great mass of hair does look good bound up with colorful silk and felt.

These boxes weren’t finished the first time. Sometimes it really helps to hear that little voice when it comes from someone else. Thanks for keeping me honest ladies.

Little boxes need to close, even if they are tiny and only hold a tooth or a ring. Little wire-wrapped dangles with recycled sari silk yarn sewn into a little loop. So sweet.

Good night.

More than just a name, I spent a wonderful afternoon in Volunteer Park, one of Seattle’s gems located in the Capitol Hill neighborhood with Paola and her daughter Primavera.

Playful, patient and endlessly tolerant of my adjustments, Paola modeled the latest SpiderFelt pieces while Primavera ran in circles around our feet. Her bubbling personality added an extra special dimension our photo shoot, bringing sincere smiles to her mother’s eyes.

I took over 500 photos in two hours, as Paola modeled twenty-one pieces. I will be updating my shop with a couple of pieces every day. Many, many thanks to mother and daughter for their assistance.

There was more work in the felt banner department this week:

It appears that my Pilates instructor is correct about my posture. From the position of the word ‘open’, I tend to lean to the right. Next time I’ll have to lay down a yard stick to keep my bottom edge aligned.

The words are felted on the front and back of the same piece of felt. I think I need to work on making this sign a little more compact if it is going to hang in a shop window, in the meantime I’ll hang it on my studio door.

Carrie has been dreaming of a large box to hold her son’s blocks and wooden beads, but her hands are a little busy right now, so I took a stab at my largest felt box yet.

I started with a really large piece of felt using Harrisville Designs roving in chianti, rose and poppy for the first layer and marigold for the second layer. These colors really sang as soon as they came together.

The small box with horizontal bands of color measures 4″ x 7″ and 6″ tall, a little smaller than my standard box.  The larger box with three equal vertical stripes measures 9″ x 7″ and 10″ tall without the edge folded over.

There isn’t much story to tell here. I don’t remember how this idea materialized, but it has been lurking around for a while.

Let me present: custom felt name banners (ugh, what a clunky name). You choose the background color and we work together to select a motif that can be represented in felt.

I hate the title, but couldn’t think of anything more zippy. Where are my creative powers? I’m hoping that an imaginative writer will make a better suggestion.

The background for each banner is made with wool roving from Harrisville Designs. They have 56 colors available, though I have approximately half currently in stock. These two samples measure 17″ wide by 12″ tall.

In addition to being posted in my etsy shop, these samples will be on display at Venue in Ballard.

Enough people commented on the shame of hiding the colorful parts of the pincushion on the bottom, that I worked to alter the design.

I started with a small snake of felt, needled it a little to hold the edges together, then added successive layers, needling a little as I went along. With each layer, I varied the colors along the length, which accounts for the variations between each pincushion. When it was large enough to draw snide remarks from my sidekick on the sofa, I put it aside.

The next day I wetfelted it as best I could, an unwieldy process considering the size of the roll. Next came rinsing and then slicing. Finally, each piece was finished off with ten minutes of needling to trap the fibers and firm up each individual piece.

These are now listed in my etsy shop, either with or without felting needles.

These pincushions were a suggestion from Diane at Venue in Ballard. She bought something similar at Bumbershoot several years ago, but doesn’t know who made them or where to get more. My apologies to that artist, whoever you are. Please identify yourself if you read this post.

I started the first pincushion with the red center at swimming lessons on Saturday; first I needlefelted a solid ball, and then needlefelted subsequent layers until I ran out of colors. This ball was fairly solid when I was done, which accounts for the smooth outlines of each color layer.

The second and third balls were made by rolling roving into rough a ball shape, needlefelting just a little to hold the roving in place and then adding additional layers. The navel orange was melon-sized by the time I stopped adding roving.

All three balls were wetfelted to varying degress. Some friends suggested I finish them in the washing machine, but that really didn’t squeeze them hard enough. So after going around with a load of towels, I wetfelted them by hand. The red pincushion needed very little work, and is still the most dense of the three pincushions. The green and orange pincushions required a lot of felting because they had to compress so much to create a solid felted core, which resulted in the swirls.

For the sake of scale, the smaller two pincushions measure 2″ in diameter, about the size of a clementine orange. The largest pincushion is about the size of a navel orange. This would be a great kid project, especially if you had a Clover needlefelting tool to keep inattentive fingers safe.

These are now available in my etsy shop.