Woolgathering

What a wonderful word it means to engage in idle fancies and daydreaming and to gather tufts of wool, shed by sheep on fences.

Both of these describe me lost in my creative thoughts and the delight when I come across bits of fleece trapped in fences or on the side of the road. Having learned how to make a spinning stick for use when you wander along lanes, gathering bits of fleece lend themselves beautifully to on the hoof spinning.

My spinning has taken me through Shetland fleeces, alpaca fleeces and into the world of natural dyeing. Then this week although not a trapped piece of wool but rather a large and colourful Jacobs fleece arrived and as I unwrapped it the colours of white, tan, browns and black emerged from the packaging. A deep soft fleece that promises to spin up into a colourful yarn. It has been washed and is now drying in my herb dryer in the greenhouse.

This fleece will accompany me on my travels, in my old VW campervan, as I take time out this summer to travel across Europe and my hope is that I return home with yards of yarn for weaving or knitting.

Pictures will follow.

 

 

 

 

The Felted Stone

 

I am very excited to let you all know about my new (soon to be live) web space.

The Felted Stone will be a place of creativity, meditation, and transformational opportunities.

Here is a little taster of some imagery for chakra work

Felted pod aspiring to become a handbag

All those gorgeous, rich, jewel-like, dyed fibres came together to create this 12″ high felted pod, but it is calling out to me to become a handbag. I hope I did the fibres justice and kept their beauty.

Fibre Art Inspired by Jackson Pollock

I recently took up the challenge of a Jackson Pollock inspired piece of work. At first I was not completely taken with the idea as his work is huge, all over the place or so I thought, but on further investigation of this artist I was hooked.

The piece I made was inspired by Pollock’s Moon Woman, especially since I have just finished a moon woman felted piece.

Firstly here is the felted piece it’s depicts a mother and daughter reaching out to each other across the moon.  I quite liked the idea of cutting the moon (another of Pollock’s works), then following his technique I lay the piece on the floor and got splashing with a select range of colours and allowed myself to be inspired by the movement of the fabric paint and the image below. Quite an experience, thoroughly enjoyed myself and I feel that the work has become energised too. I’ll let you decide that one…..

Once I had wet felted and embellished this main piece I went onto to give it the Jackson Pollock treatment, here is a little video of the experience

From the first image this is how my Moon Woman developed, the process was liberating and lots of fun and personally I feel she has an edge of energy in her that didn’t exist in the plain felt work – but you may have different thoughts.

Moon Woman

On this gorgeous sunny winter morning, and after the festive Gemini moon I decided to use the energy to create a felted piece reflecting the moon and female energy.

It’s still in its new moon phase, not quite finished, I plan to add beading and stitch to it.

Wet and needle felting

The sun is shining today and spring is trying hard to push away the winter cold.

During the winter I have been working on some felting projects, I was involved in a monthly artists challenge and February had the theme of Africa.

My challenge was to find my felting wool, and then to draw a picture of a charging elephant, I wanted an African elephant with ears flapping.

So I wet felted a background using merino rovings, and added some silk tops for interest, than sitting by the fire I translated my drawn elephant onto the background using a felting needle.

I had so much fun making the elephant that I decided to work on a giraffe, and to put more 3D into his face.

The giraffe needed acacia leaves to feed on, so I used free hand machine stitch to create some leaves for him to feast on

My next project is going to be a zebra, but this time I will photograph each part of the process and if you feel inspired you may want to make one too.

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The fabric bead walling hanging

Thank you for all the inspiration and ideas I received through various sites. the fabric beads have arranged themselves into a wall hanging.

Spring is here, and the delicate colours of snowdrops inspired some of the beads, early morning sunrise inspired others so the piece is called sunrise over snowdrops, or something only a mother could love.

The end piece ended up quite large, about 3′ long by 1.5′ wide.

The beads are on fishing line so that they look like they are hanging in the air.

A joy to make, and the process of making the beads is completely addictive, so I’m off to make more.

The beads are made of fabric, covered with felting wool, silk, metallic thread, bits of soft metal and angelina fibres, each bead is like a small landscape. I held them in place with a clay bead also handmade and a crimp bead.

 

 

decluttering the brain

Diary entry: Day 1. of my journey

The snow is falling, our house water is frozen, but my brain is getting a spring clean.

Today I have written out on scraps of paper all the project ideas swimming around in my head. For me too many ideas = stuck,

 

Here is a photograph of  a piece that I eventually completed as a wall hanging 5 years in the making or should I say gathering.

 

 

 

After writing out all my ideas, I then decided to put +’s  and -‘s beside each idea. Did I have the skills, materials, inspiration and motivation? Then on the back of each I wrote out how I could make it happen. My ideas included art journal making, wall quilting, jewellery, bags, paper making (as in the piece above), cushions (don’t you just love beautiful cushions), and learning more skills for my embroidery sewing machine.

These projects are purely for my own interest. I can’t make to order, I can only make unique individual pieces of work. I have wondered if an Etsy store would enable me to showcase and maybe even sell some of my pieces – see here I go again, rushing ahead of myself and further cluttering up my brain.

That led me to make a mind map. Have you ever tried one of these, as they are great fun? Tony Buzzan has written a few books on how to mind map. Basically it’s a creative way of getting your thoughts out on paper using lots of colour, images and one word links. Now armed with my mind map I can see the contents of my creative mind – it’s a little overwhelming still, but it has taken me to the planning stage.

Today I will plan out some of the projects. I can’t limit myself to one project as I get bored, so I will limit myself to 2 or 3 projects and mind map for each project with some weekly goals -not too big, easy to attain goals. My aim is to focus and maybe even achieve a complete piece of work.

 

Thoughts from a creative woman

I have spent many hours, weeks, years experimenting and creating art and crafts from all sorts of mediums.

It all started in earnest many years ago when my husband for Valentine’s Day made the mistake of buying a beading book called “The Art & Elegance of Beadweaving” by Carol Wilcox Wells. I say he made a mistake because I was absolutely and completely absorbed by this book, the beautiful, unique and complicated pieces of bead work. If he had romance in mind he was out of luck – I was lost in my own romance with beading.  So of course the next day I hot heeled to a local bead shop and stocked up on what I needed to start my journey into the world of beading.

The following year I was invited to a celebration for International Woman’s Day and asked to run beading workshops. What can I say? It was a challenging and wonderful experience, my workshops were full, I was given funds to buy beads and equipment – I was in heaven. The women who came to the workshop on the whole went away with one, two or three pieces of work, some of the group who were completely into the whole process left with a goody bag of beads and pliers – how could I not? I had older women with failing eyesight who were keen to have a go. Beads, humour and helpful advice was flying in all directions. My lasting memory was the tears of laughter and frustration that can only be found in a group of women mastering a new and fiddly skill.

Later on, after I had finished a university degree  in Complementary Therapies, I was kicking my heels and wanting a new challenge. I had a love of stitch developed as a young adult sitting with my mother in the kitchen in the evenings sewing and listening to radio Luxembourg, when I left home to get my own space, the first thing I bought was a Frister Rossmann sewing machine, this lasted me for many years, later I inherited my mothers first embroidery sewing machine.

So it was natural for me to re explore the art of stitch. I took myself off to college to do a City and Guild in Creative Embroidery, not sure what I was going to be doing and I started the course in complete ignorance. That was my next inspirational experience. I learned so much about fabric, embellishment, project work and art.

After the first year of this course we moved country, my husband got an early retirement deal, we couldn’t resist and left the rat race of Monday to Friday work and weekends recouping for the following week. City life, busy roads, even busier shops everyone rushing here and there.

Now I feel I am in the privileged position of having time on my hands, a craft room full of half finished projects, and materials to do more.

This potted history of my journey to this place today perhaps will explain my current confusion of ideas and half finished projects.

I am mainly self taught in many skills, getting inspiration from books written by wonderful fabric artists, paper makers and beaders, and from sharing ideas with friends and family and continuing to explore this amazing creative world.

But like I said on my main page, this is about the beginning, this is the time to clear thoughts and plan a route through my creative process, pull together ideas, things I love to do and ideas I would like to share. If you feel you are also in this space and would like to join me please come along for the journey. Share your ideas, your creative process and together we will learn and hopefully produce things we love.