Wet felted, wool painting.

Debbie:: Don't read this until after the 25th if you want your wall hanging to be a surprise!

:::

Hello my lovelies. How are you doing? All ready for Christmas? Is the house decorated, the pantry full and the gifts wrapped?

Well I think I could say yes to most of those questions, still a couple of things left to wrap but the job I'm most pleased about finishing is my felt wall hanging, for the very, lovely Debbie.

A rather long one this one. Well longer than I've ever contemplated before. In fact Wonderful Man  had to help me dismantle my work table in the attic and bring it down to the kitchen where we reassembled it end to end with our dining table to give me a work space long enough.

And this is how it ended. Work table dismantled once more and reassembled back in the attic so that I could embroider and embellish in my usual surroundings. Wet felting is an untidy business, well it is the way I do it. I think the whole family is happier when I'm back in the attic, lol.



One of the most difficult parts of this commission was to try and work out how much the felt would shrink. Not enough and I would have to trim it to size, which in turn would mean losing the lovely natural wiggly edges.

Too much and the piece would be too small and I'd have to start over again! God forbid! It took me about seven hours to lay out the Merino wool for this one and then I wasn't sure about it so left it overnight and came back to it the next morning with fresh eyes.



Next what seems like an afternoon of soapy water and much vigorous rolling and roughing up.

Then I have a day or two's break while the felt is left to dry naturally.

Out comes the sewing machine next and my box or should I say boxes of threads. Tricky is a nice word to describe how difficult it was at times to manoeuvre this around under my domestic sewing machine. There are other words but tricky is the one we'll use today.

Hand embroidery and scrummy sparkly bits are next. You can't beat a little bit of twinkle here and there.

One of the good parts follows. Slip stitching the backing fabric and casing onto the reverse. I luuuuurve slip stitching.

Finally, balancing on a chair to fit all of its 62 inches into the viewfinder.

Gloriously happy!

That's how it makes me feel to look at it finished and ready to be carefully wrapped. It's at this point that I remember how much I enjoyed every single moment of making it.

Merry Christmas to you all

and

I hope you'll join me in 2013 to share in each others creativity.

Love Fi x 







Felt Flower Brooches and a Secret Felt Wall Hanging.

 Hi, are you ready for a bit of wet felt overload today, lol. I can finally show you this felt wall hanging I made for my friends 40th birthday. 

 And some felted brooches that I've been selling in my local art gallery. OO! nearly forgot to mention some very exciting news, do you remember my 'Meadow' felt wall hanging that I posted about recently? Well a couple of weeks ago a lovely lady bought it to hang in her lounge. Oh the delicious warm feeling that a total (but lovely) stranger has fallen in love with something that I've made and likes it enough to want to gaze upon it every day! Priceless!

 Anyway back to wispy felt flower brooches.

 These peacocky coloured ones are something new for me, I hardly ever work in blues, I'm very much a pink girl.

 They take an absolute age to make (well it feels that way) each individual petal has to worked between my fingers until it's felted.

 But it's worth it in the end.

 They seem very popular at the gallery.

 Now to the 'secret' felt wall hanging.

 I made this for my lovely friends 40th birthday. 

 Lots of curly wurly wool tops on this one, and some sparkly sequins to make it shimmer as the light catches it.

 It's not too large... after all, she may not actually like it. She may decide to hanging it in the loo. You've got to think of these things, lol.

 Well it's time to go now so I shall leave you with a sneaky peek of my current felty offering. Here's a pic of me grappling with it on the kitchen table. It's waaay bigger than my bamboo blind can cope with, I'm on the look out for a 3 or 4 foot wide one. 

Right, back to the sewing machine. 

Thanks for dropping by. 

love Fi x

Ta-daa! The Forge

 Here it is, all finished...I think.

 This was my starting point, a pretty little cottage called The Forge, presumably because it used to be...a forge. 

 I'm quite liking the straggly, frayey bits of thread. I'm not going to trim them, I don't want the finish to be too neat.

 My favourite part is the green railings which I had to wait almost till the end of the piece to do. You can actually see them better in the first photo, before I added the last two hanging baskets.

 After the railings, it has to be the little bits of stonework.

 I just need to find some way of getting prints made of it now. I need to start taking my work more seriously and making it work for me. But where to start, having prints made, that's a whole new ball game! I still haven't done anything with The Old Sweet Shop. I'm a bit of a control freak so not being able to take control of the printing bit makes me put it off altogether. V naughty.

Hmmm...maybe it just needs a couple more stitches here and there. 

Thank you for stopping by and any tips on how to go about getting good quality prints made would be more than welcome.

love Fi x

Drawing with stitches

 Do you ever feel in limbo, not knowing what direction to take? Hmm..well that's how I've been feeling lately.

 Maybe it's not actually limbo, rather procrastination. Dithering about not knowing what to do or which direction to take, instead of just getting on and doing something, anything! Sometimes there are just soooo many things I want to try that I can't decide what to do. Or is just middle aged indecision, lol.

 Procrastination was one of the reasons I started this blog 4 years ago. Well if you're going to write to the world, you'd better have something to write about. So at first, blogging made me make things, so I  had something to 'show-and-tell' if you like. It worked! I sew most days and I'm now lucky enough to sell my 'makings' in a local gallery and online. 

Thinking about it now, you have all been a huge part of my journey.You have all contributed in helping me find my direction by reading this blog, commenting, emailing me, purchasing and commissioning work from me...supporting me with many gentle hands. I suppose, since mine is not the only blog you read, you'll be doing this unknowingly to many others out there, doing something really quite wonderful and understated, without even realising it. Well I've realised it and I'm so grateful to you all for each individual tiny little nudge in the right direction. As a whole you're a powerful friend. 

So here is my latest, 'what shall I do?' A little drawing done on the sewing machine of a friends daughter. The old linen napkin seemed a perfect choice for my subject matter as they are both what my life has been about, home, children, domesticity. They just seemed to go together.

 I came across the photo in one of my files whilst procrastinating! It was taken about 8 years ago in the back garden on summers day. The children kindly stopped their play to pose for me. 

Little 'A' sitting at the end was my chosen subject. I just loved the pose, the long gangley arms, the clasped hands and the lopsided bunches, lol. It's making me smile even now, lol.

Love Fi x

Embroidered hand felt and new beginnings.

Hi all. Here as promised is my latest piece of embroidered, wet felted...felt. Would you like a closer look?

I nearly didn't finish this piece. Although the wet felting went to plan,

I wasn't overly pleased with the garden bench in the centre of the picture.

Maybe I'm just being a bit picky though, probably because I found this part particularly difficult to do. My sewing machine objects a little when it stitches over the same spot several times, which is a bit of a pain when you're machine embroidering!

It's growing on me though. I particularly like the two small bunches of dark pink flowers in front of the bench and the fallen rose petals on the path.

There is quite a lot of machine embroidery on this piece.

I

It's then finished with lots of hand embroidery, each little pink petal is cut from silk which I space dyed myself and then individually stitched in place.

And this is it's new home (not for too long I hope). This is Chapel Gallery in Hawes in Wensleydale. A brand new arts and crafts gallery offering craft workshops, coffee and of course MarmaladeRose goodies.

The new owners Anne and Tim Smithies kindly let me take a few pics to share with you all.

I think Anne is hoping to fill the gallery predominantly with art and crafts from local Dales artist but there is a sprinkling of fabulous work from farther a field.

Don't you just love these luscious ladies sitting having a chat. These are by the very talented Anna Mercedes Wear.

Anne herself is very gifted. She works in more mediums than I can list here, but in these pictures you might spy her handmade glass decorations, beautiful patchwork quilts, machine quilting DVDs, hand drawn cards, cuddly toy bunnies and art dolls, not to mention handmade ceramic and glass buttons! That's right ladies I said BUTTONs and we all love buttons, lol.

Turned wood bowls, coloured glass bowls, leather purses, and ceramics.

More beautiful wood, needle case-cushions, a couple of my felt brooches and fat owls, and some lovely little round angels.

On the bird table we have...well...birds and underneath are growing some of my crochet flowers.

Here are the beautiful sparkly class ornaments Anne makes. Dangling and...

standing to catch the light.

Buttons, buttons, buttons, drool!

Bunnies, bags and bowls. Glass, ceramic tiles and lavender hearts.

And last but not least a stunning exhibition of photographs of 'the locals' by Richard Hanson called The High Life. . Click here to see the photos in close up and more of Richards exciting work.

I hope you enjoyed our little day trip. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of Annes pride and joy...a very fancy, all singing, all dancing coffee machine! And I couldn't resist this last picture, lots new lambkins skipping about our fields. Aaaaah :)