After visiting the Best Made Local craft fair in Stony Stratford, I discovered the beautiful crafted landscape work of Myra Hutton and jumped at the chance to attend on of her fabulous workshops.
The first stage was to create a sample of a felt background using white wool and selected colours, to learn the felt making process step-by-step.
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| Before: Layers of fluffy wool |
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| Building up the layers |
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| After: Rolled, rinsed and dried |
Once we had gained confidence with making the felted background, we allowed the piece to dry and moved on to producing our main piece of work for the day.
For my main piece, I used inspiration from the beautiful Scottish landscape. I used photographs of the hills, lochs and flora all taken during my last trip to Inverness.
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| Layers of merino wool indicating the colours of the landcsape |
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| Wetting and rolling the layers to bind into a felt fabric |
Once the rolling had been done, the piece was rinsed and dried out ready for the second stage - embellishment.
Coloured threads, fabric scraps, wiry wools, nibs and silks were all gathered and arranged onto the surface of the felt. These were then sewn onto the surface using free machine embroidery to give texture and depth to the work. This was my first taster of machine embroidery, so guiding the felt to give the desired effect took some getting used to. I really enjoyed the freedom of expression that this technique allows.
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| Clouds defined using machine embroidery |
The third stage is to add some delicate finishing touches such as hand embroidery and bead work.
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| Work in progress |
As you can see it's really coming along. I'll post my finished piece here soon!
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