Slippers revisited
30 Jan 2012 4 Comments
in felt Tags: felt, foot lasts, slippers, washing machine
One thing I completely forgot to say in my previous post is that when things don’t work out, it’s amazing what support you receive from the online community – most of whom are people you have never met in person!
Original "honey monster" slippers
In an earlier post I described how my first attempt at making felt slippers wasn’t a huge success. Lo and behold, Chrissie Day, an experienced felter who has written several books, popped up to give advice in the comments. So I bought her book Felt Style, ordered some polystyrene foot lasts, and had another go.
Slippers on forms after initial rubbing
I covered the lasts with clingfilm, slipped them into my “honey monster” slippers, and wet, soaped and rubbed until the slippers fitted the lasts well. I have to say it was so much easier rubbing the slippers with the lasts inside, as it gives something to rub against.
Then I slipped a pop sock over each one, tied a knot at the top, and put them in the washing machine with a bath towel at 60°C.
Slippers after the washing machine
As you can see, the slippers are a much better shape, and the ridges are less prominent (though I can still feel them). They are still a little big lengthwise (size 5 rather than size 4, I reckon!), so I think I need to make the original template a bit shorter. But with an adornment or two, I think these are now perfectly acceptable footwear!
So huge thanks to Chrissie for her advice and support on this. The kindness of strangers never ceases to amaze.
When things don’t work out
27 Jan 2012 5 Comments
in felt Tags: felt, Grayson Perry, muslin, nuno, resists, scarves, silk
I was reading a post by Karen over on The Felting and Fiber Studio about a felt album cover she’s been making, where she keeps changing the design and unpicking the embroidery because she doesn’t like it. I know how she feels.
Before Christmas I made several manly scarves in various colour combinations, and they were very popular.
So I thought it was time to try some variations on the theme – but they haven’t worked out.
The first variation was using a preprinted silk scarf, using undyed merino. I didn’t like the result at all – the shapes and the colours just didn’t work together:
Then I tried using muslin with a more open weave. This was a bit tricky to work with, especially when it was wet, as it kept clinging to itself and was difficult to keep flat in one layer. Also, I had a problem with the wool, as the colour started leaching out when I wet it. You can see a bluish tinge where the muslin has taken up the colour on the left-hand side of the photo below:
(When I contacted the supplier about this, they said it was possible that an over dye had been used on it and that a small amount of excess was washing out. Has anyone else experienced this? It’s never happened to me before.)
The much more open weave of this muslin meant that with a bit of careful effort I could squeeze the plastic resists out through the muslin without cutting it (though it did leave a bit of a hole in some cases). I rather like the more subtle spot effect; up close it looks quite cellular.
However, because the muslin is so loose I think it would catch on things quite easily and become very irritating.
So I decided that maybe it was time to move on and try something else. Instead of changing materials, I changed the shape of the resist. Although I originally intended it to look like tiger stripes, I didn’t allow enough for the muslin to shrink, and the nuno areas are smaller than I planned, relative to the stripes. But in these colours it reminds me of the opening credits of The Simpsons – so welcome to my Clouds range!
When things don’t work out, it can be a chance to review your technique or rethink your design. But sometimes it may just give you a gentle nudge in a completely different direction. Some of my most interesting work has resulted from pieces that didn’t work out as planned – and in textiles that seems to happen more often than not!
I went to a talk by Grayson Perry at the British Museum just before Christmas, where he said it can be heartbreaking to spend a week on a piece that just doesn’t work. So it happens to everyone!
Colour matching game
25 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: colour, game
Warning: this is quite addictive.
And I suspect in the later stages of the game it’s as much about hand/eye co-ordination as about colour co-ordination – but see how you get on!
African hats at the British Museum
23 Jan 2012 1 Comment
in exhibitions Tags: Africa, British Museum, crochet, felt, hats, spider silk, V&A
In the same room as the wonderful Benin plaques at the British Museum is a small display of African hats. No wonder they are easily overlooked.
They include some funky crocheted cotton hats from the Cameroon grasslands:
Also a Tunisian chechia, knitted in 2-ply merino, washed in hot soapy water until it shrinks to half the size (the photo below shows the original knitted hat above and the felted one below):
After felting, the surface of the hat is raised by carding with a tool made from a teasel:
Finally, there’s a fascinating hat made from spiders’ webs, cane, twine and ostrich feathers made by the San people of southern Africa in the early 20th century:
Talking of webs, a new V&A display has just opened that will showcase the world’s largest pieces of cloth made from spider silk. Just as long as they don’t have any of the producers lurking in the corners…
Friday favourites
20 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
I haven’t done Friday favourites for a while. But I’ve just joined Pinterest (aaargh – that’s another six hours a day gone!), and as I was pinning some of my favourite works I came across a group of artists working with paper. As I’ve recently made paper myself, I thought this would be a good theme for today’s selection.
Polly Verity makes amazing origami curved folds, each scored and folded from one sheet, with no cuts and no glue. I also love her work made from crumpled tissue paper, like the liver, stomach, colon and small intestine:
Isaac Salazar is an accountant who has never taken an art class. He uses old books that would otherwise be thrown away and creates words and images by folding and cutting the pages:
Finally, Bekx Stephens creates geometric sculptural pieces that seem to create waves of movement through repetition. I would love to learn some of these techniques to use on fabric with printing/dyeing:
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