Felted landscape

I was lucky enough to go on a two day workshop with Helen Melvin (http://www.fieryfelts.co.uk/) creating a felted landscape.

The first day we created the felted background, some basic instructions are below (but I strongly suggest you look at some you tube videos and or get on a workshop session as making felt requires patience and lots of reassurance from the tutor as in my case).  May sure you have plenty of time and patience before embarking on this...:

What you need:

• Merino wool tops (in a range of colours)
• Silk tops and other wool bits are optional
• Olive oil soap or olive oil soap solution
• Water
• Small plastic milk bottle (with holes pierced in the lid to act as a shaker)
• Plastic bag
• 2 pieces of bubble wrap (at least the size of your desired finished piece), small bubbles
• Plastic cover for table
• Piece of netting (the sort you have as net curtain in windows)
• Old towels
• Bamboo mat (the one you use for rolling sushi in)
• Landscape picture (for inspiration)
• Apron (so you don't get too wet and mucky)
• Sewing machine and threads

What to do:

1) Prepare your work space...lay out an old towel, on top of that lay the bubble wrap bumpy side down.  Then start teasing out your wool tops and lay them down all facing one direction.  Be aware that your finished piece will shrink about 25% so make it bigger at this stage. Lay down another layer of wool tops at a 90 degrees angle to the top layer, keep layering until the desired thickness is achieved, I used 4 layers, make sure there's no holes. The top layer one should roughly look like the landscape image your looking for so tweak to get the desire effect, make sure your happy with what you see now, as soon as you take the next step its too late to step back...

2)  Now take the milk bottle 'shaker' and shake warm water over the top of the wool, press down to get the water absorbed into the wool all over the wool. 

3) Lather up the soap, lay the netting over the top of the project and gently rub the soap lather into the work, gently to begin with so as not to move the fibres too much. Slowly start to rub all over the surface using a light touch initially. Rub in all directions and cover the whole area right to the edges. Every so often lift up the netting, if you don't do this it will felt into the piece at this beginning stage. Then screw up the plastic bag and use this too rub over the surface, keep adding soap lather and water to the piece, gradually increase the pressure and intensity of your rubbing, use your knuckles and rub the piece all over.

4) Pinch the surface to see if the fibres lift up, if they do keep working it in each direction, with increasing pressure. When the fibres don't pinch up anymore you can lay your piece inside the bamboo mat and roll vigorously with long strokes with even pressure, keep going for a minute then un roll and check on the piece. The roll up again in the other direction, i.e. 90 degrees to the first way you rolled. When your happy that the piece has felted well and no bits are hanging off and there's no holes its time to finish off.

5) Run the piece alternately under hot and then cold water. Then lay flat on an old towel to dry.

6) On the second day we stitched into the felted piece using a sewing machine.  Zig-zag stich was predominantly used, it was altered is width and length as you stitched. Lots of threads were used to create various effects.

7) To finish the piece I asked one of my artistic friends, Ronny to colour a canvas for me, and I then stitched the felted landscape on to it... and then all done.  This piece took a lot of time (unlike some of my other pieces), for the stitching part it needs leaving and then looking t over several days and more bits adding.

Hope you like it!