About the felting

I had to post today, the date is 9/10/11.  Love those dates.

The theme I am working on - still - is based on Darebin Parklands/Rockbeare Park.  I keep trying new techniques based on the theme.  The two ideas that I work on are the rock formations and the tree trunks.
I spent a day last week working on the tree trunk idea, using felting.  I tried to incorporate two workshops I have attended.
Both methods use a prefelt as a base and then you design on top of that.
The first one I tried was based on the LeeAnne Davis method of sewing fabrics that will not felt well, using wool or some other thread and then felting it onto another layer of prefelt, then embroidering further.
I have blogged about her before, here and here.

Here I have used a silk loom end, scrim and some synthetic fabric.

The pink bit here is an old piece of 'silk paper' that I made last year.  The other bits are scrim and more synthetic fabric.

More scrim, silk ripped into strips and synthetic organza.

I used left-over bits of tapestry wool for the sewing down as I thought that would felt well into the prefelt.

Here are some pictures after the final felting.  I have not embroidered them again as they did not please me that much and they are only samples anyway. I may get enthused and do some embroidery but it will depend on how much spare time I have - not a lot at present, I am trying to work on my graduation piece.

The silk strips looked ok.

The silk paper did well and I don't mind some parts of this, it has possibilities. 

The silk loom end lost a lot of its lustre when the felting came through.  The synthetic gives good texture.

I actually remembered to measure the pieces before and after felting and it did shrink about a third, in one direction.  I'm not sure if I rolled it more in one direction than the other or if the sewing caused some of this differentiation.

I have just looked at the preview of the blog and think they are not that bad after all.  Maybe I will try again, see if I can get some good effects and use embroidery to enhance the pieces.  That's the problem with me at the moment, I can't come up with a final technique or design!!  I'm still experimenting - which is fun and interesting usually but causing some anxiety at the moment as I have to come up with some work.