Felted Bag

Here's the felted bag I mentioned, I need to sew the sides together and make the strap yet, it was needlefelted using the Janome Expression. The dealer down the street, from my shop, lent me the machine and if I wasn't in so much pain I'd make samples for them as well. Maybe next week sometime??? I have another bag done already and it's at the shop in the window display with a bunch of other felted items that is announcing our needlefelting workshop the end of October.

Bottom to Top: Front view with the flap open, the back and the front views, and the front view with flap closed. The views are clipped a little bit but that's because I'm in so much pain I'm not able to stretch up enough to get a better view. I'm taking muscle relaxers and pain pills but it doesn't even tough the pain - which tells me it's in the bone not the muscles cause those muscle relaxers they gave me can drop a horse and I'm not whinnining yet!

The background fabric is wool that has been dyed with natural dyes, and the wool on top is a combination of natural dyed and synthetically dyed fibers. Note that it is nigh impossible to match natural dyed fibers to synthetically dyed ones.

What I've been working on

Well if I wasn't in so much pain I'd be working on these extreme embroidery pieces! This is where you take traditional embroidery layering, distorting and simply pushing the surface until the desired result is achieved.

Here I'm starting with a piece of muslin (calico) that I've painted with Tsukineko inks and then with light gold Shiva Paintstiks for my base layer. The piece is 9" square and is now ready to be partied on!!! Now to just get my body to cooperate with my plans.

Green Ribbons

Here's a half pound of wool boucle as well as a half pound of 7 mm silk ribbon. The top picture is a bias woven sheer silk ribbon, which I really wish I could get more of as I absolutely love this stuff for embroidery - but alas it was an italian knitting yarn, not a true ribbon, for knitting sweaters, scarves and the like.

Rust Dye Ribbons

Here's a before and after rinsing shot of the silk ribbons and silk fabrics. Then a post dyeing shot, I'm using an acid dye, that for once doesn't make me sick, to get the green and no I know don't the formula as this was in the pot post dyepainting some rovings and I just had to use the color for something! I'm finding it difficult to photograph the ribbons while they are in the dye pot so bear with me, I have a skein that is in the exhausted vat that should come out lighter.

I'm using these pieces in an extreme embroidery class I'm teaching this fall which I'm making into a zine with DVD. I am looking at duplicators, my computer will NOT burn a DVD to save it's life for some odd reason (and it's on it's second DVD burner but just doesn't like them for some odd reason). I'm hoping to get all of my previous DVD's burned and shipped out to former students and soon. Until now I've been using the neighbors laptop to burn DVD's.

The oragish fabric is commerical cotton that was rust dyed and then painted with seta color paints. The back side of the fabric is the most interesting part of the fabric