When is a Celery a Rose?

Ah... it feels good to have another piece from my design wall finished! I completed "Celery Rose" last night. In an earlier post I talked about making prints from the base of a celery stalk. The prints looked like a rose which lead to creating a pattern from the print and voila!

The borders are needle felted and deliberately left uneven to
compliment the movement in the design.

Here is the divine inspiration - behold the celery stalk!

 
What other vegetables do you think would make an interesting print?

Felted Purses

These are sweet little purses! The size is just right for your cell, wallet and a few other must have items.I start with white raw wool roving and dye it using fiber reactive dyes from Dharma Trading. The technique is called wet felting which turns the raw product into a solid and durable fiber. The flowers are made using the needle felting technique and attached to the purse. Availability information is located by clicking the "felted handbags and scarves".

More Fun with Felting!

I was without power for 7 days due to Hurricane Irene; I'm now back in the cyber world... I sure missed electricity! The first project I did when hot water came back was to work out some ideas for wet felted designs. I wanted to make a soft, delicate cream colored scarf with just a hint of pink. Once the scarf was felted it seemed like it could use a little more style so I made some dusty rose colored felted flowers. Each flower has an antique bead from my Grandmother's necklace. For more detail please see the "Felted Desings" tab at the top of the page.

My next project was to make another felted purse. My only thought was to create multi colored felt and I didn't really have a sense for what the overall design was going to be. The wool is very soft and light with silk felted in. I ended up combining the finished wool with some really funky greenish fabric and some vintage buttons. The straps are long so you can where it across your body.

My last project for the weekend was to finish up one of my hand painted silk scarfs. I  had embroidered around the stamped ginkgo leaves with gold metallic thread and was ready to sew on a backing of hand dyed silk but without power... no machine! I was happy to have the scarf completed and for more details please go to the "Silk Designs" tab at the top of the page.

Combining Needle Felting with Quilting

The piece below is titled "Friday Afternoon" becasue it's a fantasy place my hubby and I would like to be each Friday as the work week winds down.

I love needle felting and I love quilting so combining the two techniques seemed like fun! I wanted to design a piece that worked with perspective and adjusting the basic Attic Window pattern helped create a feeling of looking into the horizon. The fabric I chose is from my hand dyed collection.

I knew I wanted to use needle felting for the bulk of the design and dyed wool roving specifically for this project. I didn't want any seams showing in the needle felting so I first created a border of batting that I could add the roving directly onto without the seam showing.

I'm partial to including aderondack chairs in my desgins beacue they represent unconditonal relaxing to me. I wove flax to create the beach basket and the towels are a piece of fabric I made using flour/water paste.... squiggly lines and spray paint - yah, I was totaly playing with that one!

When it came to quilting I let the design tell me where to stitch.