Felt Inspiration

Last week was spent on more felt business. I had to finish stitching the backing on the large underwater piece and get it ready to hang. I was submitting it to a juried fiber art show in West Hartford. The show is titled 'Out of the Loop' and is put on by the West Hartford Art League. It was stressful for a few reasons; driving down toward Hartford and getting lost for an hour being just two of them. I am happy to be able to say that my work was accepted along with the work of three of my good friends from the Northeast Feltmakers Guild. Go Felters!! I am also still working at getting the four pieces that are going to be in the Wesleyan Potters annual show and sale ready for exhibit. I find that I can not attend to that boring finish work for very long. I also am good at procrastinating at things like that when I think I have plenty of time. I am a bit more motivated since last week though. I added to my own stress because what I thought was plenty of time to finish sewing the backing was not. After I finished sewing I hung the piece and it no longer hung flat. I wound up finishing the sewing at the gallery. How unprofessional is that! Ah Well...live and hopefully learn.

I was able to recoup during my weekend visit with Joei. We did more flowers for the guild on Friday while we discussed what to make on Saturday. We decided on slipper/shoes. Mine are the blue gray ones.

My shoes are made with a combination of short fiber merino, pelsul, and C1 so I hope they will be durable. I am going to try to put some soles on them...I have a shoe repair man in the family :)

While we were working on our shoes we also washed two fleeces.

The grey fleece is from Whippet, an icelandic lamb. Joei and I bought the fleece at the New York Sheep and Wool Festival. The camel colored fleece is a merino moorit that Joei kindly shared with me. The grease had started to dry on the fibers so it is still a bit sticky but I felted a tiny bit and it made a wonderful felt. Now I am pondering what to use them for.

On Sunday I made the background felt for this piece so it is ready to hang in the Potter's show.

I also fulled a piece of a prefelt that I had made earlier to see how it will look when/if I finally use it to make the image that it is intended for.

And I worked some on fulling this head that I had started at home.

I love the way his eyes glow in this shot.

I took this shot to show how sculpted his face is. I used mostly Romney which is always a bit spongy and did not shrink as much as my other heads.

I put wire in his arms so they can be posed. He reminds me of a Wallace and Gromit character.

Finally I am happy to be able to say that at the opening of the Granby Land Trust Art Show last night I won one of the top awards....the Granby Land Trust Award. I also sold the piece and got a possible commission. I am proud of myself.