Thursday, April 5, 2018

Demystifying Felt with Heidi Bukoski

Tonight we got great instruction and history on the three different kinds of felting. We also were able to try all 3 kinds.









These are samples of Heidi's work.  The hats are wet felting, the birds are needle felting and the fabric type pieces are nuno felting.

We first tried needle felting which is done with a barbed, very sharp needle.  We used a plastic cookie cutter to give our piece a shape. Heidi uses a medium grade, short staple wool for best results.



Next we tried wet felting. We placed a thin layer of wool in one direction and another layer in the opposite direction and then placed the piece in a plastic bag.  We added a little water mixed with detergent and began rubbing.


Nuno felting is similar to wet felting except that the wool is placed on a piece of silk gauze and then worked into the silk with water and detergent. Very time consuming.



These are our finished samples above.  Very interesting.





Trying on Heidi's beautiful items.  Butterfly wings.









Several guests tonight.   




I belong to the Surface Design Association (www.surfacedesign.org).  One of the perks for me is getting one of the three swatch collections of actual textile work done by SDA members.  I have Collection C right now that I'm going to bring to the meeting on Wednesday and spread them out for everyone to look at, touch and talk about.  There are 90 12" x 12" pieces in all conceivable fabric techniques--- even some where the back is completely different than the front.   
Jennifer

 Show and Tell





Suzanne brought this wonderful needle felted elephant to show us. The elephant was part of a challenge from the website listed below.

https://www.sarafinafiberart.com/default.asp





Priscilla got an honorable mention in the MLH show for the piece above.

The following pictures are what she played with all winter. Using the Gelli printing plate she printed lots of pieces of paper and fabric.  







Wendy tried a new technique called Cartonnage. Basically it is a technique of gluing fabric or paper to cardboard.  Always best to know a few tricks though.

She bought a kit from Claudia at:


Great site with free tutorials to try.