From Vessel to Light

As I was working on yesterdays 30 Minute Felt Project, I kept thinking about about felt lighting and how interesting this piece might be turned into a lampshade.

I love felt in lighting. There is nothing so soft, warm and inviting as the way light travels through the wool fibres.  I have made many pieces , small and large, contemporary and whimsical, and once showed my felt lighting range at the Interior Design Show in Toronto. I have a whole new series designed...just need to time to make them...

This piece is more in keeping with the playful and experimental....I may hang it up in our living room for a little refreshing change of inside scenery.....

Lovely and light!

Warm wishes,
Fiona

30 Minute Felt Project- Stacked Vessels

These 30 minute felt projects are an opportunity to come to the creative table with no expectations- just a short intensive, mind-wide-open exploration...It can be easy as a craftsperson to get stuck in productions ruts, and this is an exercise to give ourselves permission to play within our medium. This is not about creating felt quickly;  it is about setting aside an amount of time that feels reasonable in our busy days to create freely.

This mornings inspiration came from a stack of handmade ceramic bowls that my sons made in a brilliant class with super talented Julie MacKinnon. They are so beautiful in their form. 

I knew this was going to be a bit of a challenge, but also an exciting pursuit!

I started off with my two wools- Norwegian and Finn, some pencil rovings, two round foam resists and my hot water/felting solution ready to go.

I started with the smaller resist and laid out the wool to cover both sides.

Hand-dyed silver pencil rovings wrapped around the form. I am using these almost everyday in the studio right now. I am so drawn to very simple white and grey shadings.  I was not entirely certain on how they would be positioned once I attached the two forms together and later shaped them, but that's part of this exercise- it doesn't matter too much how the end result will look...so I let go of that wondering and moved on...

 Covering the second resist with two layers of wool rovings.

And now I hit an A-ha kind of moment. If I laid my smaller vessel on top of the other, they would be joined to form a shape like an insect body or two bubbles attached together....not the intention...( although a fun one for another day!)...
What is the inside-out-backward way of thinking with resists to get them to create the form I wanted them too?  Ah yes.....A little cutting was necessary, but first I felted the vessels to the prefelt stage.

To create the correct form for this experiment, I needed to nest the one resist within the other, with only a small area of wool in direct contact.  I cut away an opening of wool, and also the underlying resist.

 ...then laid the second vessel form on top, wool now in contact, with some bubble wrap around the edges to keep them from joining completely.

Lots of rolling and rubbing and kneading....

I decided to make some openings in the larger form, so that the inner felt form would be revealed.

Time to get the resists out, and felt fast....

 Time is up and the double form is revealed.  Very fun....It's interesting like this. Reminds me of those dolls that can have their skirts turned to reveal a second figure. The two vessels are now felted together, one inside the other, in a seamless whole.

Rinsed, shaped, stuffed and drying.

Quite a fun experiment! In the next 30 minute felt project,  I think I'll scale back my scope...as these last two "small" projects have been a challenge to finish, and something a little less complex would make the whole exercise even more light and interesting! Definitely successful in achieving the goal though- I'd love to make another dozen of these, giving them more time to create more complex forms, layout the wool fibres more evenly, and full the felt more thoroughly. Most often when working off an image or object for inspiration, I don't want to have that around me when creating, so that it has inspired the piece but only as a notion. In this case I actually wish I'd kept the bowls in front of me, as I wanted to achieve those very simple, shallow forms and smooth surfaces. I got a little carried away! Next time..

Sharing these projects here has got me thinking about how great it would be to be able to share them in a video format...and that leads on to another topic for another day!
Happy fibre play!
Warm wishes,
Fiona

30 Minute Felt Project- The Mountain Vessel

Over the last few weeks I've been playing a new studio game.....15 minute felt projects.  Just once a week, as an opportunity to approach design work with a blank mental slate, no commitments to outcome and sense of fun experimentation.  This is actually the third of these projects.....the mountain vessel....

  It's so easy to head out the studio with the timer set at 15 minutes and just see what happens. It's allows a simple opening for some spontaneous creating.  This morning I had mountains in mind....and shadows....and laid out a circle of two layers of Norwegian wool.  Problem number 1 in meeting  the 15 minute felt deadline (Norwegian wool is not a quick felter!)! Problem number 2 was that I made my surface too large to complete in such a short time.....

Then I used some strips of resist material I had handy and started to alternate layers of resist, with triangles of merino prefelt. These were not pre-cut- just quickly cut randomly and added to the surface.

Wetted out and ready to felt...This is the point that I started to realize my folly in wool selection and size......

 I did get the piece designed, laid out, wetted out, rolled and hand rubbed....and then my timer went off! Okay...So a little ambitious...but it is an expansion activity not a limiting one,  so I gave myself another 15 minutes to finish up....since the purpose is to have a freeform felting session, but also to not let it take over the whole morning/day/week!

At 30 minutes I rinsed well and shaped the mountain spines....

 Then shaped into a vessel form using a steam iron.....and dried in the morning sun on a pedestal in my studio window....all morning it made me happy to look over at the finished form...

A great creative practise and one I plan to continue over the summer.....but with the expanded, but still limited timeframe of the 30 minute felt project!

Warm wishes,
Fiona

Red Textures

 I am having a delicious stretch into new work....making pieces for the felt::feutre exhibition....It is so delightful to work out ideas without too much time pressure; just exploring pure creativity.

This is a technique that I teach in my Surface Design class....using slow felting wools to create nodules....and in this case, worked on a foam resist to make the finished piece take on a three dimensional form......

  I'm quite enjoying having these displayed in the studio, just as they are...I love their redness...it's powerful, and especially in combination with the charred wood piece underneath. The wood is part of a collaboration I am working on with my eldest son, Finn McGuffin....an interior design line in charred wood and felt...more to come on that....

  These red pieces are part of a sculptural piece that is another exploration of Joomchi felt.  They will be turned inside out and become the inner layers of a snowy white multipocketed piece...reflecting on what we show on the outside and all the layers that exist behind that social facade....the life experiences that inform our every movement and word, in multiple ways, but that those we interact with cannot always fully know....

Finishing up the white outer shell today...will show you some pics when complete!

This week is bringing on so many creative ideas...it's been a big week for communication, imagination and manifestation....a "yes" kind of week. 
I've got to go out and get another sketch book....most of the new ideas are for collections of pieces, and I just can't start on those until....until.....maybe December? The calender is very full....so I'll just  fill up the notebooks, and let those collections come to realization when the time is right!

Warm wishes,
Fiona

Felt Floor

 

  This is a project we worked on a while ago...another collaboration of wood and wool....

  Felt flooring in our living room..... It was such a great, exciting experiment....The idea jumped into view while Graham and I were on the ferry from Vancouver island to Salt Spring one day....one of those jumping up and down, speedily thinking, planning, dreaming, kinds of conversations....Growing from a single floor into a whole design line of flooring, room dividers and art pieces....since then it's shrunk back into a more reasonable scale of project...scaled, down, refined....the experiment floor in our home, and wall pieces, small and large...these will be part of our new studio line for 2012....(I'm planning on some wood/wool hybrid bags also!)

  Floor before....yuck.....

  Design drawn freehand onto panels of beautiful birch plywood... then carefully cut and labelled. Installed and finished with a natural varnish.  The floor measures 12 feet x 16 feet (3.6m x 4.9m).

  I hand felted some panels to use in the sections using the very durable Norwegian C-1 wool, laid out very carefully in order to achieve the same thickness in the finished felt, as the wooden panels.  Then handdyed, in order to get some liveliness in colour variation....Glued securely in place.....and taa-daa....wood/felt flooring.  It's very fun.....

  It's hard for me to remember sometimes...like over the last few weeks (wintery blues)... that everything we touch can be just a little more, a piece of art, something beautiful....It's important to make that effort.  That's what this project was all about. It's something we can always do....and making our living spaces a little more beautiful, with our own special touches, I think can elevate all the activities that take place within that space...

Warm wishes,

Fiona