New Website

 

My New Website
A quick note to let you all know I just finished updating my website. It is completely redesigned. I did it myself using an app on my iPad called HTML Egg. I would like to commend the creators of this app. It is amazing and easy to use. It is well worth the money I paid for it. Please take a look at my website at h2ocolorpainter.com.

Happy New Year's

New Painting Blog

I needed to do this short post to let you all know what I've been doing lately. No there is no new artwork to show.....sorry. I have just been working on setting up another blog for my Painting Blog and Gallery. It's been a full time job figuring out the best way to do that and I'm still doing it all on the iPad, which is a challenge in itself. Now from my fiber blog you can go to my website and to my Painting blog by clicking on the links in the top right area of the right hand column. The address for the Painting Blog is http://lyndapikeartist.blogspot.com/. You can also subscribe to that blog by entering your email at the top of the that page and clicking on submit.

It may be awhile til I start producing any artwork with the holidays coming soon and a long vacation also. Hope to do some posting while I'm away. Everyone have a wonderful holiday season 

Quick Felting Gifts

Lynda's website

Wet Felted Wool Covered Bars Of Soap

Yesterday and this morning I felted these bars of soap for some

lady friends for holiday gifts. They are quick and fun to do and are

very useful. Nice for exfoliating and they dry out quickly. They are

lavender scented which give off a nice aroma.

You can find some good videos on YouTube that

Explain and show how to make them. Just Google

Wet Felting a Bar of Soap.

Raspberry Swirl Scarf

Wet Felted Wool With Silk Window 

Pane Inset

This is the felted scarf I did using the silk inset technique I did in the practice test piece yesterday. I used some wool roving I hand dyed and silk fabric I hand dyed. The technique worked great but in a few areas the edge of the silk did not get attached well. That was easily fixed by hand needle felting those areas. The silk became very textural when the wool shrank around it. A very pretty effect.

Title 22

 

Wool Felting With a Silk Fabric Insert

Test Piece With Silk Insert

Here is a test piece I just made this morning. This is a piece of my hand dyed silk inserted into a wool felted base. I laid out one thin vertical and one thin horizontal layer of wool roving. Then placed the cut out piece of silk fabric on top of the wool. Then I placed a thin wisp of roving around the edges of the fabric to embed it into place. Next I covered it with netting and wet it down with cold soapy water. Then I lightly rubbed it with a plastic grocery bag that was wadded up. Next I removed the netting and then placed another piece of bubble wrap on top and felted it with my electric sander. When it was completely felted I took it to the sink and rinsed in very hot water and culled it by throwing 25 times in the sink. Then rinsed in cold water and threw it 25 more times in the sink. This causes the shrinking and hardening of the fibers. Now stretch it out and let it dry.

After doing this sample I am ready to use this technique on a scarf, can't wait. 

            Silk insert sample piece.                   

Silk insert sample piece

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      Rainy Days Are Here.....Great Felting Weather

Yesterday morning I dyed eight chiffon silk scarves and some yarn and a piece of silk fabric.  I used Jacquard and Dharma Acid Dyes. I wanted to do small quantities of many colors so I researched and found a way to do that in one pot. By mixing your dyes and placing them into quart canning jars you can do up to seven different colors in a typical enamel canning pot. You can put up to 2 silk scarves in each jar. If you want a smooth all over solid color I would just put in one scarf so it gets well saturated with the dye bath. If you want a variegated or tie dye look cram two scarves into the jar and it will come out with a lot of variation in color like the fuchia piece shown below. You can tie fabric bundles or scarves with string or rubber bands and get wonderful patterns.   

SScarves ready for felting	Extra bits of dyed yarn for scarf embellishments

    Yesterday I Nuno felted the turquoise scarf with black flowers and white

    and rusty red accents. Today I did the deep wine scarf with cobweb roving

    that was pre variegated colors when I bought it.

 

   

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    Other Nuno Felted Scarves

You may have seen these scarves before, but I just wanted to add 

them to this new blog for those who have not been here before. So 

sorry if you've already seen them.

Most of these scarves are hand died silk with wet felted wool

roving. These will be on display at my studio during the Art Studio

Trek 2013. For further information about the Art Trek go to 

Artstudiotrek.com

this s          This scarf is extra long and can be wrapped around the neck two times.	This scarf is 100% wool...very soft and lightweight.

Two sided wool scarf

2 Sided Wool Felted Scarf

               Side One

               Side 2

Wet Felted Wall Hanging

Multnomah Falls, Oregon

           

A couple months ago we took a road trip up the Oregon Coast and then inland up the Columbia River. We visited the Multnomah Falls. I was very impressed by the scene and all the vegetation surrounding the falls area. When I got home I decided to wet felt a wall hanging depicting what I had seen. 

The big shapes were wet felted with wool roving. I layed out 3 layers of wool then wet it all down with soap and water. Then I used the no roll method of felting by using a sander on the wool placed between 2 sheets of bubble wrap. After it was completely felted I finished the piece with traditional rinsing and fulling. Then I let it dry completely. Next I hand needle felted some textural yarns on for the various vegetation, the bridge and the figure.

3D Cut Layers Felting Technique

Wet Felting with 3-D Cut Layers 

             

I wet the whole piece down with netting over it with warm soapy water. Then placed a piece of bubble wrap on top. The wool was all layed out on a piece of bubble wrap also. So now all the wool is sandwiched between the bubble wrap. Instead of the time consuming backbreaking rolling I usually do I used my husbands sander to do the felting. It was felted in a quarter of the time. Using the sander you can't leave the netting on too long as it will felt in very quickly. So check it often and remove it soon after wool begins to felt. Once you do the pinch test and it is ready to full, take it to the sink and rinse in hot water. Squeeze out excess water and wad up and throw it several times on the floor of the sink. This will cause it to shrink and harden up a bit. Now rinse in cold water and soak in cold water with a touch of vinegar in it for 15 minutes. Rinse again, squeeze excess water and roll in a towel to get last bit of water out.  Unroll lightly stretch to shape. Now you can find the center of the circles by feeling and then make a snip in the center with sharp scissors going just down to the plastic resist. Now you can slit from the center of each circle out to where the layers are felted together, like cutting a pie to create the petals that will fold back revealing the purple wool underneath. You can now remove the plastic circle exposing the yellow centers.

To add some detail I hand needle felted the stems and needle felted the tips of the lower flower under so they stay curled. This was a very simple design I created to try my first attempt to create the cut layers technique. I had seen it in some photos but could not find instructions. So I tried it on my own. I think it was pretty successful as far as how to do it. Here is a sketch showing the layers of wool.

A "Fishy" Art Quilt

  A "Fishy" Art Quilt

When I was on vacation traveling up the Oregon coast we visited a small aquarium in Seaside. They had 3 or 4 metal embossed plates with sea life on them. They had lots of paper and crayons for kids to make rubbings. No kids around so the artist in me said I have to do that. So I made some rubbings. Brought them home and photoed the fish and photo shopped it and printed it on a piece of fabric and proceeded to make an art quilt out of it. I incorporated some hand painted and stamped fabrics added some border fabric and free motion quilted the border in a wavy fashion. Then I trimmed the edges curvy and added some satin cording around the edge.

Crayon rubbing on paper.

Layout.

Finished piece.

Recent Wet Felted Projects

NEW BLOG

I am changing my blog because it is easier to post from my iPad. So Please resubscribe to my blog here if you would like to follow my artistic meandering. My GoDaddy Quick blog was not working out using

the iPad. 

So here we go. I'm going to post the photo of my latest wet felting projects that wouldn't post on the old blog. If you got multiple emails with no photo this will solve the mystery of what I was talking about.