Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Felted Pictures

 

Wendy's Monarch

If you think the season for felting slippers is past and you have a basket full of coloured fleece maybe you would like to try your hand at painting with wool.

You can blend coloured fibres as you might blend paints to create subtle colour variations, as in the background of Wendy's Monarch.  The background is a wet felted base.  But you can also create detail like the lines on the butterflies wings with a bit of needle felting.


Maggie's landscape

Maggie has used a similar technique to produce this lovely landscape with some embellished poppies in the foreground.

prefelts

The child's blanket shown below began with a lightly wet felted base layer.  Then images were created as "prefelts", very lightly felted pieces that just hold together.  Then the prefelts are laid onto the partly felted base and the combination is carefully felted as one.  The trick is not to over process either the base or the prefelts.

 You can apply this same technique to nuno felting.  Nuno felting introduces a thin open weave material to stabilize the wool felt so that you can create a thin but stable cloth for making garments.  The wool fibres penetrate the silk so it is completely covered by the felted wool.

Pauline's vest



Darrell's embellished garden

In the photo above Darrell has added another element with embellishment to create the flowers in the foreground.  She has also made use of the raw wool fibres that tend to be curly and whispy to create clouds in the background.

Felting Workshop

If any of this interests you, Darrell is giving a workshop that will teach you the basics of wet felting and set you on your way to painting with wool.  You will come home with your own version of a flower garden. Darrell is doing two sessions, Friday April 19th or Saturday April 20th so you have two choices.  For more details go to our web site Qualicum Weavers and Spinners








Thursday, February 1, 2024

Workshops and Websites

learning together

 Our workshop committee has organized an exciting series of workshops for 2024.  We started off the year with our popular beginner series, beginner spinning and beginner weaving.  These classes book up ahead but if you missed the January sessions, we keep a waiting list.  



Beginning Spinning is being offered a second time February 5th and 7th.  This course will get you started.  Later in February 23 Linda Raven will take members deeper into the world of worsted and woolen.

Our Beginner Weaving Level 1, starting Feb 16, is unfortunately full but if you are interested and would like to be on our waiting list for the next time then contact workshops@gwsg.ca  For those of you who have taken a beginner course and want to explore more we have Introduction to Weaving, Level 3.  In this course you will expand your skills and learn how to design and execute your own pieces.  Participants will create a boucle tea towel of their own design.  The course takes place March 1 to 3.


For more advanced weavers we have two interesting and very different courses.  


An Introduction to Bound Weave takes place March 9th.  This workshop will have you making figured pieces using a weft dominant technique similar to Krokbragd.  Participants will create a figured design on their own table loom.  If you need a table loom for this course we may be able to help with that.  Contact Gillian Best for more information at gbest@shaw.ca  
 
Woven Shibori
with Linda Wilson is a 4 day workshop that starts on March 12th.  Linda will take participants through the process of creating a unique textured cloth with pleats and ruffles.

  For more information about these courses please go to our website at https://qwsg.ca/workshops/

There you can click on the course title to find out the costs and more details about the instructor and the course content.  If you decide this is the course for you then you can go on to register and pay to secure your spot on-line.  

If you have any issues or concerns about the system or need some assistance then contact Gillian Best, gbest@shaw.ca