Stab Things Into Existence Blog (Anna's Place of Holding)
- fiber painting
TOUGH DECISION
I’ve made a tough decision, one which impacts me in all the feels, but one which I’ve made for the right reasons. I will not be attending or teaching at GenCon in Indianapolis this year. GenCon holds a special place in my business: I truly began my teaching at GenCon many years ago when I first discovered felting. My husband, Randy, who had a rather significant following on Twitter (his favorite form of social media), began talking with his twitterverse about what I had taught myself to do, how he loved my felt paintings, etc., and it attracted the notice...
Where I began
Some of you have known me from early on in my felting journey, and you have seen my work transform and evolve slowly over the past ten+ years. Some of you only know me from what I’ve been teaching and doing these past several years, as I’ve honed my teaching skills in local workshops, convention classes, and guild events and meetings. But I dare say that very few, if any of you, recall my early work, for which I was, at the time, as a self taught felter, very proud. Now some of these make me cringe: I show you...
How do you paint with wool?
What you see in the picture above is the first felt ‘painting’ I created shortly after I discovered felting more than a decade ago. I had been looking for more and more ways to create felt and had come across a couple of felt artists online whose work I greatly admired: Jan Waller and Moy Mackay. Jan’s work is fun and full of life-often featuring a figure at play or her daughter. I love her vibrant colors and the sense of whimsy evident in her work. I was delighted to meet Jan at a workshop in Wisconsin several years...
Spine Surgery knocked GenCon OUT!
I’ll be launching something cool this fall, and if you want to have access to me for felting classes, tips and tricks, special events, etc., then head over to www.stabthingsintoexistence.com and leave your email address. My friends who give me their emails will be the FIRST in line for this new project, The FELTit Experience.
WHAT IS FELTING?
Felt is a textile material that is produced by matting, condensing and pressing fibers together. Felt can be made of natural fibers such as wool or animal fur, or from synthetic fibers such as petroleum-based acrylic or acrylonitrile or wood pulp-based rayon. (Source: Wikipedia) Clear as mud, right? Felting is a way to create things of beauty, both fabric and sculptural, through the use of a barbed needle (needle felting) or by changing the pH of the wool and using friction in a soap and water application (wet felting). Here on Stab Things Into Existence, I’ll teach you how those...
