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...
What you don't know...
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...
The difference between Craft Felt & Wool Felt
When I am asked if I use craft felt in any of my classes, I like to let my students know what the differences are between craft felt and wool felt. For starters, craft felt is created with manmade fibers, mostly plastic and synthetic fibers, which have been needled and/or heat processed to cause the fibers to adhere to one another. Wool felt is made primarily or entirely from natural animal fibers, mostly, sheep wool. Wool felt is more expensive than craft felt, and for good reason: animals require care and feeding in order to produce their wool over and...
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...