Category Archives: felt picture

The Beach – prefelts

After months of pondering, collecting images of sunsets and finally sketching ideas in watercolour I have finally started laying out the fibres for this painting. My new drum carder arrived last week so I have been itching to use it, this felt picture is the perfect foil for my new toy. 🙂

I have decided to tackle this picture as a mosaic of prefelts with inlay for the silhouettes and Kapiti Island. The mosaic technique should give a clean straight line for the horizon although I will actually use 3 strips for the background, the yellow one will be cut in half length-ways and stitched either side of the blue prefelt.

The prefelts were constructed from 2 layers of yellow or blue fibres followed by batts of mixed fibres from the drum carder.

Here is the roving all laid out ready to felt.

And the prefelts all stitched together.

Hopefully I will get to spend a few hours tomorrow adding wisps of roving to the base to bled the blue band and the lower half togeher and making the prefelts for the silhouettes.

Planning for The Beach

It’s alright, I haven’t lost my few remaining marbles, sunbathing on British beaches in November really isn’t my cup of tea. I will leave that sort of activity to much hardier souls. The Beach, is a new felt picture I have been mulling over for several months, it is a piece that is quite emotional for me so I want to get it right. About 18 months ago Mr TB lost his mother (Bev) after a long battle with cancer, it was tough for everyone, but especially him being on the other side of the world (he is a Kiwi and most of his family still live there). One of my abiding memories of Bev is that she loved walking and would take their dog, Josie, to the local beach in Otaki almost every day, Josie loved it, always finding the most enormous branch to proudly carry along the beach and into the surf. Ever since I started working with felt, I have had this idea that I would like to depict this idyllic seaside scene in a painting for my father in law as a reminder of those happy times. We are flying back to NZ in Dec so I had better get a move on!

Finally, after much ruminating I have started sketching out some ideas in water colour, what do you think? Do you have a favourite?

Mr TB has already suggested that I choose another silhouette for the dog, although this is a typical Josie pose, head down, tail wagging in that “play with me” posture dog’s have (she always wants you to throw these enormous tree trunks that I can barely lift) I can see his point, it isn’t immediately recognisable as a dog.