Artybird Carnforth Archives - Jane Mercer Felt Artist

Printing

I have been trying out some Lino printing , firstly with a Christmas present kit and then at Artybird. I am not sure where I am going with this but it's good to have a play. I started simple , with shapes and black acrylic paint on paper . I was quite pleased with the effect. Last week at Artybird I tried again with inktensive blocks and a more complicated design , in fact two designs. The idea was to print onto felt. It is totally unintentional that they look like legless birds. Here I have tried printing on fabric with the inktensive blocks. Not very impressive. Worse was to follow as I tried to print on felt. What a disappointment , I think my shape was not well chosen and getting an even distribution of the colour medium to transfer to the felt seems very challenging. Back home I tried…

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15/05/2016

Artybird Carnforth / Wet felting

Taking my time

I am coming to realize that it can take me a very long time to finished a felted piece. In July 2015 I made a piece based on some photographs I had taken in 2014. The inspiration was wet lichen covered rocks. Then I looked at this felted piece and thought what on earth will I do with this now ! For those of you who read this blog , might remember I eventually cut it up. A radical move , but I still could not finish it ! I loved the dark brown Masham surround and wanted to find away to bring it all together. So I took it to a master class with Artybird and asked ," what shall I do now". Various suggestions were made mostly involving bringing it together as a piece. I thought about this , alongside the original inspiration for the piece and suddenly…

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31/01/2016

Artybird Carnforth / Wet felting

Alpaca

My use of alpaca to date has been as a yarn for texture. I like to do this as it takes up natural dyes slightly differently than wool adding both texture and shades simultaneously. You can see this in the madder dyed piece below , where the alpaca yarn is at the top and slightly lighter than the surrounding wool I was therefore interested to see how the fibre itself felted during a day this week at Artybird in Carnforth. The fibre I had to felt was one year old alpaca , the youngest and softest . It has less scales and less crimp than wool fibre. Perhaps it would be very hard to felt. With four thin layers laid out I just used my normal techniques and only cold water and found I could easily and quickly make a small sample. I had embellished the piece with…

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10/01/2016

Artybird Carnforth / Wet felting

How to restart ?

Well after a successful move back to the UK , followed by two weeks unpacking , and a family Christmas and New Year, I need to start felting again. In truth we are far from unpacked but the essentials are sorted and now is mostly just a question of time before some modifications to the house can be organized and its dry enough to tackle the jungle of the garden I have temporarily installed my sewing machine on a small table in the study and put a felting table in the conservatory so nothing is stopping me - except I am not sure what to do ! Before I left the Netherlands I put in my pop up felting studio, some jewellery making partial felt and some beads , but I am not inspired to make any jewellery right now. I have in my stash of fibres some beautiful fibres that…

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03/01/2016

Artybird Carnforth / British wool fibres / Wet felting

Memories of Artybird

Over the last weeks I have been doing a lot of sorting out and clearing out the mountains of felting I have accumulated. Some things have headed to the recycling but I have also come across some treasured pieces from my first Artybird felting course. Sunsets featured prominently in my first course and here are my beginners attempts at dyeing with some very tentative sunset stitching. One of the great things about the courses was the design work , but there was felting as well Two different techniques to felt a sunset ! My first experience of natural fibres , using Shetland , which I have really grown to love. Making an embroidered piece, again all hand dyed which if I remember correctly I was told to go back and stitch some more . All these pieces are a wonderful reminder of the journey I embarked upon about 5 years ago. I…

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01/11/2015

Artybird Carnforth / Box of beautiful things / Uncategorized

Leyburn Exhibition

I belong to a cooperative called 'Box of Beatiful things ' made up from the students and staff of ArtyBird Carnforth and yesterday we set up our latest exhibition in Leyburn , Yorkshire. It's at TOSH , The Old School House and our exhibition is in a lovely airy room on the first floor. It was the first time I had ever helped set up an exhibition and Chris, Jo, Chris and I had great fun choosing what pieces went well together and which walls to put them on. We had a hanging system which was great but there was lots of climbing up and down stepladders trying to position the pieces and make sure they were level. In addition to all the pictures and wall hangings we had bowls and cushions , lamp shades and cards , lit pictures and brooches , a feast of wonderful work .…

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09/10/2015