August 2015 - Jane Mercer Felt Artist

Masham Merino Mixes

I am trying slowly to use more and more British or at least European fibre in my felt and dyeing work. In pursuit of this aim , I bought some Masham fibre from Adelaide Walker at Woolfest. Creamy white and beautiful brown. Although I have this aim I do have a large stash of coloured merino. I decided to try working with the coloured merino and the natural Masham together. I did not physically mix them , but have used them together to make a number of pieces. The Masham is slightly more coarse than the merino , but they blend together beautifully and I love the mix of natural colors in the Masham with the bright colours of the merino. Here are my finished mixed pieces. and here is a small one, actually made with left overs before stitching. This post has been reissued due to problems with the…

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13/08/2015

Boring but ……

Over the last few months I have made quite a number of wet felted small vessels. These vessels have been made out of different white fibers and then dyed. At the time I made them I knew exactly what I had done , but coming back to them a few weeks later and I began to get seriously muddled up . I was no longer sure which was the nettled dyed BFL , or the nettled dyed Polwarth ( Thanks to Teri Berry for these fibers they are great) Time to take control and keep on track before I was totally confused. Better admin was an urgent necessity? So I gave each vessel a reference number and a small label with the critical information. And I started I vessel register on a spreadsheet. This feels a bit like work But I know that the key to being able to reproduce…

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01/08/2015

Eco Dyeing / Natural dyeing / Wet felting

Blackberry pink

Beautiful juicy blackberries growing in all the hedgerows. Good for eating and also good for dyeing. I have to admit I am not a big fan of eating them straight of the plant , but I do like them stewed with some apples. But today I could not waste them by eating them as I wanted to check out the results of using them as an dye. I first made a tiny little wet felted vessel, with six points , which I stupidly did not photograph ! I then did some simple stitching on it with cotton yarn. After soaking for an hour or too, it was plunged straight into the dye pot. Just a few hours later a sweet little pink pointed vessel emerged. I love both its smallness, it's pointedness and its pinkness. Now I have heard that you can freeze blackberries and then dye with them , so…

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01/08/2015

jewellery / Wet felting

Brooches

I have discovered that of all the felt I make, I sell more jewellery than anything else. Maybe it's because its small and relatively cheap and can be given as a present ? But I don't really know why it sells better. This fact frustrated me for quite some time , but now I have decided to embrace it. I find making jewellery relatively easy . More to the point is very portable and with my increasingly nomadic, two country, lifestyle that brings loads of opportunities. Slowly as I travel I have been making the odd extra pieces. The pieces were never all together until this week . When I stopped and counted and realized I had 40 pieces !! How did that happen ? Most of them are brooches . This one is my favorite . I also have quite a few necklaces and have been experimenting with making…

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01/08/2015