0 to Quilt in 5 Days - Blast Off

5 days gone and I have 2 quilts ready for the Quiltwest exhibition! Today I needle felted the backing fabric onto the front of the piece. As I'm incapable of cutting a straight line the corners were hacked into curves and finished off by needle felting on some more white swirls.

The fish were fused on and then stitched.

The octopus was stitched down with lots of free motion stitch in variegated and metallic threads.

Lastly the silk paper barnacles were attached with stitch in a similar coloured thread.

The forms are in! Come along and see the quilts in May at The Quilt and Craft Fair, Perth Exhibition Centre.

0 to Quilt in 5 Days - T Minus 1

The octopus quilt has come on quite a bit today as you can see above but nothing is stitched down yet. First I added some more colour into the boarder with wool fibres and the needle felting machine. Here is the first layer.

And then more detail with some white wool swirls.

The background was then quilted on top using a swirling free motion pattern.

It's difficult to see in the photograph. Here's the back.

Tomorrow I have to trim the boarder to size and get all the motifs sewn down.

Cairn-scape #1

I've used lots of different techniques to make the cairn in a folded landscape - a Cairn-scape! I used lots of different Gelli® mono-printed papers and fabrics to make the base layer.

On top I added needle felted wool and organza along with free motion stitch.

The cairn is paper on one side, fabric on the other. The viewer can decide how they would like to fold and display the piece.

Another Mixed Media Cairn

I have finally finished another mixed media cairn piece mounted on MDF. This one has needle felt, sewn acrylic pour, collage, and resin.

Here it is hanging next to the first mixed media cairn.

Mini Mixed-Media

I'm experimenting again with mixing my media. This mini piece has a needle felted landscape with appliqued cairn motif. The pebbles are cut from the felt and backed with printed papers. It's all mounted on a mini wood panel which has been painted with acrylics. I used resin to fill in the pebbles and give them some shine. The sky has also been coated with resin.

The Lonely Cairn

This piece is now finished and ready for display. The background is needle felted sari silks, felt and free motion stitch. The cairn was made using a rubbing with Shiva sticks onto some hand dyed cotton. The cairn was applied with free motion stitch. The whole thing is mounted on a ready-made canvas.

Felt and Collage

Today I've been taking some of my design ideas forward into textiles. I've started this sari silk, needle felted, panel.

The next thing I need to decide is how to apply the cairn.

I've also continued to work on more designs using prints and collage. This is my favourite at the moment and I've already started a larger version.

And of course a few more cairn designs.

Bottles or Bowling Pins? - Felt Pictures.

I've finished two of my needle-felted pictures and mounted them onto canvases. They started off as bottles but have come out rather like bowling pins!

Needle-Felted Dyed Wadding

You may recall a while back that I decided to dye some wadding and use it for needle felting in place of expensive (but lovely!) pre-felts. The wadding has been out of the dye for a while now and today I started felting bits of wool fibres, acrylic felt, yarn, organza and even painted baby wipes to it. It works just as well as pre-felt and is quite a bit more robust. This is just an experiment, I'll see how it goes before dyeing some other pieces of wadding in a more considered way. Below you can see the wadding at the beginning with only a little wool fibre added - it's already quite colourful.