There was an interesting reaction on the Feltmaker's List to calling myself an "Old" felter in my previous post. It was pointed out that I'm not old, but wise- a person with much felting knowledge and experience. I'll accept that. Here is part of what I replied to that: ".......in the blog I guess I was really referring to being a person who was making
felt in an "old-fashioned" way and with a narrowly focused attitude. While a
lot of the new feltmakers seem to me to have large, glaring gaps of knowledge in
their feltmaking skills, I became aware in my research that I also have gaps in
my own knowledge base. I love the field of feltmaking enough to want to know as
much as possible about it. It has been a wonderful journey so far, studying with
people who see things very differently than I do. (Actually, when I was
younger, this might not have been as easy for me as it is now since I have way
less ego involved in my art than I did then.) I may not make immediate use of
the techniques I'm learning, but I'm really enjoying the thrill of pushing my
knowledge further."
To continue with some things I've learned.
I was able to study with
Vilte Kazlauskaite, who is a feltmaker from Lithuania. I love the relief textures she gets in her felt garments and was excited to learn some of her techniques. The main thing that I learned from Vilte is that textural surface embellishments are relatively easy to control if they are placed face down onto the felting mat. Then they are covered with a very thin layer of super fine merino which acts as a "glue" to attach the various embellishments to a thin backing cloth. (In this case I used 3 mm chiffon.)
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| Above, various textures viewed from their back side |
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| Fiber laid on top of the textures. | | |
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| Silk chiffon laid on top of stack and then wetted down. |
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| Finished texture study after felting. |
Most of the students in the workshop with Vilte made garments. These were felted all in one piece, with a resist template in the middle. I don't think I look good in these types of one-piece felt garments, but I did want to make a garment. I look better in a garment with more shaping and one that is sewn together. Following the advice of
Margo Duke (another wonderful feltmaker), I decided to use the mosaic collage technique of
Rosemary Eichorn. (See Rosemary's book:
The Art of Fabric Collage.) So, I used the
asymmetrical vest pattern #6 from Rosemary and with the knowledge I got from her book, I got the pattern to fit me quite well. (Thanks for the fitting help Kathe!) I used the shrinkage percentages from my textured felt sampling, and enlarged the pattern. I made the enlarged pattern in three sections, right and left fronts, and back. I then felted my textured pieces to fit the pattern and sewed them together at the underarm and shoulder. I am super happy with how well it fits. Although, this was a lot of work and the pieces didn't quite shrink as predicted.
Here is the sample vest I made. I want to do one in color, with the cotton voile fabrics like I used in my friend Kathe's scarf, but I'm still looking for the "right" fabrics to do this. This vest is made with various creams and whites silk habotai and chiffon. The fiber was 19 micron white merino.
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