Felted Rainforest Wall hangings

My adventures with the 5th grade class at Fredericksburg Academy continue, as we work on completing two glorious wallhangings . We have decided to create two pieces as the kids are creating such spectacular flora and fauna to include in our compositions. Just wait to you see what these kids ahve done!!! i am amazed and thrilled with the excitment, energy and inspiration that we have got going on with this project.
Just to remind you , we have been creating felted batts of felted roving. The kids have done all of the work. From the greens felted pieces I have pieced together two background canvases that are approximately 4ft wide by 5 ft long.

We then decided what other colors would be needed to create the inhabitants of the rainforest and made felted batts of wool . Then the kids created sketches and then cut up the felted batts to create their critters and flowers.
The felting was fun but the creation of the critters and foliage was amazing!!! Witha few suggestions and a few how to's, they took off!!

One girl spent some time creating a wonderful Tapir.
(seen here in progress)

The orange was perfect for the Toucan's beak.

Once the kids had laid out their animals on a piece of tuille, I took them home and carefully stitched the pieces all down to secure the compositions. I absolutely adore this anteater!! Isn't he fabulous???
We had one group of boys learning how to use needle and thread to stitch leaves onto vines that they had felted. They were so excited that they were sewing!!! Whooo hooo!! We had another group that was creating flowers and beading stamens, another creating insects and snakes and yet another group working on Jaguars and Lizards!!!

Our class work for the day!!

Here are a few closeups of some of my new favorite critters. I have placed them on one of the backgrounds so you can begin to get an idea of how this will all be built!!

Along with our hand felted batts of colored roving I had added pieces of felted wool sweaters inot the mix of available textile supplies. This lovely little scarlet macaw was created with a piece of a pink cashmere sweater that the Principal had donated to our cause!! The girl who created this wonderful bird ,cut feathers from a yellow wool sweater and from a blue felted batt.

The dragonfly was an inspired creation by a girl who used a doily for the wings and then ourfelt for the rest. The chameleon was put together using a felted batt that was made using bits of a blue net tub scubby captured in amoung the wool roving fibers. The young imaginations at work was a joy to behold and I consider myself so lucky to be so enriched and inspred by these terrifically creative kids!!!

We are getting to the point where we will be placing our trees ,vines, waterfalls and animals on our backgrounds; backing the wool with a sturdy fabric support and adding our wooden vine hanger. Stay tuned for the final reveal of our fabulous Wallhangings. The tough part is going to be putting these creations up on the Auction table at the Fundraiser!!!

New Jewelry and Felting Backgrounds with the Kids!

I ahd a very successfual holiday season at Liberty Town this year and had to rush about after vanquishing the dreaded horrific virus , to create more stock for sales. I sold all of the resin earrings that I had delivered right before Christmas so I dove right back into the resin pond as my peices seemed to be so popular- Go with the sure thing right? these pictures are a bit blurrey as the resin is hard to photograph and a flash absolutely does not work!!
The earrings above are made with sterling wire and have images from a vintage dictionary. I embellished them with czech glass beads . It was hard to leave these to be sold- I need to make some for myself!!
This pair is made with a piece of my fabric paper with sheet music and colored tissue as the backing

I think that a real music lover might be drawn to this pair, I know that I would be!

I made these tiny collages with tiny images for hummingbirds and added the snippet of music and a bit of color to each. the beads hang down behind the images on a silver chain. Theya re both different but similar enough to work as a very unique pair. I am finding that assymetrical pairs are becoming quite popular. at least with the buyers at Liberty Town!

Last Wednesday I began my Felted Wallhanging adventures with the fifth grade class at Fredericksburg Academy.
We are going to be working together for the next several weeks to create a fabulous Rain Forest Wallhanging to be raffled off at the Annual Fredericksburg Academy Auction Fundraiser.

It was delightful to work with a nice small group of 14 versus the mob of 45 that I had led back in Novemeber. We split into groups and laid down roving in allsorts of wonderful greens , browns and bits of blue. The kids were a bit dissappointed that we ran out of time. i had to take the pieces home and do the final shrik down and throwing myself.

We plan to rememdy this when we get together again this Wednesday!!!

After steaming, I pinned the panels out on some foam boards to dry. The colors are wonderful!!
Tonight I will stitch all of these panels together to create a background canvas that we will work on tomorrow. We will be making more panels of greens , ropes in greens and browns for vines, colorful panels for flowers and birds and green ropes for snakes. Mrs. Reynolds is determined to create a Howler Monkey for a focal point
. Last week I sent the kids off with a homework assignment. They are to come up with some simple sketches of things that they think should be included in our project. It will be interesting to see what thye come into class with tomorrow.
This is a project that could consume as much time ,energy, wool and ideas as we could throw at it, but we have to keep it under control as the Auction is in early March and we do not have unlimited time and supplies. the kidsa re really enjoying the project and the fact that they get so much say into what we are creating!!