Embellisher Felting Workshop with Her Majesty Margo!!!

I have been gone for so long!! I have neglected you all and my poor blog!! I have been busy, busy, busy and I hope that the next several posts will help to explain what I have been up to!!


One of the major highlights of the past several weeks was a Class with this wonderful and talented lady, Her Majesty Margo, Ms. Margo Duke!!

(above photo taken by Susan Elliott)

Here she is as she appeared in class with her adorably stylish felted Fascinator chapeau and her gorgeous wool and silk shrug that she calls her Butterfly Wrap!
I was quadrupley excited to take this class as I found out that my dear blogging friend, the  amazing thread and bead artist , the delightful Susan Elliott would be traveling down to meet Margo and take the class as well!!   Oh my! almost more than I could stand!!!
 We had lots to cover in our Gown Fragments class and Margo got right to it demonstrating how to achieve some of her beautiful looks with our embellishing machines.

Margo is always so very generous with the materials that she provides for her classes and we each chose some silks and ribbons and fleece and silk fibers to create with.  Our class was held at the wonderful Artistic Artifacts in Alexandria, so anything else that we might need was readily available, including the felting machines.  (Judy Gula is now a distributor for the Simplicity Felting Machine which works like a dream and does not cost an arm and a leg.  If you are considering buying one of these wonderful machines, look at this machine first- Judy can tell you all about it and sell you one too!!

                                                   This is the palette that I chose to work with.  No surprises here!!!

This is the progress that I made on my piece during the class.  All of the work that you see here was done using the felting machine.  you can also see that I used my regular sewing machine to add some free motion embroidery work .  once the wet felting portion of the project is done you will see just how much texture this extra stitch work adds.

The small pink circles that you can see are little circular rosettes of wool yarn that i felted down into the wool and silk fabric.  All sorts of fibers and yarns and trims can be added to this process and my piece became a sampler of sorts for many of the techniques that Margo was demonstrating for us.

Our time together literally flew by and none of us wanted to pack up and leave.  We all would have gladly stayed for a three day marathon class if we could have!!!
Margo has plans to give a class on creating her wonderful little Fascinator Hats and you can bet that we will all be stalking her blog waiting for the next class announcements!! If you ever have the opportunity to work with this delightful lady, DO NOT HESITATE!!!  You will be so glad that you jumped at any opportunity that arises!!

                                  Here we are as a class showing off our work on our gown fragments.
                             (Susan Elliott is standing on the far left in the pink shirt with the great smile!!!)

Once I got back home I set to wet felting my sampler piece.  If you look back at the area around the large purple flower you can see a border of green wool that had been embellished to the edges of the purple silk.  once the wet felting was done the green wool had shrunk up so much that it was no longer visible and it had pulled the purple silk along with it to form the much more ruffled and blousey flower!!!!

In fact, all of the luscious silk fabrics had been gathered and ruched in along with the shrinking wool!!  What fabulous fun and a delightful set of techniques to apply to all sorts of different projects!!!
                                Thank you so very much for yet another delightful and delicious class Margo!!!

Keeping All the Plates Spinning????????

Sometimes it seems that I have so many things to pay attention to, I cannot possibly get anything done!! Lately I have had lots to do but I seem to be managing to get alot done. Not sure how long this will last but as long as I can keep the plates spinning, at varyiing speeds mind you, I will be happy with whatever I can achieve!!!
I ahve been working on developing a felting project for m upcoming stint as Visiting Artist at Fredericksburg Academy. this year I ahve decided to present the 50 5th graders and 42 4th graders in Mirinda Reynold's Art Classes with a felting Collage Project. This is in the early development stages but I am very excited about it and feel like I am almost ready to proceed tot he supplies gathering phase. As I only have an hour with each group for the entire project, I am required to be as organized as possible. This is not a strong skill set for myself personally but when I ahve to present and pretend that I am organized, I can usually pull it off!!!

Each collage will end up being approximately 5x5 inches and We will incorporate all sorts of fibers into the collages. We will start by talking about the mechanics of the felting process, how important the felting process has been in our human history and then I will show a wonderful You Tube video showing a group of Mongolian tribesmen creating their shelters with felted fibers. You can see this marvelous video by clicking here.

This is a close up of the mini collage shown above. You can see bits of lace, ribbon yarn, plastic mesh onion bags, and silk fibers locked into the wool roving. I am so lucky to have wonderful Blogging friends who are talented felters and textile artists to call on for advice. I continue to be so very grateful for the internet, as without the web I would never have met talented stars like Elizabeth Armstrong.
Elizabeth has served as a wonderful friend and resource with her talents and experiences as a teacher of huge and complex felting projects with large fgroups of young students. Thank you so very much Elizabeth, with all of your suggestions and tips, they will prove invaluable!!

Here is another sample where I have incorporated several pieces of silk fabric scraps.

I love the effect that can be achieved by adding the silk with the wool. The puckering and added texture happens when the wool is shrunk and the silk is gathered in with the shrinking wool fibers.

While my felt samples were drying, I created some silver wire wrapped charms from some sea glass that a dear friend had sent to me. My friend has a large collection of Mermaid's Tears as she calls them, and I ahd offered to wrap some of her favorite pieces so she could include them in a charm necklace that she is creating.

I made two charms using the glass that she sent me and then I created a speciall charm with one of my favorite natural beach talismans .

I wrapped a very small special Lucky Stone in sterling silver. I am very pleased with how these turned out and I am planning on creating more charms for future projects. A bracelet full of lucky stone charms would be fun as long as it didn't get too heavy!!!

Late last week I was graced with a wonderful treasure of someone else's trash!!! I could not believe my good fortune when my friend Anne offered me some "bits of left over wool and silk yarns". Never one to turn down offers of free fibers, I welcomed the boxes. Feast your eyes on what I found when I removed the box tops!!!

Now this is fastidious organization!!! Isn't this beautiful!!!!

This top box is mostly silk yarns.

I just love how this fiber artist wound this last little beige bit of yarn on this vintage curling rod!!! I assured Anne that I would make good use of all of these fibers and I plan to use many of these wonderful colors in the supplies bags that I create for the Felted Collage project with the 4th and 5 th graders. They will make wonderful color bits in the collages!!! It is amazing how these treasures make their way to you when you let people know that you are willing to gather items that things that other's consider useless!!!

On Saturday, we had a glorious calm and sunny day, kissed with a hint of dry fall air, just marvelous weather!!! I jumped on this opportunity to whip up a few more samples for my upcoming Sun Printing Workshop on Sept 25th.

Here I used a linen napkin and many differnt botanicals gathered from the roadside and daisies from my garden.

Here you can see that I used Acacia leaves, and Golden Rod.

I also did several samples with non herbacious mask elements. I did one with my favorite plastic doily and then another with a mixture of nuts ,bolts, washers and plastic gears. I also included t-pins from my sewing supplies.



Yesterday we traveled up to George Mason University to meet Matthew for lunch. He is doing fabulously well considering he is only starting his second full week of classes!! HE traveled into DC on the Metro by himself to go to the Smithsonian for a class assignment. ( I know that this event was a much bigger deal for Me than it was for him!!!) He is very excited to be so close to all that DC has to offer and now has the confidence to take full advantage of all of the opportunities that the area offers. In several weeks, Greg Mortensen, author of the fabulous book Three Cups of Tea, will be lecturing at Mason! I told Matthew that he would be hosting his Mom on campus as this was not an opportunity that I am going to miss!!!

Becca was very excited to eat in the fabulous Southside Dinning Hall at Mason. This building has won many awards as a completely "Green Structure". This is NOTHING like the dining hall that I ate in at college, believe me!!! The kids are able to choose from all sorts of food offerings during every meal. They use small plates and there are no trays available so kids cannot load up their plates and trays with tons of food that might go to waste. They are free to get seconds and thirds but they have to get up and go get it and maybe think twice about doing so. Any food that does go into the clean up area is composted and sent off to a farm where the University then purchases fresh veggies! How COOL is THAT!!!!!

Becca and I first headed to the amazing salad bar and Becca finished her meal with a frozen yogurt cone. The setting and decor is lovely and beautifully designed and we all had a great time. I could not get over the cool design and colors of the condiment containers, and as I always have my camera with me, I took full advantage and shot a few quick pictures. Matthew and Becca were shaking their heads and keeping their distance and not claiming me as their mother!!! I am not sure what the students who were eating there thought of the crazy lady taking pictures of the mustard and ketchup containers, but I don't care. We must take advantage of all opportunities that present themselves, RIGHT???????

Now come on, can you blame me??? Aren't these containers cool??? I love the design and the colors!!!

Matthew showed us the class sign that all of the incoming Freshmen signed upon their arrival. Becca found his name and I just had to grab a picture. I think that Matthew will be glad that I took this picture eventually!!!

IF you look at the top of the yellow curve you can see Matthew's sginature!

AS I still have a few plates spinning after this very busy weekend, I need to get going. Errands to run, Dye mixes to make up, work space to clear, lots to do!! I hope that all of you have a happy and productive day!!!

Under Sea Fantasy with Wool, Thread Scraps and Beads

As the White Rabbit says, "I am late. I am late!!" But now I can say that I am done with my Bead Journal Project for March!! As April 1st came and went I was emmeshed in several other projects and really had no clue where I wanted to go with this months project. I was working on some needle felting and using my embellisher so I decided to start a small piece and see what it said to me. On a blue rectangle of sythetic felt I laid out pieces of roving in shades of blue and green and added bits of this and that. I oput down bits of silk velvet and some trims , then some bits of thread trash and a circle of red silk. I took it off themachine and sat and looked at it. What was it saying???? I felt like I was looking for hidden pictures, like those favorite pages in old Highlight's magazines.
After leaving it to make dinner and other chores ,I returned and immediately saw a red Jelly Fish looking up at me. We ahve been watching the fabulous LIFE series on Discovery and perhaps I was influenced by the Deep Sea episode we had just watched. Not usre, I just know that I knew where I was going and the rest would be easy!!

I really enjoyed embellishing the felted piece. I did stitch in the majority of the red tentacles to make the Jelly Fish really come to life. Then I added bits of quahog shell found on Nauset Beach last summer and drill shells and perwinkle shells also from my stash of holey shells! I used tiny flower shaped sequins in shades of orange, as they look like anenomies and glass donut beads from Tanzania with strands of purple beads spewing from the centers like sea urchins. There are also several colors of fresh water pearls as well as several forms of mother of pearl beads.

Considering that I was floudering about and undecided about what to create for this month's project I am quite pleased with how this project evolved!!!

What to do for april's project- has to be something with leaves and my favorite spring flower- now that I ahve located a pattern for creating beaded leaves, I will definately be including foliage!! Stay tuned!!!!