Felt-a-licious Too

Now that our gallery opening is over, I have time to get all the photos in order and write about this event. Phew! It was a lot of work, but I would do it all again. It was so much fun to set it up, figure out where things would go, make vignettes, see all the gorgeous work all my fellow felters have done and finally to see the reaction of people coming into the gallery.


My friend, Beth, designed the banner and postcards.


Come on in for a peek to what we've been up to.


'Dogwood Dance' is our representation of the four seasons of the dogwood.


As people would walk in, they would stop, look up and take it all in. Then they'd pull out their phone and start texting or take a phone photo and send it. They'd say they were texting their friends, "U gotta C this show"!


The backs were nearly as pretty as the fronts.


To give you a perspective of how large they are, Bev is standing nearby.


Let's step back a few days and view the chaos that was to become our first gallery show. Bev and I had strategically packed her small SUV with all our things, not even having enough room for my dog. Sorry, Trapper, I had to leave you behind! We unloaded everything...


...and spread it all out on the floor.


Daunting! I thought we would have to edit about a third of it, but we actually got nearly all of it up. Just a few lone pieces got left behind.


This show is different than most of the shows this gallery has. Most of the pieces are wearables so we had to figure out how to hang them so they looked ok and could be taken off the walls to be tried on.


This is an ethereal shawl that Sharon made. (My friend, Seal bought it and told her husband she would just be wearing this. Thumbs up...Like!)


One of Roz's many pieces. Beautiful!




I just have to say that this group of women is so incredible, inspirational, talented, and diverse and I am so proud to be a member of this 'tribe'. We meet once a month and it never ceases to amaze me what they bring to the table, literally and figuratively. We all have a common bond, the love of our art, and it's always fun to get together and share.



The vessels we displayed were really well done.


I've never seen Francine's vessels but I really did love them. When you touched them, they were so soft and flexible but they stood so erect. Beautiful!


"Bluebird of Happiness". I felted 3 little blue eggs that are tucked into a nest inside this vessel.


Roz's Pea Pods


Jeanne traveled across country last summer taking workshops and seeing the sights. She gathered seeds, pods, leaves and sticks every day. At night, she heated up her little hot pot, took what she had found that day, boiled the things and extracted the dye and dyed cotton muslin with the dyebath. She also used a technique to transfer the images of the leaves, seeds and pods onto the dyed muslin, using the sun. When she returned home after 6 weeks on the road, Jeanne hand stitched all the little pieces together, making this unique 'quilt'.


We had many flowers, in the form of garlands, pins and necklaces.


Grace and Paige created most of the flowers. So light and airy and gorgeous!


Nearly all of us had wall hangings, basically paintings using wool as a medium. My piece is on the left, a bowl of beets.


The Great Wall of China.




Hats and gloves and dancing above the display are our Barbies.


Three years ago, six of the felt group came up to Cumberland for a little creative retreat. I had 3 old Barbies and we had our own little 'Project Runway'. We divided into 3 groups of 2, each taking a Barbie to felt an outfit for. We went to different parts of the house so we weren't privy to
each others' designs.


We had a great time and actually came up with unique outfits.




Because we had so many pieces that could be worn, we decided to let some of our scarves and shawls be taken home with the purchasers. We set up 'Scarf Alley', hanging dozens of scarves on a felted clothes line. It was fun to see women trying them on and then wearing them at the opening.








I think this was my favorite vignette. I love the primitive aspect of it and the pieces are so well done.












We had so many pretty things displayed.


But after we had everything hung, I thought we were missing something. Something wierd, kooky, big and kinda ugly. We needed a pod.

So on Thursday, Bev and I began 'Whacky Pod'. We hadn't come prepared to make such a large piece, but had brought wool for other projects. We started out with burgundy and black for the outside, black on the inside and in between the outside and inside layers, we used up all the bright colors that didn't go with anything. We made spiky things for the top and hanging tendrils for the bottom. Luckily we had enough wool, wetted the big egg and rolled and rolled into the night. In the morning we worked it a bit more, infused it with fabric stiffener, made some ridges and let it dry all day by the radiator. The opening was Saturday night so the pod had to be done or it wasn't going to have a home in the gallery.


The radiator did the trick (along with a little dryer action) and we walked the pod to the gallery.


After a near fatal drop, Houston got it hung.


And now we had a 'fun' piece, to contrast to all the pretty pieces.


Here we all are (except for JoAnne who is in Norway). A talented group of women, for sure! Here's the article about us in the Cumberland paper.