Felt-a-licious!

For a year and a half my fabulous felt group has been preparing for our first gallery show. We have actually been creating felt things for nearly 4 years now, but the gallery event has been on the books for over a year. It seemed like so far in the future but now we're hanging the show.


All 14 of us are doing our own pieces but we 'felt' that we needed a large dramatic installation. We created four panels representing the four seasons of a dogwood tree. I dyed 80' of tulle netting (54" wide) in blue (sky), green (leaves) and brown (earth).


We used my dyed wool roving...


...lots of it


and laid out the roving in little fluffy tufts.


The 'rocks' were done with grey and brown swirls of wool.


We rented the Barnesville town hall as we needed a large enough space for our 20' foot panels. It took us 4 different days and a few more hours to finish them off. We put 6 long tables together to accommodate each piece.


Laying out 'Summer', we had made pre-felt green leaves, adding the leaves on top of the base of green and blue.




This is 'Spring' with the dogwoods in full bloom.


Bev is busy making the 'branches' by rolling roving.


After laying out all the fiber, it is wetted down with soapy water.


We all get along so well in this group. It really was fun to work together on this common vision, to roll, pat, tap, cut, rub and encourage these pieces do to what we wanted them to do.


Then it's covered in plastic, patting it down to make sure all the wool is saturated with water, and gently rubbing the wool to embed the fibers through the tulle netting.


After rubbing and tapping for about 1/2 hour, the piece is tightly rolled in a bubble, tied into a bundle...


sometimes on the floor because it's so large...


.... and then the rolling begins. When our hands tire,


...we use our feet, rolling away as we plan our next project.


We started out with pieces beginning at 20' x 5' and ending up with 13' x 3'. This is 'Winter', with the dogwood buds just starting and a full moon on a winter's eve.




"Summer'


'Spring'


'Fall'

These photos are taken at my house and do not do the pieces justice. Bev and I have been hanging the show at the Saville Gallery show in Cumberland for the last two days and tomorrow more photos will be coming as the show is installed. We're nearly done, a bit of tweaking to be done and we're good to go. Tomorrow Bev and I are working on one more piece. I thought it'd be fun to have a whacky pod, with tendrils and spikes coming from it. We'll see hat we can pull off. The opening is Saturday, so we only have two days to wrestle some felt.