Felted Landscape Redo

In my previous post I asked for some honest critique on my felted landscape piece. If you are a long time reader of my blog you know that I have done several felted landscapes before this piece. Those previous pieces had little or no hand stitching on them. I added stitching to this piece as it was created for the Embellish Stitch and Enrich online class that I am currently taking.

First let me say thank you to those who commented, especially to Debby W and Paula Hewitt (who don’t have email). It is much appreciated. I wanted honest critique on this and that is what I was given. Sometimes it helps to have some one else point out what is good and what is bad with a particular piece.

Paula stated that my use of detached chain stitch on the one green tree made it stand out too much, especially since it really isn’t the focal point in Camilles’ painting. I debated which stitch I was going to use on that particular area and actually started with the seed stitch, but changed my mind (I knew I was wrong in doing this but went ahead) and did the detached chain. Of course, afterwards I could see it really was not the best choice and I even said so in my previous posting. She also stated that she would have used straight stitches for the purple border (to emulate the brush strokes in the painting). I actually had considered that when starting that area, but decided to use the French knots instead.

So thanks to this input, I went back and took out the detached chain stitching and did seed stitching on the tree. It looks better, but still not quite right, but I think I can live with it now.

















On a different note, I received this in the mail Saturday.




















This ATC is from Karen, who as far as I know does not have a blog. She is the one to whom I sent the red ATC from the previous post. She also sent along these lovely pieces of lace and feathers.



















I have been working on more samples from the online class and will show them very soon.

Online Class-Lesson 2

This is a sample I made for Lesson 2 for the online class I am taking with Dale. I fused gold foil to wine felt with misty fuse. Next I cut up tiny bits of yarn, several fancy fabrics, some ribbon and lame’. I didn’t have a sheer chiffon scarf to use as a cover so I used a piece of red tulle. Then I machine embellished the heck out of it mostly from the front, but I also did some from the back.















Right after I made my sample I was asked to do an ATC swap. It just so happened that these were her colors, so I cut up the sample and added some beads and hand stitching.





















I did some beading and stitching on the other half but have not decided just what I will do with it. Maybe use it as a central motif on something?

This painting is by Camille Pissaro. This is my inspiration piece for the landscape challenge for Lesson 2.















This is my piece before hand stitching.















This is it after I did hand stitching. I’m not so sure if I like it now or not. Of course, those of you who are into hand embroidery would know other stitches and ways of making this look better. I welcome all critiques on this piece.

Swap

I recently did a couple more ATC swaps. This is the ATC that I received from Anna.




















This is the one I made and sent to Anna. It is foil on felt background. The discs are ones that Anna sent to me sometime ago. They are metal and were silver in color. I used alcohol inks to color them. The photo does not do justice to this ATC.




















This one I received from Suzanne. Once again the photo doesn’t quite do it justice.

















And this is the one I sent to Suzanne. It was made from some of the tiny scraps I had in the scrap box.

Lesson 1 Continued

Even though Lesson 2 started yesterday in Dale’s Embellish Stitch and Enrich class, I have still been doing some experimenting with a few more samples for Lesson 1.

This first one is wool roving punched onto a double folded piece of cheesecloth. This is the front.













This is the back.













These two are examples of wool roving punched from both the front and back onto itself.













This sample has pieces of torn cotton strips punched onto a felt base.















This one has wool tops and roving punched onto a piece of used dryer sheet. It has been punched from both the front and back.















I used these last two to make my challenge piece for Lesson 1. It is 4” x 6”.














I left the edges unfinished for now as I haven’t decided just exactly what I will do with this.

Now to see what fun things I can do with Lesson 2.

Online Class-Lesson 1

I have just started taking an online class "Embellish Stitch and Enrich" with Dale Rollerson using the embellisher. The first lesson is playing around making samples using lots of different fabrics, fibers, yarn and such.

This is a piece I did last year. I thought I would show it as an example of punching yarn and creating a design. It is acrylic yarn punched onto a piece of craft felt. Acrylic yarn is harder to punch than wool but it will mesh into the felt with several passes of the needles.
















This new sample has organza and polyester fabrics punched onto a craft felt base. It shows the texture you can create with these fabrics.




















In this sample I laid eye lash yarn on top of a piece of black craft felt and punched over it quite a lot.



















This is what the back looks like.



















As you can see, this sample has three different things going on. The top 3 rows are nylon ribbon punched down. The middle strip is a piece of felt punched to the base felt. It was punched first from the front then from the back and then repeated front and back a couple more times. The bottom is some acrylic yarn that was first punched onto a piece of stabilizer and then punched onto the felt base.




















This is a piece of felt that I punched some scrim and yarn onto. It was punched from the front and then the back and then the front again. I think I over punched from the back because you can barely make out the scrim now.















Some of you may remember seeing this sample before. I taped a thumbtack to the embellisher and punched these circles of felt onto felt. Punched from the front:




















And what it looks like on the back:





















More to come when I get a chance to play some more. I still have her challenge from the lesson to tackle.