Author Archives: ruthlane

Busy, busy, busy

Posted on by under hand stitching, Kantha

 I have been a busy, busy girl. First we made a trip to Washington DC and on to Philadelphia for the Buyers Market of American Craft to buy for the store. I wrote a post about it over on the Felting and Fiber Studio site. We got home from Philly and then two days later drove over to La Conner, Washington to go to my stitch course with Gail Harker. When we got back after a week, I had my local surface design group at the house, a Brewfest fundraiser on Big Mountain and now we have company coming to visit. Never a dull moment. The photo above is a sari from the collection of Penny Peters who has traveled to India several times. She assists with our stitch class and since we were studying Kantha embroidery during the session, she showed us some wonderful examples. These are all done with running stitch. Who knew that the lowly running stitch could form so many patterns?

 This pattern really caught my eye. I love the geometric look of the center section. We studied the stitch, working in our sketchbooks. I’ll have to show sketchbook photos later.

 This one was really cool as well. The filling in the elephants and birds is done with all running stitch. This is another sari in Penny’s collection.

We then stitched samples of a variety of patterns using running stitch. It’s amazing how long this takes. For these 6 small samples which are each about 1″ x 2″, it took me 4-5 hours to stitch. This one was done on only one layer of muslin as Kantha stitching is usually done on very thin layers. I have more examples to show you but they aren’t quite finished yet. Plus I have two Kantha projects to work on before our next session in May. We got loads of homework!

 For those of you who were asking about my Round Robin piece, I finally got it back. This isn’t a very good photo of it. I’ll have to get a better one. Louise added a variety of paper and paint and Bunny added copper metallic mesh and beads. It really turned out to be a beautiful piece.

For our play session at my house, we did paper mache, mainly because Carole had never done it before. I made little bitty cups of paper thinking I would use them for light covers on a string of Christmas type lights. However, as you can see from the photo, I only managed to complete four of them. As that would make for a very short string of lights, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them.

I have finally gotten the book pages from the publisher to review. I’m sending those back soon and the book is still going to be out in August. I have another hat felting class scheduled at Camas Creek Yarn on March 23rd. I hope to get an advanced hat class worked out for some time this summer and perhaps a nuno felted jacket class. And then there’s the yurt. I think that I will only be able to get the designing portion of the yurt done this year. I had hoped to be able to start felting it this summer but with everything else on my plate, I don’t think I want to rush it. I am trying to stay focused as per my word for the year and I think I need to keep my focus on my stitch class. So yurt making will definitely be a two year project!

Don’t miss my upcoming post as it will be a celebration of my 400th post and I’ll be having a giveaway.

Yurt Samples

Posted on by under wet felting, yurt

 I’m off to my next Level 2 Stitch class tomorrow but I thought I’d tell you about what I’ve been doing in regards to Yurt planning. I have gotten several books from the library that talk about yurts. None of them suggest you use felt for the covering. They all suggest you use canvas but that pretty much defeats the whole purpose of making a yurt in my opinion. So I’m trying to figure out how much wool I will need. I thought it would be possible to felt the covering with raw wool and skip the washing and carding parts. So I made a sample to test this theory. This is the pile of wool before felting. It is 18″ x 18″ after layout and is 5 layers of wool thick.

I thought I had a photo of the finished sample but somehow it isn’t on the camera. Even though it did felt, I still had holes in the finished felt even though it was five layers thick at the start. The greasy wool seemed to slide around a lot more than clean, carded wool. It didn’t shrink as much as expected either. I think that was due to the sliding around problem. I could definitely make the yurt covering with raw wool but I think it will take less wool and be easier to felt with clean, carded wool. I have found a Montana source for raw wool at $3.07 per pound. I have also found a mill in Canada that will process the wool into batts for $7.00 per pound. That price is for finished weight so you don’t have to pay the full raw wool weight which is generally 40-50% lanolin. I think I’m going to need 200 pounds of raw wool to end up with 120 pounds of wool batt. I did speak to Ankaret from Canada (Thanks Ann for the connection) who is in the process of making a 10 foot yurt. She was very helpful about how much wool they used and the process they went through. We are planning on making an 18 foot yurt. No guts, no glory!

My 400th post is coming soon and I’m planning on a give away. So keep you eyes peeled in the next couple of weeks to win a variety of fibers and threads. 

Hat Felting Class

Posted on by under class, Felt, wet felting

 I taught a felted hat class on Friday at Camas Creek Yarns in Kalispell. I had 6 students and we had a great time. I forgot that I brought the camera until about half way through. Paula took most of the photos and the one I did take of her was blurry and didn’t come out. All of the photos of me, I either have my eyes closed or I’m looking silly. This one looks like I’m whistling while I roll.

 And of course, my hands are always going when I speak.

 Here are Jan and Marylou rolling with Darlene’s help.

 Here is Mary rolling and Leah looking on.

 This is Darlene’s hat after the resist came out. Most of the students decided to do a “cowboy” style hat with a folded crown.

 This is Mary and her hat. We’re working on stretching the felt after rolling.

 Here’s Jan cutting the resist out of her hat.

 This is Marylou’s hat before shrinking.

 Darlene is removing her resist and Leah is in the background rolling hers.

 Here is the beret I made for a sample. We used Strata batts from New England Felting Supply and they are so easy to felt. It really saves on layout time as well.

 This is a close up of the embellishment fibers on Jan’s hat.

Here is Darlene making the folds on the crown of her hat.

And Jan is working on her folding here as well. We didn’t quite get the hats completely finished so I’ve asked everyone to send me a photo of their finished hat. Hopefully, I’ll have some finished hats to show you soon. I’m teaching the same class in mid March. Visit the Camas Creek website if you’ll be in the area and would like to make a felted hat. I’m also planning on an advanced hat class and that will be happening in April or May. 

Surprise Fiber Goodies from Karen

Posted on by under fibers, gifts

 Look what came in the mail yesterday. Wonderful fiber goodies from Karen. What a surprise. She sent mulberry silk, merino, merino and silk blend, optim, hemp fiber, sari silk ribbons and organza yarn. The last four items on the list I haven’t experimented with yet. So fun times ahead!!

I look at this photo and just want to jump in and wallow around in the fibery goodness. Thank you so much Karen, you made my day!

Nuno Felted Book Cover

Posted on by under hand stitching, nuno felting

 This is a book cover that I made last summer but never finished. It was a practice piece for another project and it just happened to fit my paper stitch book perfectly. The purple portion of the flower is felted to the cover and was a pre-felt. The cover was made with merino and cotton ‘harem’ cloth. The cloth was covered on both sides with wool and a resist was used to make the pocket that the front cover of the book slides into.

 I added hand stitching, mainly button hole and chain stitch. But there are also a few straight stitches and some french knots. The leaves are done with chain stitch used as a filling stitch. It’s still pretty plain and I may add other flowers and leaves at a later date but right now I’m happy with it.

 I added a hook and eye type closure, the kind that is made to go on trousers.

Here’s the inside showing the first page of my stitch book. It’s a little wonky in places but it helps to keep the book closed as it tends to bulge open a bit with all the stitching on the pages.