Ispirato

Here’s another scarf, hand-felted in my studio.

This technique is called nunofelt. It involves combining fabric with handfelted wool.

I used a piece of Lara Downs hand-dyed tissue silk. I had some multi-colored “pre-felt” that matched it perfectly. I created a felt border for three raw edges of the silk and left the selvedge side unhemmed. I put some small pieces of felt into the scarf body and made a hole to thread one end through.

There is no stitching involved. The fibres of the wool are wet-felted into the silk fabric.

I’ve been busy in my felting studio. Here is one of the scarves I’ve made as a commission this month. Purple was requested, and I was pleasantly surprised by how magical these colors are together.

I buy my wool fibers already dyed. The fibers are laid out in the desired shape and wetted with a warm soapy solution. Then I roll the scarf up in a foam yoga mat, tie it up and roll it back and forth. I like to sit and roll with my feet. After a period of rolling I add more warm water to heat it up and rub the scarf against the bumps in the yoga mat to shrink them together even more and create a strong felt fabric. It is dried and ironed, then ready to wear.

My studio is above Lumina Gallery in Malvern East, Victoria Australia. We are having an open day Saturday the 22nd. That’s from 10.30am to 4pm at 89 Waverley Road. There will be free workshops and demos, so if you are in Melbourne come on down!

It’s been several months since I’ve posted any SoulCollage cards. This one is called “The Fool”. Seena Frost, the creator of SoulCollage and author of the book by that same title suggests that everyone consider making The Fool to include in their own personal decks. To me The Fool is the innocent, naive person setting out on this adventure called “LIFE”. The Fool can also be a clown. In a royal court the jester was often the only person who could get away with speaking the truth (probably as long as he did it in the form of a joke!). When we create a SoulCollage card it is named and placed in a suit. The Fool is part of my Council Suit - the suit of archetypes.

I’m posting this card in celebration of the fact that I recently undertook the SoulCollage facilitator training. Now I can run workshops on this fantastic practice which I’ve come to love so much. There are only 17 facilitators in Australia at present and I think I’m the only one in the South East suburbs of Melbourne.

I’ll discuss it more in future posts. In the meantime I invite you to read more about it by following the link below:
 SoulCollage is a registered trademark of SoulCollage LLC. More information can be found at http://www.soulcollage.com. Cards are made for personal use and are not to be bartered, traded or sold. Thank you to all the photographers and artists whose images inspire us to recreate and discover our inner and outer worlds.