I finished my fourth mixed media piece. The image above is the front side, and the image below it is the finished back. I'm documenting both sides.
I wanted to see what would happen if I started with a piece of purple wool felt sandwiched with different colors of wool fleece on the front and back sides. I needle punched the wool fibers from one side of the piece to the other, changing sides for each step to see what the result would be. I documented the eight steps it took to make it. One thing I learned was that the side facing up became the flatter side, and the bottom became the fuzzy, more felt-like, side.
I decided I liked the flatter side of this piece better (because of the color and design, not because it was flat) when I chose to stop. It had a lot of tiny needle marks on it, so I washed it with dish soap and hot water to further felt the fibers and to shrink the tiny holes. The purple dye from the wool felt was not rinsed out very well from the manufacturer, and I had to rinse it a lot until the water rinsed clear. I didn't expect that to happen. Luckily the dye didn't run on the other colors, probably because of the lanolin still left on the wool fleece. (The smell of lanolin brings back memories of working with wool in Art School.)
You can see my finished 2008 weekly mixed media work (so far) on my website, and read about my process/progress here on my blog.
