Above is the front of my tenth Weekly Mixed Media piece this year, and below is the back side.
These are the steps I took to create it:
I cut many 3/8"-1.25" strips of wool felted fabric and also pre-felted wool fleece
and started to weave them (like weaving a pie crust), trying to alternate between wool felted fabric and pre-felted wool fleece strips.
Here it is fully woven.
I decided it needed some stability, so I placed the woven wool on top of a piece of white netting with tiny felt-like small black dots
so it looked it this before I started needle punching it.
I guess I forgot to take a picture after needle punching it, before the next step. This is the netting side, which was the fuzzy felted side since I only felted it from the other side down. This is how it looked after I sewed black lines with my sewing machine, diagonally across through the dots
and the other side showing the white stitches.
Looking at this piece with a template blocking it to 6" square, it looked pretty boring, so I decided to cut a small rectangle out and flip it to show the other side of the felt, to create more interest. This is the netting side with the rectangle removed
and this is the wool side.
I think that this week's project was very unsuccessful due to materials and design, though it was an opportunity to learn. Even though I needle punched it slowly, I broke 2 needles, because in places, there were 2 layers of wool felt fabric, and it was too thick! After breaking the 2 needles, I decided to stop felting because needles are really expensive and it wasn't worth continuing to felt it. Now I know to NOT use 2 layers of the wool felt fabric, and I have a new rule that if I break 2 needles, STOP.
Hopefully next week will be more successful.
You can see my 2008 weekly mixed media work (so far) on my website, and read about my process/progress here on my blog.
