New Stuff

I received 2 commissions in January that compelled me to learn some new techniques. The more standard thing I learned is wet felting. Wet felting may seem like a natural thing for a needle felter to do but let me tell you, they are very different processes. I’m kind of liking it though! When the weather turns warm I think I might just set up a table outside and make a few scarfs.

I will be making at least one scarf (for the commission that prompted me to learn this process) and below is a little test strip I made. How cool are those dragon sales?

Interesting enough, my other commission was also dragon related. This other piece being a 3-d fiber art sculpture, I could certainly stick to my usual needle felting techniques. They wanted a clay head (which I have certainly done before) but there was going to be scales on that head that needed to blend into the scales on the spine. The texture transition (or really the lack of transition) of moving from clay to felt always kind bothered me in my past sculpts. Then it dawned on me, I use real wool in all my felting, and real wool is heat resistant. So I tested inserting the wool scales into the clay and baked them. And it worked! This opens up so much possibility moving forward. There’s still a few kinks to work out but overall I am happy with the result. I show off that dragon in my next post so stay tuned!