Machine Needle-felting Tutorial

1. First I gather my materials, by color. Starting with the kit from
Suzanne Morgan (Refer back to the piece I made last week, and follow along with my article from Quilting Arts, seen here.)

2. From my own stash: Recycled Sari Ribbon

3. Iron the ribbon flat

4. Sheers from my stash. Some dyed and some plain

5. Wool roving and knitting rejects and some silk roving
 (only because I already have it.)

6. Lay out the pre-felt piece 

7. I begin building the layers by laying out a thin layer of roving, all in one direction.

8. Using your needle felting machine, 'sew' down the center of the piece to begin anchoring the roving.

9. Anchor roving by needle felting a few rows

10. Begin adding layers of texture like ribbons and bits of knitting. I like the ribbons to run off the edge, you can always trim them later.

11.  After your roving  textured pieces are down and lightly secured, begin adding strips of sheers, like organza, tulle, cheesecloth to cover the whole surface.

12.Once the whole surface is covered with strips/pieces of sheer, needle-felt the whole piece securely. I go over the whole surface to compress the layers.

13. Here's a view from the back. I also needle felt from the back, which will bring up the backing color to the front.

14. Here's a close up of the front, you can see how compressed it is.

15. Because I like to work small, I cut the piece in half and now I have a series! :-)

16. At this stage, I'll add any additional color or shape to balance the composition.

17. Once you're happy with your background, you can add shapes (I like circles) using roving, yarn and ribbon.

In progress ~ machine needle felting by Jane LaFazio

In progress ~ machine needle felting by Jane LaFazio

Machine Needle Felted "Rainbow Series: Turquoise and Gold" by Jane LaFazio

"Evidence of Fossils" by Jane LaFazio

"Rainbow Series: Green and Blue" by Jane LaFazio

"Rainbow Series: Pink and Yellow" by Jane LaFazio

When I created new needle-felted art work, you can purchase it in my JaneVillle Etsy Shop. I also teach machine needle felting at art retreats, check my teaching schedule here.

tomorrow a tutorial

 I'll post a tutorial tomorrow on needle-felting. AND, some of my friends will also be posting tutorials, tomorrow and for the next few days. I'll link to them each day. Hold onto your hats! It's a Tutorial Tsunami!

venice: graffitti bird

 A few more pictures from our trip to Italy...

venice: graffiti

Orvieto: lock

Orvieto: gate

Orvieto: market day yellow roses

Venice: burano lace

Orvieto: Duomo

Orvieto: Duomo fresco

Venice!

 Husb and I LOVED Venice!! I've traveled a fair amount and this was my first time to Venice and I was completely wowed. You've got to go, if you can. It's not a city for the physically weak (there's a lot of walking and steps) so go now, if you're able. Or at least move it up on your list of cities to see. This is me at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. (It was her house for 30 years, and now it's full of her incredible collection of modern art.) Yes, it's right on the grand canal. I could live there.

Venice: Bellini

 Our friends were going to Harry's Bar for a Bellini and told us it was a must. Well, Hemmingway and Orson Welles among others had hung out there, so of course WE had too. See this tiny drink in our hands? 15Euro. (that's about $20!) Still, now we can say we were there.

Venice: rialto bridge

 We had perfect weather.......

Venice

 Yea, I was loving it.

Venice: the orginal horses

 Upstairs at Basillica San Marco is a great (and uncrowded) museum, plus an incredible view of the Piazza. AND, the orginial horses from the cathedral. They were created in like 1100 or earlier--simply stunning.
 

Venice

 Every time we turned a corner, we'd see something like this.

Venice

 The rest of my photos of Venice are here.

ala Tracie

 Tracie Lyn Huskamp's artwork has a wonderful feminine style. She loves and appreciates nature (don't we all?) and has blended her talent and her passion into her artwork and into her book "Nature Inspired: Mixed-media techniques for gathering, sketching, painting, journaling and assemblage." I was lucky enough to take one of her workshops at Art Unraveled a few years ago where she taught me her technique of painting birds on fabric. (She explains it in the book too.) I recently got out her book and was inspired to do another, this time with a Tracie-inspired background. (My background is a page from a bird book, painted, gessoed and stenciled, then I've added my painted bird on fabric, and LACE and some text.) I'll be giving away a copy of Tracie's book later this month...

venice windows

(not a postcard, btw...my photos!) There were windows full of fashion, glass, and masks in Venice, but those didn't catch my eye.

Orvieto

If you want to see all my photos of Orvieto (just 61) go here.

burgundy glow

 Suzanne Morgan saw my article in Quilting Arts magazine and thought I'd love one of her 'everything kits.' She was right. This was made from her 'glow' kit, containing prefelt, roving, and gorgeous bits of dyed silks and yarn using the process I described in the magazine article. It'smade from the elements in her kit, with the addition of some of my sari silk ribbon, and embroidery thread. I've mounted it on a piece of burgandy dupioni silk.  I've got her 'earth and sky' kit too, and I'm thinking of doing a tutorial here on my blog next week--what do you think? Oh, and I've still got photos of Venice to post! Stay tuned!

burgundy glow ~ detail

Orvieto, Italy: Paloma

 I got a little time to draw and paint.......

Orvieto, Italy: Market Day

 I painted these here. Such a fun morning!

Orvieto, Italy: Duomo

 We could have spent a week, at least, doing sketches of the Duomo!
 

Orvieto: some of my student's artwork

 During the week, the students created individual pages with watercolor sketches, then created a small portfolio to hold the pages. Here's one of the tables from our ending reception, showing 3 of the students work. Two of the 13 students had never done any drawing at all I can honestly say everyone was very pleased with their own work. And I was certainly proud of them!!

Orvieto: star student draws his pastry

 It's moments like these, when I know I've been successful in my message. Here's Keyshore, sitting at a cafe watching market day goings-on, and drawing his pastry!! Keyshore and his daughter, Mamta, traveled from Mombai, India to be in the class.

Orvieto

 There are beautiful paths along the side of Orvieto, circling the hilltop city.

Orvieto: view from the winery

 Another view of the countryside from Palazzone Winery.

Orvieto, Italy: cappuccino

Husb snapped a pic of me while I worked on this page. A truly perfect way to spend an afternoon, a cappuccino on a street-side cafe, and a  sketchbook (and husband too!)

Orvieto, Italy

 Remember this photo, it's the perch I had when I made this quick page.

"Venice" and catching up

Home after two weeks away and there's a lot to catch up on! As you can see by my "Venice" post, I'm back in the studio, processing the wonderful memories and images from the trip.  I'll post more photos tomorrow but first to catch up!

While I was away, the dear and talented Lyric Kinard did a give-a-way of my DVD and got lots of interesting comments about working small and another interview of me, talking about teaching.

I'm preparing for some upcoming workshops. Mixed Media with Paper and Cloth on July 4 & 5 in beautiful Idyllwild, CA and then a super special mixed media retreat in Utah July 15-18. Two workshops at the Long Beach Quilt Festival on Thursday, July 22, and Art Unraveled in Phoenix August 4-6, plus the seriously life changing debut of the CREATE retreat in Chicago in August where I'm teaching 3 classes: Sheer Fused Collage on Friday, Collage 101 on Saturday and Sketching &Watercolor: Journal Style on Sunday. It's all on my WORKSHOPS page.

Venice- hand made rubbing- in progress

Published!

 My needle-felted hand-stitched "Rainbow Series" is featured in this issue of Quilting Arts magazine. (June/July 2010, page 20-24). I'm super happy with this direction in my work--it seems to suit me. It's the same process I used for "Above the Bog" that will be included in the Beneath the Surface exhibition shown at both the Long Beach and Houston International Quilt Festivals.

Orvieto, Italy

 We're back home from a 2 week trip to Italy, beautiful Italy! We spent the first week in Orvieto, where I taught sketching & watercolor: journal style through Adventures in Italy, Bill and Kristi Steiner's wonderful company.
This is Orvieto, as seen from Palazone winery, just a few kilometers away. Orvieto is a tiny medieval  hill town, just one mile by one and a half miles, in the area of Umbria.

Italy

 Oriveto is about in the center of Italy.

My students!

 I had 13 fabulous students, from the US, Canada and India. They were truly a wonderful group, and we all had great fun together. Here they are, perched on the edge of Orvieto, drawing the view. We were so lucky to have perfect weather the whole week!

cooking class!

 On Tuesday afternoon, we had a hands-on cooking class with chef Lorenzo at the Zepplin restaurant, in Orvieto. It was so much fun, not to mention delicious! We chopped, we ate, we cooked and ate again while we made a full dinner from foccaccia to tiramasu and then sat down in the restaurant to eat it!

Drawing in the town square

 The week was beautifully planned, by our hosts, Kristi and Bill, with time to draw, explore and learn. Here  are my students in the main plaza of Orvieto, drawing the giant, gorgeous Duomo.

My class, drawing market finds

 Thursday is market day in Orvieto. We walked to it, wandered, photographed and bought beautiful fresh fruits, veggies and flowers. Back at our B&B, everyone got out their paper and sketched and painted the bounty--then we ate it!

In the courtyard of our B&B

 My class, in the courtyard of our B&B.

street view, Orvieto

 Orvieto is small, safe and quiet, the perfect place to just 'be.'

view from the clock tower of Orvieto

 Husb and I climbed to the top of the clock tower to get the full view of the city and beyond.

In the classroom

 Most of the week, we spent out and about drawing, painting and experiencing. Towards the end of the week we went in the classroom at the B&B to create portfolios for our pages.

from the Orvieto clock tower

 That's the duomo in the background.
I'll be teaching this again, same place, same time of year in May 2012! I'm already looking forward to it.

Ah Venice!

 Wow ~ We had a great time in Orvieto and Venice!! I'll be posting lots of pics and drawings! Watch this space!

I'm going to Italy!

I'm off to Orvieto, Italy and then Venice, with my dear husb, returning on June 3. I'm teaching a workshop in Orvieto, then we're traveling with friends to Venice. I've posted a tutorial (below), so you too can practice your sketching & watercolor: journal style. I'll try to post on Facebook, but no guarantees!
CIAO!