A Day In The Life #9 - Summer Textiles

22 Degree's today. Soaking up the sun doing a little bit of needle felting was lovely. These past couple of day's I've not been really well and I have been trying to rest but the sun was calling my name today. I've not done too much, just a few needle felted bits to sew onto my big scarf, Doing a few a day has minimized my stress levels a lot as I wanted to do it all in one day and get it out of the way, Rome was not built in a day!! I also took time out to paint my nails this lovely coral/pink colour which matches the colour's in my project just perfectly.

Sorry for the short post again people. I am currently juggling between being poorly, preparing for my exhibition and starting up a new blog, so keep your eyes peeled for that!!

Thank you all for reading x

A Day In The Life #8 - Scientific Petri Dishes!

While it's been lovely weather today in soggy old Yorkshire I've taken advantage of the weather and took a few little snap's of my creations which I did today. I got a little bored of creating needle felted bacterial petri dishes to sew on my exhibition scarf and decided to create some more nicer and mixed media bacterial petri dishes which shall be put in real scientific petri dishes to put on show at my exhibition. 

I used my normal technique of building colours up and needle felting them together eventually creating a wide circle. I then used different coloured angelina fibers and needle felted them in too. I think this is what really makes it come to life and look really nice, I then felted some little circles on top of all this to make it look like some bacteria growing on it. 

They fit perfectly in the petri dishes I ordered of ebay. I think they will look really great for my exhibition. Although they are easy to do they are quite time consuming. 

I hope you all liked my short but sweet day in life - fingers crossed tomorrows will be filled with lot's of sun as the weather is due to be nice. 

Thank you all for reading x

A Day In The Life #7

All day I've sewn and sewn and sewn! My big exhibition scarf is finally coming together, The angelina fibers and needle felted bacterial petri dishes I had are all sewn onto the scarf, Of course with the scarf being 4.5 meter I had not created enough to cover the whole scarf as it is huge! Tonight and tomorrow I shall be creating more needle felting's and more angelina fibers to sew onto my scarf, As well as needing to make needle felted jewelry and print my scarfs to sell, So you will probably understand how stressful it is right now but hopefully it will all be worth it. So far I have sewn the angelina fibers underneath the needle feltings, But I shall also have random needle feltings scattered everywhere. Here are a few pictures of my progress.

That's been pretty much it for today guy's, hand sewing takes a lot of time and I've not had much time to do anything else today. I hope you all are enjoying the progress I am making.

Thankyou for reading x

A Day In The Life - Long Weekend

Sorry I've not posted in a few day's I've had a bit of a break from blogging/preparing for my exhibition, even though my exhibition is on the 23rd of this month, It was a well needed break. Although, back to reality now. Friday was the day I finally got my holographic heat transfer material onto my big scarf, I had already cut out many circles out of the material and was ready to use the heat press to stick them on. I thought this would take longer than it did but it only took an hour or so, Thanks to the good people in the print room for helping me getting the backing off of the heat transfer. The heat transfer was to put in the circles from my design I printed. In each circle there are 3 little circles (where the heat transfer will go) however I decided to put the heat transfer in only 1 or 2 circles rather than all 3 of them as I did not want it to look too much.
The heat press is set at 180 degrees and to a timer of only 18 seconds, This is enough for heat transfer, pressing fabric and what ever else you may need to use the heat press for. After peeling the backing off the heat transfer I then placed them where they needed to be and used the heat press to stick it on. Here are a few photo's.

The outcome of this looked really amazing. My plan for this big scarf is to make it look really amazing and wacky. To sew loads of things onto it and for it to look as tactile as possible. This was a good start.

After a nice shopping filled weekend off doing college work and blogging, we come to today, Monday. Today I have hand sewn on some angelina fibers and needle feltings I created. Sewing them on using a sewing machine would be much faster and secure, But I don't have a sewing machine at home and after hand sewing them on I really loved the way it looked. 

I love how this is progressing into something more tactile, I shall be sewing more of these on my scarf tomorrow and created more needle felted jewelry. 

Thank you all for reading x

A Day In The Life #4 - Printing My Big Scarf

Today has been the big day!! I've finally printed up the main part of my exhibition which is my big scarf!! Keep reading if you want to know how I did it and see how it looked in stages.

To get started I washed down the printing table I was working on and dried it too. I then measured to where my screen would be once placed on the registration bar and laid my fabric in the correct place on the table so my fabric would be clear of 1 inch on each side so I can clean the ends up on the sewing machine at a later date. I used masking tape to tape my fabric down, making sure its straight and its pulled tightly. 

I then got my pigment's together, As I am recreating one of my samples I am using the same colour pigments I used on that sample.

ignore the back colour as I did not need this or use this for my exhibition scarf. 

Once I had my colour's sorted it was time to print, As my screen's and fabric are so large I had to have the help of kathryn to help me print my screens also because I had not used the registration bar before. First off I printed the pink pigment.

After I had printed this colour I was so excited because it was finally coming to life, I washed and put my screen to dry while this pink pigment was drying, I then got my next screen and got ready to print again this time in blue pigment, This will go over some of the pink at a slight angle to make a purple colour with a blue shadow and also just be blue in other places it is printed.

 I then used my third screen and printed the cells to my fabric and this is what the end product looked like.

I am so so so so excited and in love with the outcome of my big exhibition scarf I can't even put it into word's, The colours are just beautiful and I am so proud of the print. I now need to add my mixed media onto the top of it, Such as sewing my needle feltings onto it and adding my holographic heat transfer, Also using dissolvable fabric and angelina fibers to sew onto it. I still have my work cut out but the end product will be so so worth it. I got gave so many packets of angelina fibers today from my tutor it felt like Christmas!!

After I had printed my big scarf I had time to print one of my normal sized scarfs which I shall sell at my exhibition, The one I chose to print was the orange/pink coloured light silk scarf. I started by masking taping the fabric down. I used similar colours but not exactly the same as they were different shades and instead of doing my cells green I did them a coral colour for this scarf. Here are the pictures after each screen print although I failed to get one of the end product, However I know you shall see it in a future blog post.

I did not get a picture after printing the last screen so I am sorry about that. After I took this off the print table and hung it to dry I instantly fell in love with it, The way the pattern and colours move on the floaty silk amazed me. I am so happy with the work I have done today and I cant wait to produce more.

My to do list from tonight is...

- Sew my needle felting's onto my big scarf.

- Do more dissolveable fabric on the sewing machine.

- Use angelina fibers and interfacing to create more mixed media for my big scarf.

- Use my holographic heat transfer material on my big scarf.

- Print up my other smaller scarfs and dye more material.

- Buy Petri Dishes and Jar's

I hope you have enjoyed tonights blog post, Come back tomorrow to see what I've been getting up to tomorrow.

Thankyou for reading.

A Day In The Life - Needle felting and New Idea's

This morning I spent time doing some needle felting as I still have a lot to do. As I need to create bacterial petri dish needle feltings to sew onto my large exhibition scarf as well as bacterial petri dish's to put in actual petri dishes just for show in my exhibition. I then also had an idea to create some little items to sell in my exhibition to make my money back, I have ordered some jewelry making rings, earings and ear wire's and I shall be making needle feltings to glue onto these with the hot glue gun to sell at my exhibition. 

I gathered all the wool I had, not sticking to any colour schemes and set off to make some needle felted bacterial petri dishes, nothing too detailed, just some quickish colourful needle felts to sew onto my exhibition scarf. 

I only had time to do a couple of these. I then started to create a couple of little ring sized cell needle felts which I will glue to a ring and which can be sold. I did not get any picture's of these as I feel they could do with some improving but I shall write a blog post as soon as I perfect them!!

Sorry this blog post is only short and sweet as I've had a busy weekend and if you read my blog you probably know this blog post is a day late too, I hope you enjoyed it nevertheless.

Thankyou for reading x  

Needle Felted Petri Dishes - Tactile Sampling

It has been decided that my main scarf I shall be making which will be purely for my exhibition will be as tactile as can be. Taking this into consideration I had an idea of sewing some needle felted creations onto samples I had already created to see how it would hold and look like. I took one of the needle felted petri dishes I made a few week back and hand sewn it onto a silk printed sample. 

This is what the outcome looks like. I really really like it and I shall make some more of these petri dishes enough to put out for my exhibition and to sew onto my scarf. I hope you all like it and if you have any other ideas for my exhibition please comment! 
Thankyou for reading x

The Textiles Of Science - Creative Business Card's

As I said in a previous blog post, I have been designing my business card's both corporate and creative. As I said I was to use acetate for my create business card to layer it up I did sample this and the ink seemed to smudge on the acetate and even though I could spray with glue I could easily spray with glue to stop this issue but I decided to go with something more textiles based. I've decided to needle felt my business card's in the shape of the cell which is in my tracing therefore will connect with my pattern on my scarf and the colour scheme too as I will be doing them light green and dark green. I have made a start on this and I am enjoying the outcome so far, I have produced 6 business card's in just under 2 hour, I am planning on producing 30 of these for my exhibition so this will take me 10 hour in total, although this is a long time I shall be breaking it up as I shall be doing these at home and using my time at college and days off at college to do my samples when my screens are exposed. I shall be doing my business card's at evening when I would normally be blogging this may mean I shall not be blogging as much as I need to get most things done before I jet off on holiday on Thursday morning. Here are a picture of what they look like at the moment...

Using light green and dark green wool to needle felt these business card's. Your probably thinking where's your information? Well I have decided I shall print out my information on a small tag (big enough to read) and attaching it to my business card's. I hope you all like the idea and if you have any questions or want to give me any feedback feel free to comment or contact me.

Thankyou very much for reading.

Needle Felting Brains!!

Part of my exhibition will be needle felted organs/cells/DNA placed in cell's. I have been making a start on these at home as you will know if you have read my past posts about the needle felted bacterial petri dishes. I decided to make a start on needle felting a brain, I wasn't so sure about what it would turn out like or how I would do to create it but I went and did it and hoped for the best!! 

Above is a picture of the needle felted brain I have started, It is a work in progress and is not finished yet. I am thinking about adding in some angelina fibers and some more different material, maybe organza or satin. There isn't much to say about it right now, But I am hoping it will look awesome when I have finished it. My idea to display this in my exhibition is to place it in a jar and have it on a shelf with other similar things in jar's, such as knitting or weaving.

I hope you like my attempt at a needle felting brain. Thankyou for reading.

The Science Of Needle Felting

A few blog posts ago I wrote about how I experimented and created a sample of needle felting using the topic of my final major project and using artist influences, You can find that blog post here. If you have read that blog post 'Experimentation- Needle Felting' then you will already know that I really liked the outcome of my experimentation. During then and now (a few days) I have had a one to one tutorial with my tutor and we both discussed that the needle felting unit - a unit has set criteria which I am marked against - Is a unit I could improve after all my target is DDD. Taking this in mind I decided for my final major project exhibition, Instead of doing one major outcome, I would create a piece of installment art. Now I'm not giving too much away, But one idea I shall share right now is that I am going to create 6 or more needle felted bacterial petri dish's and place them in actual plastic petri dish's which I will buy off ebay (for under £10). 

Today I have created another two needle felting creations and in this blog post I shall talk and also show you through photo's how I did it.
If you have not read my previous blog post about needle felting and you are not familiar with needle felting you should check it out before reading this blog post, You can find it here.

Step one
Firstly, I gathered all my tools, just like before, except this time I used both the single needle handle, and the handle which fits four needles. By using more needles at once I saved time. 

Step two

On the photo below you can see the starting point of the needle felting, I created a base with white wool, Where as before I built up the base with different colours. I wanted to see which was the best technique. To start this base I simply made a ball of white wool the size of a small apple and used the large needle handle and needles which you can see in the back of this picture to needle felt the fibers together, I then added onto this to create a more flat petri dish looking shape.

The start of my second needle felted bacterial petri dish.

Step Three

After I had created my base I then used different colour wool and also yarn to add on top in different size circles, I did this by using thing strips of wool/yarn and wrapping each one around my finger to create a circle then transferring that to my needle felting and using the single needle I felted it carefully on top of the base I have already created. You can see what it looked like after this step in the photo below.

Added coloured circles to the needle felting.

I then added more wool and yarn circle's to my creation to make it more layered up aswell as organza. I also added more wool around the edge as I felt the edge was a little limp.

Step FourAfter I was happy with my needle felting it was time to add angelina fibers.

Angelina fibers Angelina fibers are little fiber's the size of strands of hair's - the one's I used are neon - They can be needle felted into felt and then ironed to fuse the fibers together. I decided to use these mainly to support my holographic colour scheme, not only that but without the angelina fibers the needle felting looks boring and plain but with them they look amazing, not to mention they look like little growths sprouting out of the felt.

Final Outcome

I also created another needle felted bacterial petri dish using darker colours as I did not want them all to look the same. I used a similar technique by using the larger needle holder but instead of creating a base and working on top of it, I built up the base with different dark colours and built on top of it with lighter colours. 

Final Outcome

The picture above shows the second needle felting I did today - Third one in total - I used different colour angelina fibers on this felting, As you can see it is green which supports the colour wool I have used.

In conclusion to this blog post I have found today very productive. I have really enjoyed doing the needle felting and using many different colours to create my outcomes. To improve on this I could try incorporating different techniques into my felting such as hand sewing, I could try this on the next needle felting I do.

If you have any questions or feedback for me comment below!!

Thankyou for reading.

Experimentation - Needle Felting

After having the worst migraine at college, I took a break from doing sheet work and did something a little easier on the eyes - needle felting! Basing it on my final major project, I created a bacterial petri dish by using different coloured wool and even adding some other materials such as organza and angelina fibers.

I started off by collecting the equipment I needed, These are; Wool, A needle felting sponge - a normal sponge can not be used, a sponge made for needle felting is more dense. A needle felting needle, or multiple if your going to use a larger handle which holds four needles, needle holders. 

Once I had gathered everything I needed I started by getting some wool, not a large amount, but enough to roll into a ball the size of a large grape, I then started to poke my wool with the needle I have, going into the sponge whilst doing this. This bonds all the fibers together creating a shape rather than a flat piece of wool. Once I had done that bit I then used other colour wools to add onto the shape I had already made, but adding these onto the sides to create a flat circle shape that would fit into a petri dish. 

This is what my my felting looked like before I added the angelina fibers, as you can see I have added small circles on the top of the base I made and I also added some orange and blue organza. I was happy with what I had created at this point, although my colour scheme is holographic and bacterial petri dishes usually have growths coming out of them so I decided to add angelina fibers, to do this I needle felted them into the top of my felting and then covered my felting with paper, I then used an iron on top of the paper the heat bonds the fibers together, after this I then needle felted it again to make sure it was bonded in my creation. I then used my fingers to pull some fibers out a little bit so it looks like a growth.

This is the final outcome of my needle felting. It took me about an hour and half, I think I could do it in a faster time as this time I was just experimenting. I am extremely happy with the outcome and can not wait to do more!

Thankyou for reading.