Whew!

Spent this past weekend demonstrating needle felting and silk dyeing at the Bellevue Art Fair. If you've never been to the Bellevue Art Fair, it's a treat for anyone who appreciates beautiful things - of any kind. Besides various representations of textile arts (clothes, hats, rugs, wallhangings, etc.) there were furniture makers, metal artists, glass artists, painters, pottery makers - you name it - it is a huge event with very high quality work represented.

I had a really good time demonstrating. On Friday night I demonstrated needle felting by hand and machine and was surprised at the number of people who were interested. Lots of great questions and audience reaction makes for a great teaching experience. I was a little intimidated at first as the stage was quite large and here I was, a one woman show! But it didn't seem to matter - the stage crew was great and they had cameras trained on my work area. With all the crowd noise I was grateful for the microphone as well.

Saturday afternoon it was silk dyeing - and that really gathered a lot of attention. Nothing like lots of brightly colored silk waving in the breeze to capture attention. As demonstrators we are not allowed to sell, which is just as well. But I could have sold everything I dyed, I think! There was a lot of interest, and more importantly, a lot of interest in taking classes. So hopefully there will be some familiar faces in classes in the future. It really is easy to do and so rewarding.

Machine Embroidery - Bigger Isn't Always Better

I've been working on needle felted designs for a jacket project I will be teaching in August in Puyallup and Silverdale, The Felted Jacket. We'll be doing something out of the ordinary (I don't know if I'm capable of doing the ordinary anyway) - a jacket that is not only embellished with needle felted designs but is also constructed using a needle felting machine (or tool).

So, I've also been auditioning various machine embroidery designs to use with these jackets. There are several ways to incorporate machine embroidery with needle felting. In this instance, I am looking at this outline design to be placed over the top of a background of colorful needle felted fibers.I was really glad I 'auditioned' this particular design, for as you can see - bigger wasn't better. these are both stitched out onto two layers of cutaway embroidery stabilizer, to fit into the same sized hoop. I love this design - The Three Graces - and my usual strategy is to make it as large as possible. (I'm in love with the huge hoops for my Pfaff Creative Vision!) But when I enlarged the design, I lost some of the detail - most noticeably in the hands and faces. It was an important lesson for me - not everything enlarges gracefully (no pun intended). I'm going to try a couple of different resizing programs - just in case - but chances are I'll stick with the original size. Stay posted for the jacket design!