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Xpressions, a needlefelter, and this and that
First off—HAPPY NEW YEAR’S!
As usual, I celebrated by going to bed at a reasonable hour. In the days of yore (when I was in my 20s and had more energy) hubby and I lived in DC. We actually stayed up to midnight once or twice. Then we started celebrating New year’s in Bermuda….as in at 11 pm when it was midnight in Bermuda. Eventually, we moved to Washington state and had kids, while in our 40s and 50s. We then celebrated midnight in DC–at 8 pm local time! Now we live back on the East Coast. Some nights I fall asleep on the sofa by 9. So I have decided we should celebrate Greenwich Mean Time (London), which would be 7 pm locally. At this rate, before I die I’ll get to celebrate New Year’s in Sydney, Australia, though if I actually ever get to celebrate it there I’ll actually stay up–I promise! (or set the alarm and wake up…)
The picture above is of the Janome Xpressions, a needlefelting machine at a VERY reasonable price…I think they list at $399, but can be had for less (if the link above doesn’t take you to the direct page, go to www.janome.com, click on the “Machines and accessories” tab on the left, then select Xpressions from the Machines drop-down menu). I LOVE this little machine—way better than an attachment to an expensive machine that pushes lint into the bobbin area and otherwise imperils a fine machine with lint. On this, the “bobbin” space is a metal box that prevents the fuzz from migrating to the other working areas. Smart! I’m part of the Janome Artists’ Loan program (thank you again, Janome America!), and they were kind enough to lend me one of these babies recently.
Another thing I like is the finger guard. Janome’s machine allows you to use the 5-needle head or a single needle head. Either way, the barbed felting needles are SHARP. I’m glad for the extra protection:
I got to play with it during the past week, and decided to play with decidedly NON-traditional felting materials (which are wools of various sorts): synthetic white satin and sheer silks and yarns….here is a hooped section of satin with various silks needle-punched into it:
and here is what the back side looks like (by the way…that odd green-ringed yellow blob is where I painted onto the satin and it looked yucky..please ignore):
You can also pull the punched silk back off the base fabric, and it turns crinkly textured, which I really liked. 
For a small project, I decided to kinda scrunch the silk and then “felt” it. 
I then attempted to reproduce a photo in cloth. Well, let’s say this wasn’t quite the best attempt I’ve ever made. I’ll tell you more about the project in a future post, but here is the original, glorious photo (used with permission of the photographer)
and here is my interpretation:
The “final” result isn’t “due” until August, so I may very well re-do this one. I might like this version better if I were to mount it on stretched cloth or a painted canvas, but those aren’t viable options for the project. The beading also took forever. I like the idea of the stamens / pokey up things… I satin-stitched over pipe cleaners (OK…”chenille stems”) and sewed them onto the background. Maybe they are too long? I suppose I could cut them off and re-do the beads on the ends (ugh). Or I could just start over. Hmmm… need to think on it. No matter what, I haven’t done justice to the photo the way I would like to, so will have to go back to square one…. The needle-felting bit, however, is pretty cool, and want to play more.
Anyway, HAPPY NEW YEAR! It’s a good one… I got to sew today, and even if it rained onto our first bit of snow, it was a nice day at home with the family.
PS–if anyone has suggestions on how to improve my “flower” PLEASE DO!
January 1st, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Wowie Zowie – no one could deserve it more !
Happy Dancing for you !
Love M
January 2nd, 2007 at 1:00 am
Wow Sarah…way to go! I can’t wait to see what ya do with your new toy! Janis
January 2nd, 2007 at 6:46 am
Love it! Hannah
January 2nd, 2007 at 8:06 am
Ok – a couple of suggestions but I think they would have to be done on a new piece.
First I’d add the shading with multiple layers of purple, black, green (anything dark) tulle.
Ithink you could add “slivers” of tulle to the center of the flower to also add depth.
Then I think that instead of beading (which I think looks great) but is so time consuming, you might try using (don’t laugh), puffy paint! If you go to Jaye’s blog at Artquiltmaker.blogspot you can see a sample she commented on for the APNQ show – click on the enlargement – truly amazing!
I’m jealous of your new toy – and can’t wait to see what you do with it!
January 3rd, 2007 at 4:04 am
can’t wait to see this for real!!
January 10th, 2007 at 5:39 am
I read your blog entry with great interest and wanted to thank you for the comments on the Janome machine. I’m about to dive into some wool needlepunching, and if I like working with punched/felted roving, I will need to find a Janome dealer and go shopping!!
Your art piece is quite good. If you want more color definition, maybe you could consider applying a very light, dry ‘blush’ of fabric paints into the areas that are lacking color (mostly towards the edges of the flower’s center). To get shadowplay in the petal veins, you might try the same technique with the greys. As you know, practice first, though!
Lynn