Foundations in Felt

2012-02-21T11:17:00.002-06:00

I am working on a long post about my very ambitious jacket project, which will have lots of photos and nice touches. But I also wanted to just gush a little bit about how excited I am about my newest commission! I brought some new work over to Sugaree's clothing boutique on the square in Murfreesboro, and got a chance to talk to one of Staci's employees that I hadn't met before. After looking at my work that incorporates the silk chiffon scarves into vests and collars, she envisioned a strapless gown for her prom dress! So I am spending the week dyeing and designing - more updates to come!!

Felt News - Issue 3

2011-11-02T13:26:00.002-06:00

OK, my last attempt to make my lovely PDF Newsletter appear as a blog post was somewhat disappointing. So lets try this again, shall we?

Felt News - Issue 3: October 31, 2011 Foundations in Felt

WERE YOU THERE??

I didn’t get my newsletter out in time, but hopefully you made it out to the first annual Fiber in the Boro, Saturday Oct. 29, at the Lane Agricultural Park on John Rice Blvd. in Murfreesboro TN. Check out fiberintheboro.com for next year! It was great! I bought silk...

Flat-felted beret -

merino wool and silk fiber wet felted by hand.

Custom orders and sizes welcome.

Available in assorted colors - $51ea

Upcoming Shows and Classes

With the chill of fall in the air, (with a vengeance!) thoughts are turning to warm scarves and hats, and holiday gift-giving.

More classes - YAY!!

Tuesday, November 8 at 10 a.m. - Flat Felted Berets and at 6 p.m. - Soft Felt Scarves

Tuesday, December 6 at 10 a.m. - Soft Felt Scarves and at 6 p.m. - Quick Felt Gifts

We are going to have so much fun with these easy and fun projects. The materials are so luscious that you can’t help but love the results. I have new silk elements to play with from Fiber in the Boro, too!!

Space is limited so sign up for these classes today thru harpethartcenter.com! Also, look for me teaching knitting and crochet at the Joann’s in Murfreesboro!

One of the many shows I am doing this fall is the 2nd Saturday Porter Crossing Arts Market! November 12 and December 10 in East Nashville - check it out at PorterCrossingNashville.com for more info! Noon to 9 p.m., and plan to hit the Family Wash for dinner!

Our wonderful Crafty & Fiber Community in Nashville!

I have found so many fun and inspiring groups of people in Nashville and online, and it is so inspiring to get out of my studio and see what other people are inspired by. Craftville is a fun group of Nashville young people that have a great vision of a real-life craft community! I’ve joined them, and can’t wait to do more events with the group! Check out craftville.org, or look for their Facebook page or their Etsy team. The last meeting was full of yummy food, exciting networking, talk about classes and more! The next meeting will include a talk on “Are you Etsy Savvy?”

Newsletter with lots of new news!! Yay!

2011-06-15T20:48:00.001-06:00

My friends and collectors modeling some of my newest nuno felt wearables at the May TACA fair in Centennial Park, Nashville, Tennessee.

The word “nuno” is japanese for “fabric”. “Nuno” felting, or laminate felting, is a wet felting technique where unfelted or partially felted animal fibers or wool are felted in contact with an open-weave fabric so that the ends of the fibers work through the openings in the fabric weave during felting.

Upcoming Felt Classes and Workshops

There is still time to create your one-of-a-kind summer scarf masterpiece. Nuno felt scarves are great for any season!

I am pleased to announce that I have a “Nuno” felt scarf class coming up at the Harpeth Art Center, scheduled for Saturday, November 18 from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. We well be making a variety of styles of beautiful scarves, starting with a hand-dyed silk chiffon scarf in your choice of colors. We will also learn how to make “prefelts” and fuse them into the silk chiffon. Beautiful, and yours is sure to be unique, wonderful and truly yours! Space is limited so sign up for this class today thru harpethartcenter.com!

New!! ETSY Felt, Instructional Videos on YouTube, and more!

I have been busy increasing my web presence, and wanted to share my new online forums with you! I now have a Facebook page for Foundations in Felt, where I can post and keep up with my classes and new work easily and quickly! (I confess, I am addicted to Facebook!) I also have created my own “channel” on YouTube, and am creating my own instructional videos and posting them here. I am also creating playlists of my videos from Expert Village, only in the right order! Also check out my Etsy store, Laura Felts. I invite you to please subscribe, “like”, favorite, or otherwise patronize and help me promote these efforts! Thanks! - Laura

Eureka! I got it figured out!

2011-05-25T21:34:00.000-06:00

Those pesky YouTube videos that were posted by ExpertVillage all out of order? I have started putting them in Playlists on my "channel"! Yay!!!

The first one is making felt bracelets, and you can watch them in order here...

I'll start working on the next set soon!

Enjoy!

Part 3 of 3 in series for how to make a laminate felt scarf

2011-05-13T17:59:00.001-06:00

Thanks for viewing my videos. You can find more of my videos on youtube, and one of my earlier blog posts lists links to some of them! Enjoy! - Laura

Nuno scarf how-to: Part 2 of 3

2011-05-13T17:57:00.000-06:00

Here is part 2 of the video on making my spiral chiffon laminate (or "nuno") felt scarves. Part 1 has the materials and supplies list, and part 3 has a slideshow showing finished scarves at the end.

My first video! Nuno felt scarves

2011-05-13T17:48:00.000-06:00

Here's my first video. There's a sequence of 3 that go together. At the end I even added a little slideshow of some of my scarves with background music! Not bad for a first attempt, I hope. Thanks!!

TACA craft fair - 10% off with postcard!

2011-05-01T19:12:00.000-06:00

To celebrate that my scarf was chosen as one of the images on the TACA postcard, if you receive a card from me in the mail, bring it to the show and receive 10% off your purchase in my booth. (B75 - on the West End side of the booths, near the fudge people - uh oh!!!) If you would like to receive a card from me in the mail, please let me know your address and I will send you one. I have lots of new spring silk chiffon nuno scarves, tops, and jackets. Happy May Day to everyone!

2011-04-29T07:31:00.001-06:00

Lookds like wonderful weather for this show tomorrow. Stop by after the Country Music Marathon! It will be lots of fun!

Me on Youtube!! Felt Bracelets How-to

2011-04-17T11:05:00.001-06:00

OK, this requires some background info. A few years ago I was approached by some film-makers to do some how-to videos on felting for a new website called "expertvillage.com". We made a few, had a great time, and expert village had them all in order with a link to my website, my name, etc. Well, apparently the site went under, and they dumped all their videos onto youtube. Without any order, of course. I have emailed them to see if there's a way to fix this. However, in the meantime, here are the videos for the felt bracelet tutorial, in their original order!! Thank you.

Making a Wet-felted Bracelet

About felting (various types)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-oCpRUPPJo&feature=relmfu

Supplies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wrp04j_5XDY&feature=relmfu

Linen cord for sizing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJIo0dkqdC0&feature=relmfu

Laying out wool for donut

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJVpfbklL04

laying out more wool for donut

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx8zPigH_As&feature=relmfu

Adding surface designs with yarn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kfYVd4iNuo&feature=relmfu

wrapping wool around donut

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8l2mEQ8aF0&feature=relmfu

Putting soap on dry wool donut

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgS_uvfSXss

just keep squishing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD1wVpzkCmk&feature=relmfu

Fulling the bracelet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ordhRioXF9A&feature=related

Wrinkles in the bracelet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLwAVrLRp0E&feature=relmfu

Carving felt bracelet before final fulling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uaIhj2-338&feature=related

vinegar rinse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES2R2RYroWk&feature=relmfu

dry and added decorations

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1IrbBoOJc4&feature=relmfu

cuff variation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vlOMtpf0zk&feature=relmfu

Photography - FTW!!

2011-03-03T18:34:00.000-06:00

Photo by J. Simpson

YES!!! Finally got a good backdrop set up in the studio at Harpeth Art Center, borrowed lights and a tripod from Sharon, and borrowed my next door (at the studio) neighbor Andra's daughter and her know-how with her camera to get some polished-looking photos of more stuff! Here is an image I really like of one of my new spring scarf styles. Hopefully some of these shots will go on my Zapp.org site to use for jurying into shows and such. I also emailed some to Greg in Memphis to see if he can use them for advertising materials for The Spring Show 2011 by WinterArts. (This will be in the same space at Saddle Creek South that the WinterArts show was located, and run from April 29 thru May 7.)

Plus I got a number of multiple-angle sets of images of other stuff that will be showing up on Etsy soon! Yeah!! Working on my 2011 goal of using the interwebs to the best of my abilities!!! For those with an interest, I set up a card table around 6 feet away from the wall, and taped the end of a large roll of white bulletin board paper to the wall as high as I could reach. The other end of the roll draped forward across the top of the card table and down onto the floor. We put two lights, one on either side, at the front edge of the table pointing at the center of the table, where we place the items we were photographing. Then we turned off the overhead lights to put the back of the smooth paper backdrop in the shadow as much as we could. We probably could have gotten more of a shaded effect if we got farther away from the wall. It also would have been nice to have a light directly overhead. We may see if we can borrow another light to do this the next time we take pictures. There was also a shelf too close to the right side of the setup, which resulted in some weird shadows in the upper right hand corner of some of the images.

P.S. The scarf shown here will not be going up on Etsy, but it will be for sale at one of the shops or shows I am selling at this spring.

Craziest project from Hats Bags and More class

2011-03-01T23:21:00.000-06:00

This hat was the result of my attempt to use a combination of jacob and shetland natural colored wools, with added blue dyed mohair locks, and prefelt jacobs flaps and shetland doodle spikes, all on a ball. After the different wools tried to not stick to each other, and the whole thing didn't shrink a whole lot, and half the decorations refused to stick, we still ended up with a hat that Victoria knew immediately was meant to be hers! The other projects through the week were decidedly less challenging. More to come!! (I took the beach ball out through the holes that were forming, and shrank it as much as I could. Then after sleeping on it, I cut one side open and made points around the opening, sewing down some of the blue mohair locks that were trying to fall off. Then after sleeping on it again, I cut the face opening, rolled the front edge back, added bells to the front points, and then made a button-hole and button closure on the next pair of points back.)

Monday! Weekly plan

2011-02-07T08:33:00.000-06:00

Yay, Monday! (Ok, sorry, too much.) Despite having my boys all week this week, I have set up the following production schedule for myself. This is based on taking the amount I sold at the WinterArts show before Christmas, doubling it (to have plenty of stock, since my booth looked sad and empty at the end of that show) and doubling that (to have enough to do the spring TACA fair at the same time as the Spring version of the WinterArts show). Ideally, this will also give me enough to do some wholesale sales as well. I still need to find a photographer who can take some pictures of my new spring scarves that are good enough for postcards, ads, etc. I will ask some of the other professional fiber people in town who takes their pictures and see if I can come up with someone new on short notice.
Weekly production goals:
10 scarves
8 soaps
4 bracelets
2 bottles
2 pincushions
1 jacket
1 hat
1 purse

Lets see how I do this week! I guess I am going to have to get to the studio at 10 a.m. all week.

Getting to where I want to be

2011-02-06T15:19:00.005-06:00

OK, a bit of background for those who may not know me. I am a full time fiber artist, trying to be successful in my current choice of career. My father always encouraged me during my years of trying to decide "what I wanted to be when I grew up". He said to keep in mind that whatever I picked, I would likely decide later on that I wanted to do something different. So I started out by getting an engineering degree, figuring that if I changed my mind later and decided that anthropology, music, or art were what I wanted to do, it would be more feasible to go back and get one of those degrees than it would be to start out in something else and then try to go back later and get an engineering degree, after all that math had leaked out of my head!

I did go on to get a masters degree in environmental engineering and worked as an engineer off and on for a total of 12 years or so, with time off in the middle to have and stay home with my two wonderful boys as long as feasible. I loved staying home, and never felt the need to go back to work, at least as a "professional". I also found during this time that I do have an uncommon talent and persistent love for fiber arts of all sorts. So I decided to make a go of officially being a "fiber artist", and have been working towards this goal for upwards of 8 years or more. I recall applying to my first juried guild (and being turned down!) back when I lived in Knoxville TN, which was more than 11 years ago.

My biggest challenges are turning out to be related to running my own business and managing my finances. This should not surprise me at all, since I have never in my life been able to apply a budget to my spending. Nor have I been particularly good at planning, organizing, decluttering, routines, or any of the other things that seem to be needed in business management. Plus there are the challenges of production, creative product design, pricing, marketing, and the other things that go into having a successful craft business. However, I have a feeling that I am not the only one out there who is facing (and overcoming) these challenges!

So, here is a chance for anyone who is also in the same boat with me to share my trials, tribulations, and successes, pitch in their suggestions or concerns, or just laugh at my crazy life!

Today: Having a "desk day", which I try to have once a week, to keep from falling behind on bills, missing call for entry deadlines, and losing track of my money situation. I think Sunday will have to be my official "desk day", since it is the one day that the studio space I rent is closed, and I can't get into the studio to do production felting anyway. I have several new scarves to tag, and I will photograph these as well, look for new photos later! I have 3 new potential spring scarf designs, and I need to look at the times I recorded in the studio this week and figure out prices for them as well. I promised my friend Pam Hall that I would bring new spring (i.e. lightweight mostly silk with a little bit of wool nuno scarves) stuff in for her to sell in her Cana Salon on Tuesday.

Rundown of upcoming Felty Goodness!!

2010-10-19T17:06:00.002-06:00

Saturday, October 23 - Fiber Fest at Cannonsburg Pioneer Village in Murfreesboro, TN.

One day 10-5, free, fun fuzzy animals and fiber, tools, etc. Great face time with local fiber lovers. 312 S. Front St.

Tuesday, October 26 - Brewery Art - Bridge Street in Franklin, 6:30-8:30. (See image)

Saturday, November 6 - Hats Etc. Class at Harpeth Art Center - 10-4 (www.harpethartcenter.com)

Also, my work is currently at "The Shops on Bridge" in Franklin - 111 Bridge Street (I think - it's on the corner in the house where the cookie lady used to be.) I'm also planning to teach some classes here, let me know if you're interested!

My scarves are also available at Sugaree's on the Square in Murfreesboro. She has my new chiffon ruffle collar scarves!!

this week in felt! Opening and class

2010-07-31T21:29:00.004-06:00

I have a lovely class scheduled for this Saturday, August 7 at the Harpeth Art Center in Pegram. We will be learning advanced scarf techniques, and combining them to produce openwork scarves with nuno panels, prefelt designs, interlaced sections, and felted fringes all in one project! If you are ready for new challenges and creative ideas in felt, this is the class for you!

Also, please join us for CVTACA's group show at the Centennial Art Center Gallery. The opening is Friday Aug. 6 from 5-7 p.m. The show opens Friday and goes through the first week of September.

Thanks!

Laura

ArtFusion June 4-5 See you there!

2010-06-02T20:50:00.002-06:00

Hi all. Hope to see folks out at the Factory in Franklin this weekend! Friday night is a reception with music & wine & goodies and all of that! It's going to be fun.

Laura

Demo fun with the soap & Candle makers!

2010-05-16T17:25:00.002-06:00

I got to do a nuno felting demo for the TN Soap and Candle Makers annual meeting in Franklin yesterday. What a fun bunch of folks, and very fiber-friendly! I also got to see Galyna Batewell again, from the Ukraine, who is selling wonderful felt hats that are old russian army hats! They look very nice on her, I think! You can find her work on her Etsy site, she is a wonderful spinner, knitter, and crocheter. Thanks for sharing, Galyna!

Blog is back! - Fiber Fest Workshops

2010-05-12T15:02:00.002-06:00

Hello all. After some technical difficulties, I'm back in the blogging business! Thanks, Jeff!

And thanks to everyone that came out to TACA last weekend, the weather was wonderful, as was the people-watching, dog-watching, and of course the beautiful artwork. As promised, here is the information about the Middle TN Fiber Festival on Memorial Day Weekend. I'm teaching kids felting on Friday morning, and naalbinding on Sunday morning, plus there are tons of other great workshops throughout the weekend. Hope to see you all there!

Laura

Mens hat style

2010-03-06T15:07:00.003-06:00

Here is a gentleman in my booth modeling one of my unisex style hats that I created for some of the men that have requested them. He was kind enough to let me take a picture. (After he had me take his picture on his iphone!) Smile!! :-)

Loiusville, KY Crafted show 3/6-7/10

2010-03-05T14:48:00.002-06:00

Hi all. Just a quick note from the floor at the KY Crafted show. Yesterday and today were for buyers for galleries and stores, and Saturday and Sunday are open to the public. I have a few free passes, so you can contact me for those if you are interested. Please come and see me if you are in the area of Louisville!

I'm going to be brave and get out into the city tonight. Bearno's Pizza! Mmmmmmm.

New Class starting Jan 18th

2009-12-28T10:15:00.002-06:00

I'll be starting a weekly "Knitting Basics" class at the Harpeth Art Center on Monday evenings from 6-8. The class is designed for beginning knitters or intermediate knitters who would like some help with a project or reading patterns or a specific technique or whatever! For more information, please don't hesitate to ask me, or check the Art Center website. I am also teaching felt workshops there in the next couple of months. Check it out!

Memphis Art Holiday Sale

2009-11-22T14:10:00.004-06:00

I'll be at this lovely WinterArts holiday show in Memphis starting the Friday after Thanksgiving. They even used my purse on the posters and everything! Woot!

I hope everyone is having a very enjoyable holiday season! If you are interested in a unique gift for someone in the Nashville area, please ask me about a workshop gift certificate.

Happy Holidays!

Demo/sale Friday night reception Nov 20

2009-11-19T23:49:00.003-06:00

Hi all! Just wanted to invite folks to come out and see the NEW Harpeth Art Center in Pegram. Mud Puddle Pottery has moved and expanded into the old Harpeth Clock and Quilt Building, and I plan to teach felting and other fiber arts there starting in 2010! At the reception this Friday night I'll be there demonstrating, and my work will be for sale there at least through Dec 20! Come out and see me! (P.S. If you are south or east, my stuff can also be found in the Boro at my friend's adorable boutique, Sugaree's, on the downtown Square.)/Harpeth%20Art%20Center%20Card%20front-email%20copy.pdf

Photo session with a model

2009-11-10T19:14:00.003-06:00

Just bragging on my last photo session! I got my friend Kim to come into the studio and model my work for me. I was thrilled with the results, and I'm waiting with bated breath to get the photos from the photographer.