landscape to play with

I started making this landscape play-mat over a year ago, it was supposed to be a birthday present for my son who was about to be 4 (he's now 5 years and 2 months old and I finally almost finished...). I got the idea as I watched him play with an ugly road carpet over at a friend's house. This sort of play mats or carpets can be a great platform for inventions for children, but the way they are often done is somehow closed, there are too many details that have to do with a lifestyle that is not ours (ice cream and pizza parlors around every corner, not that we avoid pizzas and ice creams but I don't think they should make up the only cultural reference for kids). So I thought of making an open landscape with roads, and when playing the children can place different objects or dolls or whatever they feel like to make a story up. There's a mountain and a sea-shore, a lake, fields and meadows. in my kids' room there are baskets with stones they collected, shells, little animals and trees that I made or that somehow made their way over to us. it's fun to see how different bits and pieces finally find a place together in a game. It's still not finished, I'm planning to frame it with some other fabric. but I'm not sure if it would make it all too bound or limited. maybe when he's 6 I'll have the answer..

*the mess at the background of that top picture is an example of the embarrassing truth of our house.

top view with a zip line who's purpose remained a mystery. the red car did some dangerous driving on it:

waves and sea foam:

I used paper clips to help the trees stand upright:

To characterize a field, I created little pockets to place the vegetables in them:

Felting workshop: day 4

On the final day we made hats. Again I left my camera at home and arrived 2 and a half hours too late... (morning traffic + frantic children). So again I only have pictures of the final product at home.

I had 2 grand ideas, one that Karmit dismissed immediately with a big lough (a 3D cloud hat with a rainbow and a big sun at the back) and one that I actually tried but abandoned: it was a rectangular hat with on the top a sun on one side and a moon on the other. the moon was going to be half black and half white, as if it's being lit by the sun, and I was going to draw trees and houses on the hat itself with pre-felted pieces. but making a half black-half white ball for a moon wasn't working at all, and after 2 different tries I turned to the final, simpler idea of a rabbit's ears hat.

I made a plastic template in the shape of the hats profile (only larger), and another template for the ears. first I laid the wool for the ears and sort of half felted them, except at their base, where they were to connect to the hat. I laid some white wool along the inside of the ears that remained unfelted, to imitate the furry bits of the ears. 

 

then I took the template out of them and placed them on the hat's template, opening and flattening the wool of the ear's bases. and then I covered the ear's bases and the rest of the template with wool and felted the whole thing. I used a plastic sheet to separate the ears from the rest of the hat, so they don't accidentally get felted together.

Finally I cut open the part of the hat's opening, took the template out and worked the middle line, where the template's edge used to be, until it looked seamless. then the fulling stage, to give it a good shape and shrink it to the right size. I stopped fulling when I could wear it and I kept it on my head all the way home, but couldn't resist shrinking it further to fit my children.

felting workshop: day 3

Unfortunately I couldn't be there at the second day, the day that was dedicated to stuffed felt animals. there's a Flickr group for this workshop and I hope soon there will be more photos available from the other participants. I forgot to bring my camera to the third and fourth day :-(, so I can only post photos that I took at home later. If there will be more process images later on on the group I'll link them here.

On the third day we were focusing on surfaces. It was hard to decide what to make, I saw the amazing animals that they had made the previous day and got all confused. finally I decided to make a felt drawing for my children's room. usually I don't like the aesthetics of the anthroposophic felt drawings, so it was a strange decision to take, and it was a hard project to dive into - because it is the material that dictates much of the look.

I was planning on a circular surface with a general whitish wash over a gradient from grey in the sky to brown on the ground, and 3 dimensional bubbles for clouds, and a tree. I soon discovered that a smooth gradient is almost impossible with wool. when laying thin pieces of wool and then felting, it just gets the shape of the wet wool, bunches of hair. finally it became mostly white.

I felted the clouds on half balls in various sizes and later took them out.

Halfway I was not very pleased with the the way the colors didn't work how I wanted, and I felt like I'm getting a regular felt drawing. but then I added the tree. I used pre-felted pieces of brown (for the trunk), greens and light brown (for the leaves) and orange (fruits), which I cut into rounds that communicated with the bally clouds. finally I was more at home in this more graphic precise world. but when I felted the rounds lost their shape and the little orange ones nearly disappeared. It seems that the orange I was using for them was not very cooperative in getting felted. I was using a thin net when felting, to keep the wool in place as much as possible. still, it moved around a bit.

At the end I cut the whole thing to a circle. I quiet like the tension between the organic forms of the felting and the hard scissor cut.

Felting Workshop

I don't get to felt much although I enjoy it immensely. It just takes so long to make anything.. But whenever I get the chance to join a workshop I try my best to participate. sitting for a few hours with other creative women and crafting and talking is a favorite pastime anyway, and I love discovering the difficulties and solutions of a craft I haven't yet mastered. With felting it seems that the wool has a life of it's own, and the creation is somewhat unknown until the end.

My friend Karmit came from England. She's a felt artist, among other things. She gave a workshop in 4 meetings, each 8 hours long.
The idea was to learn as many techniques as possible, but we decided to make things and not just stay with techniques, so we don't bore ourselves to death.
so on the first day we dived into a pile of books on botanics, sea animals, birds..
this was my reference:

I love this form of fruit, with a little home for each seed.. I wanted an object that would be an invitation for playing, with a hidden surprise.

First I created the inside with the spaces for the seeds. I used beads for that and later I cut them out.

I covered the bundle with a different color wool

and then it was time for a cigarette break.

(here's the view from the balcony at Rakefet's studio, where we were working:)

amazing Tel Aviv building back side.

In the meantime, here's a stage of the work of the other ladies: Orit made a sort of a psicho-root with lots of green branches hanging from it, Michal made an acorn, and Rakefet made a beautiful jewel-object inspired by a jelly-fish.

I covered my fruit with another layer of different color wool,

and separated the leftover light-blue wool from underneath into sort of dreadlocks

Another layer...

which I then cut in the shape of leaves.

slits to pull the beads out:

here's the inside, and the seeds:

finished!!

and here are the finished objects from the other brave felters:

In the next days animals, scarves, 1 picture and a few hats were made.

I'll post more pictures soon, hopefully.