Flooding the Kitchen for Art!

Here's something I have been wanting to do for while--not flood the kitchen--but, show you some photos of the process-or parts of it-in creating some new Bigger pieces of felting art!! And, creating two shawls took up lots of room in my home studio. This photo shows my first attempt at using silk laps (which are a silk fiber left over from the silk making process before it before it becomes a fabric);

One layer is already laid down and the next puffy bit to be stretched down is on the right; The wool in mostly salmons and yellows is ready to be pulled off into wisps and layered. No sign yet of the water soap and hand action that happens next and no photos of of that part, alas, either!

The second photo (at night with the flash) shows it after it got felted..see towels on floor--for kitchen flood wipe up process! Not an extremely dramatic flood but it keeps you on your toes trying to keep the water off your toes!

Here's the "finished product", which some of you may have seen in the Etsy Project Embrace blog interview or in my shop.

I was inspired to make big cozy shawls with silk laps by Kim of ViltalaKim in the Netherlands who wrote about them in these blog pages and Ingermaaike in Norway who sent them to her and and led me to Kate/Katrzyna of FeltFieltroFilc who dyed the silk laps and sent them to me from Ireland! So in my "kitchen flooding" experiments I also got to be in touch with etsy sellers and "fiber people" from many places, as I so enjoy doing. The wool, which included fuzzy Alpaca in the salmon and sunshine colored shawl came from woolgatherings not too manymiles from my home.

Actually, as long as I'm at it now, here are some photos of the second shawl in progress: No torrents of water captured there either but a different color palette and more steps!

First, a close up of what the laps look like before they get stretched out (they get felted into the wool and vice versa for a very soft and silky effect.) The second photo shows the stretched out silk laps taking up much of my living room; the third shows the wool laid down in overlapping layers and the forth Voila! the finished shawl on my sweet model, Emily! (Silk Laps from Kate mentioned above and wool from another etsy seller close to home, cjdelights.)

Thanks for having a look..I'm so glad I finally did this blog post! In the next next projects- in -progress post I hope to get some pix of the felter in the soap and water..flood or no flood in the kitchen! (In my shop are more pix of these and more (smaller scarves) that this project has spawned!)