Here We Go!

This is the first (of many) entries that will follow the process of my wall art felt piece that will be part of the Cultural Capital of Canada art project.
The inspiration for this piece is the photo below.  I taped it on my wall.  It is 18 inches wide and five feet tall.  This piece will be hung on a wall in the Region Office in St. Catharines, along with four other "fruit belt" photo inspired fibre and mixed media art pieces of the same size.  I am so excited to be part of this project!

The next photo shows the fun I had at The Fibre Garden last week.  I purchased mostly merino and corriedale rovings in blues and greens, and there is a citron silk that has stunning shine on top of the natural merino batting that will be the base of the wall hanging.  There are skeins of shrinkable wools in front and embroidery threads and vials of tiny glass beads!  All the supplies I need to "paint" this picture in wool!

The first thing I did was make a small sample.  It is about 12 inches by 15, and I wanted to see how the colours blend and how much the combination shrinks so that I can best calculate the finished size of the big piece.  I also did a bit of needle felting to accent the apples.

Notice the way the silk add shine and texture (because it shrinks at a lesser rate than the wool.  The tree branch will also have some texture when I add some boucle wool to the mix.

 for more felting blog entries go HERE
and HERE.