Needle Felting

Yesterday at the Create in Me retreat, I tried a new art form.  You might say, "Wait, wasn't your experience on Friday a new art form?"

Yes, in a way.  But I had worked with paint before, and I had worked with color that is under the control of forces other than my brush/hands.  Yesterday, I did needle felting, which you can see above:  the two fuzzy pictures above the pictures made with paint.

I had done a different kind of felting before, a process involving water and scrubbing wool on a cold porch.  I hated it and couldn't imagine why anyone wanted to do felting.  But yesterday's process was very different.

We had a table full of roving wool in a wide variety of colors and shades.  We had small squares of quilting batting and rectangles of foam.  We had very sharp needles, which we used to punch the roving wool into the batting.  I loved seeing how the colors merged and how I could make different textures.  I even tried to work some beads into the fibers.  I was successful, but they didn't sparkle the way I thought they would.

It's the kind of art that appeals to me for many reasons, like the way it allows an artist to play with color and texture, the way that an artist can make a realistic scene or something abstract.  But I also love that it's easy set up and clean up.  There are many reasons why I don't paint much these days, but the fact that it takes a long time, relatively speaking, to clean up when I'm done.

As I've said many times before, one of the reasons why I love this retreat is that I can try new things.  Even if I'm not going right out to buy needle felting supplies, it's cool to tuck this idea away.

I'm also dreaming of returning to a childhood love, creating dyes.  I won't be doing that anytime soon:  lots of clean up, plus time and space to dry the dyed materials.  But it's great to feel inspired!