FELT PAINTING – “SAVE ME”

I have taken to creating visual diaries to assist me with the design process. Design is a difficult concept to work through most of the time. What I create does not come with an easy to follow blueprint. There is no one who can contribute advice on what to do and what not to do. I think this is the exciting part of design once you get over the initial reality that there is no “recipe” but your own imagination and the courage to give things a shot. I know that along the path of life, we are often too scared to step off said path just in case something “goes wrong”. For many years I have heard certain people say to me, “what if?”. I don’t really care “what if” at all because I find this term a barrier to expanding my creative self. I have always preferred to respond to the “what if” with “what is” in my life. I have adopted the belief that I must step forward and keep on going. This process is what enables me to design a nebulous concept into something I can see and touch. Art is like that for me personally.

I really enjoyed working through “Save Me” from the initial thoughts into a visual reality because each article I imagine, design and create is a personal achievement of continuing along the pathway. Here are the ingredients I collated for “Save Me” to become a reality:

metallic floss, general embroidery floss, variagated floss, crystal bicones, metallic Japanese seed beads, hand dyed silk throwster’s waste, hand dyed Merino roving, hand dyed Merino roving cord, hand made Merino felt, hand made Merino cord, Border Leicester locks (hand dyed), Italian wire mesh ribbon (expandable), metallic acrylic fabric paint, fireline fishing line, viscose fibre, fusible backing.

I hand dye all my Merino tops into customised colourways and these always form the foundation of all my felting work. Each painting consists of approximately 1,200 hand rollings. Felting is a lot of hard work physically speaking. Due to arthritic pain I have on a daily basis, I can only create felt when the pain is less than usual. These days, this reality does not occur often which makes the creation of felt for me personally a special event in my life.

These images encapsulate the entire process from start to finish. What the images fail to reveal is the actual time spent in placement consideration.

The design process for “Save Me” took an entire 6 weeks from start to finish. When I do finish any piece, it will linger on an easel or work table for up a month afterwards to ensure the creation really is complete. There is nothing worse than framing up or sewing into place only to find there exists part of the design that is incomplete. You can find general blogs on my other WordPress site here: www.janebaridesign.wordpress.com

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