Weaving a Nest

Willow nest in the Cherry tree

As I wrote about a little while ago I've got a slight sphere/nest obsession thing which has been going on for some time. I recently made a piece on the theme of 'home' for an on-line exhibition based on my nest ideas. This weekend Mr. Stitches decided he wanted to cut the hedges and trim the little Glasgow Willow in our front garden, I asked him to save the willow for me as I thought I might have a go at a bit of weaving.

The raw materials

Work station

I started off with no real plan, I just wanted to have a play about with the willow and see what would happen. I'm planning to do a traditional basketry evening course this term so I thought a bit of free form messing about might be good. Obviously the willow I was working with was very fresh (leaves and everything) and I had a somewhat random selection of lengths and widths. However, I chose to embrace this as part of the project and one of the things I'm really interested in is to see how the piece changes over the coming weeks, how it weathers and if it can retain it's structure.

Willow circles

Starting to take shape

I began by making a few different sized willow circles by gently flexing and bending the willow and wrapping it around itself. As I started playing around with the circles the idea of a nest popped back into my head so I set off (very vaguely) in that direction.

Nest entrance

The finished nest sculpture

I've done a fair bit of willow weaving (mostly giant puppets!) but this was quite different. As I was working with quite short lengths and unstripped stems it was harder to see the structure emerging and I've ended up with quite dense areas and very open areas rather than a more even spread. I also was not using tape, as I have done previously, but relying on the willow itself and a few bits of linen thread (I wanted the whole thing to be totally bio-degradable) which has led to a perhaps less strong structure than I would normally create.

Finished sculpture hanging up

Weave detail

Entrance detail

Despite these challenges (and a very limited supply of stems) I persevered and I'm quite pleased with the result, which I've hung in a tree in our back garden. I'm looking forward to seeing how the nest changes and alters over the coming weeks, how the weather and nature will affect it and how long and in what format it will survive. Maybe I will wake up tomorrow to a pile of twigs and a heap of thread or maybe it will survive the winter and the climber that grows up the tree will colonise it, or maybe something entirely alternative...

Felt Progression

Experimenting with additions to felt

I had an excellent session with the No Borders art group at Carleton Day Centre today. It was the penultimate session and everyone was in a good mood and working hard (I think the sunshine and toast helped!) One of the aims of this block of sessions was to give the guys the chance to develop their skills and take things further. I had already done some felt making with this group before but these sessions have given us the opportunity to really build on previous work, try new things and push their work forward.

Laying out fibres

Blending fibre colours

Rolling the felt, the hard bit!

The group has decided to make a joint piece of work, a hanging sculptural piece for the centre which will first go on display in the Prism Arts studio in Carlisle for C-Art in September. Over the past six weeks we have been experimenting with different elements of felt making such as making felt beads and sausages as well as developing our work with flat felt. All these elements are going to be incorporated into the finished sculpture. I can't wait to start putting it all together next week as I'm really excited about how it's going to turn out.

Making beads

Sliced felt beads

So, today we carried on preparing all the elements for the final piece and also working on some individual pieces. One of the things that I most enjoy about working with people is seeing how they take on and develop ideas. It is very satisfying to see someone make something with a technique you have shown them but which they have adapted to suit their way of working and their vision.

Painting the sculptures base (yes it is a lampshade!)

Jimmy Sparks the Dragonfly

Felt and willow sculpture

Over the past six weeks I have been working on a project to make a dragonfly sculpture. Prism Arts were commissioned by Tullie House and The Solway Wetlands Project to create 3 sculptures of wildlife found in the Solway wetlands. We chose to make a natterjack toad, a common hawker dragonfly and a lapwing. I worked with my textiles group up at The Heathlands Project  as well as the other artists working on the project.

Felt sample

It has been a really fun project to work on and a great chance for the guys I've been working with to experiment with different felting techniques and for me to improve my willow weaving skills. Unfortunately we were on quite a tight time scale so we did not have as much chance to experiment as I would have liked but the guys worked incredibly hard and have produced a great piece of work.

Willow wing frame

The guys started off by making drawings and some felt samples after looking at lots of pictures of the common hawker. I worked with the other artists on the project creating the frame for the dragonfly. It was great working together as we were able to help each other out find solutions for the problems we encountered.

Body frame

Head and thorax

We made the felt for the head and body first, using merino tops and lots of graft! For some of the people on this project it was the first time they had made felt and the pieces they produced are really high quality. We added lots of sparkly fibres as well so that the finished pieces would catch the light and shimmer, like a real dragonfly.

Laying out the body felt

Laying out the body felt

For the felt for the eyes we added lots of circles of net and organza to look like the many lenses of an insect eye.

Eye felt with net and organza circles

The next step was making the wings. For this we tried nuno felting. This involves using a sheer fabric as a base and then felting the wool fibres through it. Using the fabric as a base allowed us to create a piece of felt that was strong enough to use for the wings but still light and  semi transparent. We used silk chiffon as a base and lots of the sparkly fibres to create a shimmery, wing like fabric. Everyone worked together on one big piece and it was a real team effort.

Nuno felting

Nuno felting

I then worked with one of the guys one to one to embroider the wings using metallic thread and machine embroidery. We used pictures of the wings as a reference and worked section by section to build the pattern up.

Embroidery in progress

To add the bright spots of colour onto the dragonfly and to create the details on his face we used needle felting. This involves using a barbed needle to push and pull the fibres through each other to felt them.

Needle felting the body spots

Needle felting the face

With all the pieces of felt made and embellished and the frame made the final step was putting it all together. I used strong thread and a few curse words to securely sew all the felt pieces together and onto the willow frame. When I took the finished sculpture back to the guys they were really happy with it and decided to call him Jimmy Sparks.

Face detail

The underneath

Wing detail

Along with the toad and the lapwing Jimmy was delivered to Tullie House this week where they will soon be displayed.