There were more successes than learning experiences today so I am pleased.  This is the 3D sculpture that was a work in progress last evening and is now drying on a radiator.

  
I am very, very pleased with it, when it is dry I will pull out all of the threads and start to cut into it to reveal the colours hidden within. I can hardly wait, another piece off my list.

I then decided to try using two resists one inside the other.  I had to put my thinking cap on to make sure it was going to attach correctly and by that I mean that the two pieces are felted together. I made this one with Icelandic, the 3D one is made of merino and the cords are made from short fiber merino.  The Icelandic makes these type of pieces very well and I like how this turned out.  I learned how to do this at a class I took last year with Marjolein Dallinga at Series at Red Deer College where we had to make our “inner selves”. I don’t think this is a repeat but I like the idea of a piece inside a piece. 

  
The blue bit is attached inside and it stands on its own, so a good success.

A few days ago I was wondering what I could use for a sand coloured background for my pieces to sit on. The obvious thing would be to felt some pieces but that would take a lot of time and it is way more fun to felt pieces like the one above than to make flat piece of felt followed by another flat piece of felt, I think you get the picture.  I did bring silk and chiffon and someone left some inexpensive black tea so I thought I would try tea dying.  I took a piece of each fabric, left it for 15 minutes and that seemed a bit light so left them for 15 more minutes and this is the result.

  
I think they work well together, the chiffon took the dye a little more but on its own the chiffon has little colour but when teamed with the silk it works.  I will dye some bigger pieces and probably leave them for even longer but I am quite pleased that my sand wil not take much work at all.  Some of the pieces on the sand.

  
At the end of the day I wanted to try to make a shell so I looked the small shell I had over and tried to figure out how to make the resists work and as you can see I still need to do a lot of tweaking to say I can make a shell.

  
The felted piece on the left looks nothing like the shell on the right.  I have changed the shape of the resist to better reflect the shells shape and figured out another way to get the second resist out and I will give it a go tomorrow morning.

All in all a good day with some learning.  Thanks for reading.