This morning, at John C. Campbell Folk School, I headed out with the Canon camera, to capture some flowers along the path to Orchard House. I tried to photograph the mist but realized that the camera could never focus on such a blurred scene while it was set on Auto Focus, so I shifted to manual and then began to photograph the flowers up close and personal. I’m thrilled with the wonder of nature’s beauty and the power and pleasure of this great camera.

I’m happily felting away at John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC. I do love the needle felting “art.” The wool fibers are beautiful in both texture and color, from the washed and uncarded to the finest Merino wool roving, to the sensuous bamboo yarn. And the colors!!

First a charming attempt to recreate a beautiful landscape photo I had seen. I wanted the horizontal line of the sunset against the darkening night sky, with palm tree and quarter moon.

The next photo shows an eyeglass case which began its artistic life as a sampler in color blending: from bright yellow through green/yellow unto green itself. Then we did a stand-alone leaf which we felted on, but then we raised the leaf by feathering around its edges. I needle felted a back and then needled the two sides together.

I’m in week one of “Textural Beading,” a wonderful online beading class marketed through Joggles. I’ve also been taking beading classes at White Fox Bead Studio in Maryville – great place!! I’m showing off two items: one is a pair of earrings – elegant simplicity.

The second is a beaded motif. Part of the charm and texture emerges from the use of stacked beads in the center of the petals.

The Pigeon Forge Mountain Quilt Fest offered me and thousands of other quilters a fabulous week of quilt exhibits, vendors, and fabulous classes. Here’s a photo of the applique on a colorful wall-hanging.

Then, in Terry White’s Artful Embellishment class, I finally learned how to do bobbin work – with heavy, gorgeous, metallic threads. The possibilities are endless!

As I explore textures and patterns in my latest art piece, I am intrigued by the semi-transparency of the dyed cheesecloth and how it ripples across the sky circles. I like the second line of stitching, the heavy, braided line. Difficult thread to work with but worth the trouble. The result is rich and dramatic.

Here’s a close-up of the stitching over the top of the sky. I am very pleased thus far and will continue to explore the aesthetics of texture through thread.

Yesterday I put in a goodly number of hours adding stitching to Miss Shadow’s block. I filled in the pink of her face with scatter stitches, surrounded her head with yellow chain stitch and then began drawing scrolling curves with a fabric marker. those lines I followed with tiny back stitches. I also had to weave another thread through her name since the pink letters became lost on the collage. I’m still not thrilled because I think her face is wrong – the pink with green ears isn’t working for me, but we shall see.

Then today I cut out the pieces for the felt collage. I had chosen the Chinese Gong block and still like it a lot. The block design is mola-like and I was able to cut the felt efficiently.Now for some hand-stitching. This one was fun and I think I’ll do another.

Today on a grand breakfast and shopping trip, my friend came across this box of 100% natural alpaca, from the Peruvian Andes. One package contained many pieces of soft, yet appealingly coarse fabric and the other contained alpaca fibers, perfect for needle felting.

Since our work this week in Jane LaFazio’s class, Art  Quilt Explorations, deals with felt and mola-style designs, I thought these packages would be a practical addition to this project. I’m currently using wool felt purchased from Joggles and it’s delightful, but this alpaca is marvelous, coarser and less processed. The colors are paired which will help me in the execution of my design, Chinese Gongs. And I’ll needle felt some right away into another piece I’m working on. Here’s the photos: