Introduction by Felt

A statement about my juxtaposition in life during this school term, assigned by my fiber arts teacher. It is a postcard made of wool, to be sent through the USPS. Postal art is a concept that I am fond of. I am glad to have an opportunity to justify spending many hours on something like this. Yes, MANY hours! There is no way that anyone could possibly know how much detail and time went into this little 4 1/4 x 6 inch piece of wool. I started with plain wool- hand carded it, and layered it in one direction, then another, etc., and put a piece of blue, indigo dyed cheesecloth in the center, to cast a bluish tint through the whole piece. I lightly wet-felted, making a lofty and loose piece of pre-felt. I then began needle felting my image on the non-adressed side. Using hand-spun, rough yarn, I made a knotty tree with roots. A cardinal was cut from commercially felted wool that I kool-aid dyed red, a while back. I needle felted detail onto her, as well as some colorful fall leaves on the tree and ground. I needle felted all of the words that you see. Then I wet felted with a rolling method, being extremely careful to turn frequently, and measure for postal dimensions. I felted the heck out of it, and was frustrated by the fact that it wanted to stop sooner than the needed shrinkage. I shocked it in cold water, then hot, felting more, and then put it in a zip lock with hot, soapy water and threw it on my cement basement floor over and over. When I took it out, I saw sadly that it had lost tons of detail and the words were no longer readable. I sharpied over the letters and then needle felted in white around the letters to make them stand out. This took a long time. Finally, I began to needle felt on the other side, to create seagulls. I put the address with permanent marker on silk, and then used hand-spun wool yarn to felt right through the silk and pin it down. I liked the design element that the hand spun borders made on the silk edges, like wood on the ocean beach piers. I added some feathers on the surface, which had spilled out of my down comforter. There are more details than this, but I am so done with this project (5 days and at least and well over 15 hours!)