Inspired by her first vacation in nine years, Sharon recently created this beautiful nuno felted wall hanging. She had the pleasure of visiting family in the Pacific Northwest, specifically the San Juan islands. While she was hiking, she found gorgeous madrone trees with vivid bark.
“I haven’t seen a madrone tree like that here,” she said. Our local madrones are beautiful, but they have only a few colors. The ones Sharon found had an explosion of hues. Those would be the source of inspiration for a nuno felted scarf. “I hadn’t felt truly inspired to create for a long time,” Sharon said, “but those colors sure did it!”
Sharon was so glad to find that we had the exact right colors of roving and embellishments in stock. “I only had to hand-dye some mohair and a little bit of the green wool. Everything else matched.”
We asked about her creation process, and she gave great tip. “I always take a picture of my piece with my iPad. Looking at the photo gives a better perpective, and I know what I want to change.”
Sharon made it clear that this was an artist’s interpretation of madrone bark. She worked to match the colors and patterns, but never would she try to exactly replicate the bark. However, to make the texture more life-like, she used a wide variety of embellishments. You can see where she’s laid goat hair (also known as mohair, which are the curly fibers), hand-spun yarn, commercial yarn, silk fibers, silk selvedges, and more to be incorporated into the felted wall hanging.
“With nuno felting,” Sharon said, “you have different techniques available. If I had wet felted this, I could have sewn it to make the ridges we see in the bark. Instead, I used the selvedges from bolts of silk.”
This lovely piece will be hanging in the shop any day now, come on in and see it and say hello!
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