The Erosion Bundle Project

Whilst over at Love Stitching Red's place the other day, I saw her post on The Erosion Bundle Project. It sounds like a lot of fun and a great incentive to produce a piece of eco art guided by nature and our wonderfully unpredictable English weather, so I thought I'd join in!

Here are some things that i have gathered to include in my bundle. There is a lot of natural coloured wool and wool that has been dyed with use of plants, vegetables or berries. To the bottom right hand corner you can see my blackberry and nettle dyed wools. Next to it is wool dyed in blueberries and felted into the shape of a heart which was a gift from my friend Judy at CJ Stitching & Blooms. I love the heart and have been wondering how best to incorporate it into one of my own felt projects. The erosion bundle will be perfect. I have included natural coloured hand made paper, an olive soap box, leaves, acorns, pine cones and an ear of barley. There is also some small swatches of the predyed pre-felt made from the blended silk and merino that I was given for Christmas. Finally, I added the tag from my feet felt kit which I bought from Yuli Somme last spring. It felt like this should be included in the parcel as making the feet felt was my first encounter with felt making and lets just say, I have not looked back since.

I have wrapped the bundle in layers like the party game 'passy-the-parcel'.

The first layer began with an old key that is no longer needed. I wrapped it in a 50cm2 piece of nuno silk which in tun had oak leaves, pine cones, and acorn cups inserted in between each roll of the silk. This bundle was then tied with a piece of merino lace that I had tried to make into lace jewelry back in the summer (I didn't get very far with that project!).

Next I wound the silk parcel in a mixture of natural blended Gotland wool and some blended Blue Faced Leicester wool. I wrapped some wildflower seed heads inside and bound it with a little apricot dyed alpaca wool.

Next I wrapped the natural wool bundle alongside a sprig of Anglesey heather and dried beech leaves and the last of the pine cones inside a small square of green cotton nuno gauze.

This was then placed inside the olive soap box, surrounded with the dyed wool, wrapped in natural paper and then wrapped again in recycled metallic gift paper before being tied inside a white cotton men's handkerchief and being placed in the snow between the heather and red robin in my front garden.

I will probably move it to my dads garden and suspend it from his cherry tree in the next few days. My dads garden gets a lot more exposure to sunlight, and well, its much prettier and has more wildlife in it.

It will stay in my dads garden and will be left untouched until the end of April/beginning of May, when I will open it again and begin making a piece of eco art with the contents.

Fun stuff!