Saturday 9 January 2010

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!

16 comments:

LOVE STITCHING RED said...

So lovely that you are joining in ... it's a fascinating project and an exciting one too! I feel a bit tender towards my bundles out in the frozen garden at the moment!

Good luck with yours! I shall enjoy following your progress and your muses :o)

Have a lovely weekend
Carolyn ♥

Mrs Pretzel said...

Awesome bundle!! IMO it's never too late to join. My son and I did this last year with Seth, and because there was a good amount of time between bringing the bundles in and the next part of the project, we just let ours set for a while longer outside, and only brought it in JUST before the second reveal!! Welcome to the group!!

Martine said...

This is a beautiful project and i love the idea. Helas, i'm too late, just read about some minutes ago and will be gone fore a week now. But i'll be watching from a distance.
Its hard to leave these bundles alone Jasmine, do you think you can. Wish you succes with it.
XXXm

ArtSparker said...

A journey of sorts.

t said...

What fun, frozen bundles. No point doing them here, they would just bake in the sun. Your bundle looks so interesting Jasmine, will look forward to seeing how it all turns out. Be patient.

xt

lettuce said...

such a very cool and creative idea
i so look forward to seeing what happens to yours and what you will do with it in the summer

Renee said...

Jasmine isn't it going to be fun to see how it all turns out.

Yes, the bat, it took me all night to throw that one up and then in the end I felt sorry for it.

Love Renee xoxoxo

Anonymous said...

I always shop at a store called Aunt Green. It lies in HAgaby. I buy things tehre. ecological thingi. It is very cold in seden now. Its - 14 todayl. but I don'ät complain about the cold liek all tthe other pope do nowdayd

Tammie Lee said...

such an interesting thought! I look forward to seeing what all these treasures turn into!

Titus said...

This is just fascinating, and I'm quite tempted into joining in! What a fabulous mixture of materials and what beautiful layers you produced. Hmmm...

Anne said...

i am curious about what the earth and time will do with your bundle:))

Lucky Dip Lisa said...

I've enjoyed looking at all the wrapped layers in your bundle.NZ weather is quite kind, I imagine your bundle will see quite a lot more 'wet stuff' than my bundle so finding a place with more sun isn't something I considered! I was pleased to see you use natural dyes! I have just started really exploring natural dyes and pigments having only just moved on from tea, coffee and marigolds. I'm still very much at the 'experimenting' stage! I will take a look around the rest of your blog:)

Anonymous said...

I love your layered bundle. So clever to send it away and wait to see what happens.

Thanks for your comments.

Corrine

Lawendula said...

Lovely, thanks for your comment. This is such an exciting project.
CU, LaWendula

Kris said...

I just love your bundle snug in the snow like that!!!

Deborah said...

Interesting contents! I'm looking forward to seeing what happens!