Earthtone Rug

This post was inspired by and is dedicated to the artist Susan of Artspark Theatre and Tiny Theatre. A few days ago Susan (aka Artsparker) posted a wonderful picture which was the latest in her Alice series.

Susan's imagination, skill and use of light are fantastic. I've always loved woodland and the magic of Alice. They both hold a special place in my heart. This picture made me want to recreate the forest floor in a felt.

I was running low on wool but decided to experiment with what I had left. I laid out all the natural coloured wool that I had, which was a combination of Blue Faced Leicester, Manx Langton, Blended Jacob, Gotland and Doll Suffolk. I was hoping that if I laid out a wide variation of browns and greys the fibres would all intermingle and some fibres would travel down whilst others traveled up.

Here is the rug laid out to dry on the line supported by the bamboo blind it had been made on. I wish I had take photo's of it whilst it was wet, the Manx Langton wool had such rich fertile earth tones, and at times very cocoa like colour. When wet it made the Blue Faced Leicester layer on the top look black and charcoal coloured naturally separating into what could have been tree root patterns. This is not so noticeable when the rug is dry.

Here is the reverse side of the rug to show you the variations in colours.

The green pattern in the centre is supposed to represent oak leaves from the true flowers of the forest (trees!). The shapes didn't hold so well during the felting process. I may stitch leaf spine and skeleton shapes into the leaves to make them more decorative, but I'm not sure (suggestions welcome). For now I think I will leave it how it is.

The red, I added as it reminded me of autumn and I love autumnal woodland walks, happy days!

The white spirally swirls I added because I was worried that I did not have enough wool to make the rug thick enough (which happened to be the case), so I wanted to make rug a little more decorative in case it ends up on a wall. Whilst laying out the wool for this project the wool naturally weaved in and out, overlapping in places, very similar to woodland trails. I wanted to continue the gentle curved theme and also to keep the pattern simple. It is my first large scale project so did not want to over complicate the project or distract from the beauty of the natural colours.

During the felting process the rug shrank by almost half. It is quite usual to have around 40% shrinkage but it is so much more evident on a larger project. It made me smile.

I'd like to thank Susan for lending me direction for this project. Susan is a generous and supportive blogger, often spotting the subtleties that most others miss. Susan has a wide knowledge of the arts and literature which she quotes with humour and intellect regularly in her blogs. Please visit Susan if you have not already. You can find her at Artspark Theatre and Tiny Theatre.