Hello there, long time no see!
For those of you that don’t know, for a long time now (like January!) I’ve worked on my Blackpool picture. I emailed a design to the customer and they were very pleased – great – so I wet felted it...(hmm, it wasn't great...) then I
needle felted it....and needle felted it....and needle felted some more…but it didn’t have that sparkle. There was something that wasn’t quite right about it, and the more I needle felted, the thicker it became. Ok, it must surely be because I haven't machine stitched it yet, or so I thought. I stitched barely 2cm before my machine faced a thickness that was just un-breach-able! With a felt picture I certainly wasn’t happy with (a big no, no, I’ve discovered – you can’t work on a picture you’re unhappy with!), a felt as thick as a hamburger and no stitching, it was doomed to fail. So I went back to the drawing board, it was time to make some adjustments.
Now I’m a “large scale” artist and A4 size (which the customer had stipulated) is just way too small. There was too much going on as well, I’d literally chosen a scene everyone knew
off by heart and IT JUST WASN’T RIGHT. I texted her re making it bigger (in hope!) and was delighted when she said yes. I went for portrait rather than landscape this time, brought the tower down near the front and added a rollercoaster (why not?)...but she wasn’t so keen on that
(sigh!!!)
Third time lucky! I tried a slightly different approach – I used two perspectives (landscape and portrait) and stuck them together, moved the tower back where it was and brought the
background nearer (sounds haywire I know but believe me, it works!) Oh, and I made the whole thing much sunnier and brighter AND stuck some seagulls on top of the tram which I decorated with underwater octopuses (reliving the aquarium experience!!)) And she agreed – YEESS!
I went through the processes of wet and needle felting (pulling what didn’t need to be there and adding some fantastical imagery), machine and hand felting it....
....et voila – one felt pic of Blackpool.
Now it's that toe tapping period of waiting for a phone call and the words "YOUR PICTURE'S READY TO COLLECT!" Well, let’s hope she doesn’t read this page till after I’ve given it her! I hope she likes it – I do!
