PREPARE...

Hello!
I signed up for illustration Friday! I am hoping I can still up load last weeks illustration that was PREPARE.

I was thinking MY name is ... you kill my... prepare to die!

YA! great movie!

I like to make things I can hold in my hands and feel, so I like to make sculpture and clothing. I will use whatever medium I have most of at the time (or am iching to use). For this weeks illustration I made my Gregory character (handsewn, stuffed felt, and needle felted wool ray gun. (The other character in brown is Einsle. I will have to show you how to make him after.)

Here's some step buy step pics for Gregory.

The other dude in here with him is Einsle in his early stages of conception.

These are some sketches of gregory and some other dudes. 

Then on to making a Pattern.
On this page I am also brain storming the word funny. It was for a project.

I make the pattern out of paper, giving room for sewing the edges and turning inside out. I made the arms separate so that he can be holding the ray gun out from him. I pin the pattern on some felt and cut out.

Hand sewn together and stuffed. I also made a gun sling that, I later decided was better on the hip then over the shoulder. I probably could have shown more steps, and will do in the future. 

So that is the making of Gregory!

The ray gun and Einsle are a different story!

I will talk about Dying wool in this page, but I get in to felting in to the point of twirl.

K 

We need to start at the very begining. I was VERY generously donated almost 3 pounds of very soft alpecca wool from

Helga Hillyard

Green Acres Alpacas

So I went to work with my favourite dye, KOOL AID.

Use a glass container, small amount of hot water, stir in desired amount of Kool Aid. I am just experimenting mostly. I am trying to get the basic colours. 

Kool aid is some times hard to find.

So if you "know" me and you find real blue or yellow Kool aid, buy it for me! I will pay you back. PLEASE> It is so hard to find those colours.

Mixing the wool in gently and making sure it is all submerged in the Kool aid. (By the way, I don't give my kids kool aid to drink more than once a year. Mainly because I think of what it does to the wool, it must do to my insides.) My hands by the end of the night were covered in dye, but it came off in the shower.

I have done it a few different ways. Both using a scale and eyeballing weight seems to work fine unless you are trying for a specific colour. I found a great web site for Kool aid dyes. It tells you so many colours you can make!
This time I started out with an oz of wool to 4 packets of a colour of Kool aid. I tried slowly adding hot water and stirring.
This didn't work so I put several bowls in a pre heated to 200 F oven, then turned it up 25 degrees every 30 min till it look sizzling (not boiling). I let them stand in the oven for hour or so, and rinse with natural soap. Being careful the whole time to not shock the wool with extreme temperatures. Then I let the wool dry on a grate.

                                                                                                   
                                                                           
The colours in real life look so good!! sorry for that!
K I think I should start a new page!!!!!!!!!!!!!