March's Tart Kit

The lesson for this month demonstrates two methods of felting: wet felting and needle felting. To wet felt, the roving is layered vertically and horizontally, and then wet with hot water and liquid soap, and then agitated between two pieces of muslin and bubblewrap.













Once it has been pre-felted, it can be fulled more completely with more agitation or with needle felting.











Using different colors of roving and yarn together, many interesting designs can be made.





These last examples show finished needle-felted projects. Notice the shading in the wool fruits.

February's Tart Kit

This month the lesson is about image transfer using several acrylic products: gel medium, gesso, and acrylic paint. As an extra we added a piece of Bondex as an iron-on method. The basic instructions are to treat the right side of an image and/or background fabric with the acrylic product, place the "glued" image on the fabric background, let dry, and remove the paper backing by moistening and rubbing the back paper away. The "glue" of the acrylic product holds the image onto the fabric.

The back paper comes off in layers and may take several periods of wetting and rubbing before the image is as clear as you want it to be.

The image should be a photocopy, ink jet copy, or magazine or newspaper image: something with a fairly lightweight base paper. Use enough product to evenly coat your image in order to protect it when removing the back paper with water. In using the Bondex, iron the right side of the image to the Bondex and then remove the back paper with water.

The acrylic product you use will affect the backgound of your image. The gel dries somewhat clear, the gesso is white and of course the paint will show through the image.

This is Sue's finished collage of transfered images. She used both the gel medium and the gesso.