Wool Landscapes Inspired by Movies

Movies & needle felting - they’ve always gone hand in hand for me. I watch a lot of movies (and TV series, documentaries, etc.) while I work on my needle felting projects. The couch is really the most comfortable place to work in this particular media because I’m doing the felting in my lap rather than a table top. Recently I took this movie & felting combo one step further - I let the movies inspire the needle felting!

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Many of my favorite movies have distinct visual styles and memorable color stories. For example, The Darjeeling Limited, one of my all time favorite Wes Anderson films, has a bright but tattered feel that is distinctly vintage India. The Fall is a movie with one of the most saturated and whimsical color palettes I’ve ever seen, and even though the landscapes are actual places and the characters are actors, nothing from the dream / story scenes looks like it could possibly be real. In stark contrast, the movie The Road, based on the apocalyptic novel by Cormac McCarthy, is so washed out and faded, there’s barely any color at all. I love how color and composition can be so much more than the background.

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In addition to the way color, costume, and set design each have a tremendous impact on films, sometimes the physical location is enough to inspire awe, all on it’s own. Legends of the Fall is one of my all time favorite stories, regardless of the setting. However, the stunning mountains & scenery, certainly help solidify this one’s spot on my favorite’s list for 20+ years and counting. The same is true of the rugged Alaska wilderness setting in Into the Wild. Even though the true story is ultimately heartbreaking, it’s also beautiful.

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Using my favorite movies as inspiration for wool landscapes was a great option for the cold and dreary winter months. I’d much rather hunker down and stay indoors when the weather is chilly like this! Some of the other movies that inspired these recent landscapes are The Village and E.T. (fun fact: E.T. was one of the very first & only VHS tapes my family owned in the mid 80’s!). I’ve seen these movies so many times, I knew exactly what scene I wanted to represent in my own work well before re-watching them for the umteenth time.

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So what are some of your favorite movies? I would love your recommendations. Who knows - maybe they’ll inspire some future felted landscapes!

Introducing Wool Color Studies

Back in October, I took a week-long rug hooking course at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC. I had big plans for this new skill, plans that involved combining other materials and techniques, specifically needle felting. I’ve been needle felting for over 10 years now, and have fallen in love with the texture of wool, so the thought of achieving a whole new level of texture through rug hooking was extremely tempting. During my week at the Folk School, I tried out some preliminary pieces where I hooked wool fabric strips using traditional rug hooking techniques, but I intentionally left gaps and came back to fill those in with needle felted roving. I really loved the combo – it was everything I hoped it would be!

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Fast forward to late January. Where did the last 3+ months go? Oh yeah, the holidays! The Folk School feels like ages ago, but I haven’t forgotten my original mission, despite the craziness of the 4th quarter. After returning home from Brasstown in October, I used the remaining funds from my Metropolitan Arts Council grant to purchase the basic supplies needed for rug hooking – a frame, 2 hooks, foundation cloth, curved scissors, etc. This stash of new supplies and tools has been sitting in my studio, waiting for me to return to a normal schedule. Now that the holidays are behind me, and I’m back from my big wholesale tradeshow (Atlanta Gift Show), it’s finally time to dive into this new crafting realm.

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I started out small – nothing larger than 8” or so. Practicing on a reasonable scale is purely for my own sanity. If a piece isn’t working, it doesn’t feel like a huge let down when it’s smaller. Plus, I wanted to try out a bunch of different ideas so that’s a lot more manageable when I can finish a piece in a few hours rather than investing in something for a few weeks only to discover I don’t like how it turned out. I’m a beginner in this new medium, and I want to set myself up for success and allow for exploration.

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I’m excited to share this new series of mixed media color studies. This first collection is inspired by the colors of gemstones like yellow topaz, aquamarine, kyanite, obsidian, and rose quartz. Each hoop art piece is really about exploring texture and features an overall monochromatic color palette. Each piece has a dyed wool backdrop that sets the tone for the color palette, but also acts as a fantastic foundation cloth. I wasn’t thrilled with the primitive linen look that’s traditionally used for rug hooking, so I tried out a few other options before discovering washed wool fabric. It’s way more expensive to work with, but I love love love how it looks!

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Each hoop art piece has rug hooked wool strips, needle felted roving, punch needled yarn (wool, acrylic, chenille, and others) and I also flipped the piece several times throughout so that I can showcase both the “right” and the “wrong” side of the loops. I think it’s so cool how the “wrong” side of the loop can look – it’s so much tighter and shorter, but then the “right” side is so plush and has incredible density. To me, there’s no right or wrong side – it’s all about which texture you’re going for. As for me, I want ALL of the different textures represented!

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All wool color studies are available on my website under Fiber Art / Textile Art and I’m also offering a custom option – choose your size and color palette and I’ll make it just for you!

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Winter in the Woods Collection

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My first series of needle felted animal portraits for 2020 is coming soon! I don’t get to make these portraits very often and when I do, they sell so quickly it’s a bit of a blur. I’m excited to share these 12 woodland creatures who are all bundled up for the winter season but I know they won’t last. I’ve got bears in hats, owls in scarves, chipmunks in earmuffs, and I had way too much fun putting together this little trailer that my husband helped fiml in the woods behind our house. 

This new series of needle felted animal portraits all bundled up for the the winter will be available starting tomorrow night at 7PM on Instagram. Follow @onceagainsam for details and a chance to snag one of these rare creations!

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Follow @onceagainsam on Instagram for details about adopting one of these woodland creatures. As with my past animal portrait collections, I will be listing them for sale on Instagram and the first person to message me with their email address for payment gets the piece. 

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These quirky felted portraits range in price from $50 to $125 depending on size.

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Fun fact: my talented mother-in-law hand know those tiny hats! Aren’t they just the cutest!?!

Evolution of a Maker: 11 Years of Once Again Sam

You probably know me for my handmade jewelry and fiber art. I’ve been making & selling jewelry on Etsy since January of 2009, and added fiber art to my offerings shortly after that, but I bet you didn’t know I once dabbled in making coasters from marble samples, bowls from old vinyl records, magnets from glass tiles, and some steampunk jewelry from old clock parts? Yes, it’s been a wild ride here at Once Again Sam! 

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When I started out, I was working almost exclusively with up-cycled materials for two reasons: 1. I had a very small budget, and 2. I had access to a lot of interesting materials for free thanks to my career in interior design (which is an industry that is constantly clearing out samples from their design libraries). This combination caused me to be resourceful and experiment, which is still to this day the spirit of my handmade business Once Again Sam (and that’s also where the “once again” comes from in my company name). 

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My monthly “crafting budget” in 2009 was $25 plus whatever I made selling on Etsy. When I started out, I wasn’t selling much on Etsy - maybe a sale a week for the first few months. However, I was surrounded by cool materials, thanks to my design career. The firm I was with at the time was relocating and downsizing the materials library (this was right when the Architecture industry was hit hard during the recession) and we were discarding samples like crazy, so I started reclaiming things from the trash like stone flooring samples, glass tile mockups, leather upholstery swatches, and wood stain chain sets. These odd bits and random pieces bound for the trash are how this business began!

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I did eventually branch out and started buying inexpensive items at Goodwill that I could repurpose. Some of my favorite items to up-cycle at that time were suede clothing, old belts, vinyl records, broken costume jewelry pieces, and clocks. 

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After about 2-3 years, I finally hit my stride working with wood, leather and wool. I stuck to these mediums and started selling enough online that I couldn’t get by using only recycled materials - I had to start sourcing from suppliers with future growth in mind. I still use recycled leather when possible.

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Before I invested in my first laser cutter in 2012, all the leather earrings, cuffs, and rings were cut by hand, and that limited my design capabilities. The laser cutter really opened things up for my business - not just with leather, but also with wood and acrylic. However, there are still several hand cut leather designs I still make today.

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My needle felting projects went from simple to complex within just a few short years. I dabbled in mostly 3D work, focusing on animals and plants as my subject matter. Some of these designs are still around in my shop today - they’re just more refined after years and years of practice!

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I always get asked if I’d ever try a menswear jewelry line. I have, and it bombed. In 2015 I did a series of wooden dog tags, wider leather cuffs, and engraved wooden cufflinks and the collection was a total bust. Sometimes ideas just don’t work out - either the product isn’t quite right or there’s no customers who want to buy it. You live, you learn. No more menswear in the future - got it!

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In 2016, my fiber art changed dimensions, literally. For the first time ever, I decided to work in 2D. It was completely different and I loved it immediately. I don’t know why I never thought to try that before! My first needle felted landscape was created in May of 2016 and it took my in a whole new direction, one I’m pursuing enthusiastically at the moment. Switching from 3D to 2D helped elevate my fiber art. I discovered as soon as you put something on a wall, it’s thought of more as art instead of craft.

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In more recent years I’ve changed my fiber art focus almost entirely to 2D but I still do animal portraits and felted plants from time to time. The jewelry is still primarily laser cut but I’m enjoying hand painting and finding ways to marry the technology of the laser cutter with traditional art methods.

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I enjoyed this little trip down memory lane and hope you did too. We’re all evolving, but it’s hard to see that on a day to day basis sometimes. When I look back at where I started, what I made, what I learned, I feel like a whole lot has happened in the last 11 years. There’s things I only made once and never tried again, there were things I made a decade ago that I still create and sell today, and it’s cool to see how it all ties together. My maker story is still being written. Who knows what the next ten years will bring! 

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Rug Hooking at the Folk School

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Last week I had the pleasure of returning to the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC for an intro to rug hooking course. This fascinating fiber art form is something I’ve wanted to learn for years, but I was having a hard time finding anyone locally who could teach me (or who had ever heard of rug hooking, for that matter). The history of traditional rug hooking is interesting, and the craft itself is quite remarkable, but I had a very specific reason for wanting to learn this new medium. I knew somehow, some way, I wanted to incorporate this dimensional texture into my existing needle felting work. Even though I could easily envision how I’d combine the two mediums, I had absolutely no idea where to start, so when I saw there was a rug hooking course coming up at the Folk School, I knew the stars had finally aligned and it was time to find out if this idea was possible.

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 The Folk School is located in the misty Appalachian mountains, about as far west as you can go and still be in the state of North Carolina. It’s remote, it’s beautiful, and it has a special community that’s been teaching a variety of traditional handicrafts for nearly 100 years. You can learn blacksmithing, chair caning, felt making, book binding, metal smithing, pottery, glass bead making, photography, wood turning, and weaving, just to name a few. The class sizes are small, typically less than 10 students, and you learn by total immersion. By the end of my week, I had put in 40 hours in the fiber art studio! 

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The first hour of class, we learned about the tools, materials, and techniques required for rug hooking, and then we were off to hook our first practice piece – a small coaster, using a simple log cabin pattern. Learning to hook a rug seems simple, but it’s not simple at all. After cutting thin strips of wool, you use a hooked hand tool and pull them through the open weave of a piece of fabric. It sounds so basic, but there’s a lot to it. You have to pull the loops through the fabric just so, and space them out enough, but not too much. You can work with a predetermined pattern, but after my first practice piece, I chose to make up my own or work free form. 

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By day two, I was hooking away on my first large piece and finally had the chance to try out my idea of combining rug hooking and needle felting, and I’m thrilled to say – IT WORKED! I hooked a landscape, creating a foreground and mountains with little loops of wool, then I needle felted the sky with roving. I absolutely love how the two wool textures look together. I’m comfortable with landscapes, I make them almost daily (in felt), so this seemed liked a good place to start. 

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The third day, I tried a more abstract piece, a longer tapestry wall hanging in a pale color palette, still experimenting with mixing roving with the wool “noodles” I was hooking through the linen background fabric. I also learned various ways to finish the pieces, like binding the edges with yarn.  My loops aren’t perfect, my edges aren’t straight, I ran out of wool so the finished piece is about an inch shorter than I had been planning, by I learned so much by the time this one was finished and I’m in love with the irregular pattern and soft earthy colors. 

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 Towards the end of the week, I challenged myself to try hooking precise geometric shapes with curves and points, change colors more often, work with smaller scale fabric strips, and switch directions with my loops. I created two more pieces, both using scrap wool and remnants. I also went bold with my color choices and have no regrets about that! 

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After my first 40 hours of rug hooking, all in one week, I’m only just starting to understand how it works. I’m a beginner and will be for quite some time, my work is far from perfect, but I’m so happy to be off on this new adventure in a different medium that compliments what I’m already doing. My fiber art is bound to change in the future, and that’s exciting in so many ways.

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Check out this short 5 minute video showing highlights of the week, time-lapse footage of my first few hooking projects, and work from the other students in various classes.

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I would like to extend a special thanks to Metropolitan Arts Council (MAC) who made this educational undertaking possible by awarding me a grant to help fund my week at the Folk School plus the investment of the new tools and equipment required to continue to pursue a new dimension in my fiber art. Thank you thank you thank you!

This program is funded in part by the Metropolitan Arts Council which receives support from the City of Greenville, BMW Manufacturing Company, Michelin North America, Inc., SEW Eurodrive and the South Carolina Arts Commission.

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