Friday, September 15, 2017

I have been painting with yarn (you can do it too)

Yarn Painting With Natural Fibre Yarns and Beeswax Complete Fibre Art Kit - Sunset, 
produced by Kathy White, a fibre artist from Stratford, Ontario 
(Links are at the bottom of this post)

Kathy White, an Ontario fibre artist who also does demonstrations and workshops, wanted to share her yarn and beeswax technique with people who were interested but who didn't know where to find the materials. She has begun selling small kits online, which include pretty much everything you need to make a simple sunset-and-water picture.

You press lengths of yarn into the beeswax, more or less following the photograph on the package. The board is scored with the arc of the sunset and the line of the horizon, but that's all; it's not paint-by-numbers. Because the colours of yarn vary from kit to kit, you may not end up with traditional sunset colours (mine is all blues and greens).  Kathy's blog post about the kits shows a piece she made herself from the kit materials, which looks quite different again.

This is something that most kids could do as well as adults, but (as shown on Kathy's website), the technique can be used for very beautiful and intricate pieces of art. Some young children might not have the patience to line up the rows of fine yarn smoothly, especially at the edges, where it can be a bit tricky to keep things even. 

The kit contains a 5x7 inch beeswax-covered board, natural-fibre yarn in several colours, a chopstick tool, and instructions; you supply scissors and hairdryer (optional, for setting finished work). I have a shorter wooden tool for making toothbrush rugs, which I found I preferred to a longer tool. You can also use other tools such as knitting needles. You will also need to supply your own frame, if you want one.
Partly-done picture, showing the beeswax-coated board on the bottom half
Completed picture

Kathy White's website (there is a contact form there)
A blog post with more information about the kits

Disclaimer: I received this product as a gift from the artist, but I was not otherwise compensated for posting the review.

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