A Chalk and Cheese Collaboration: behind the scenes of creating The Gentle Roller

When Philip set out to help me, I wasn’t particularly obliging – he even remarked that I probably hoped he’d fail. He would ask questions: ‘well what makes this wool felt, or shrink more than this one’ or ‘what makes you lay the fibres this way and not that way?’ ‘What does using this particular shampoo with a certain PH do?’ I would respond with either ‘I don’t know…’ or ‘that’s the way I’ve always done it,’ which made me appear as though I had the IQ of a gnat  or that I made felt on automatic, not really understanding what I was doing. ‘I do it intuitively!!’ as a response seemed inadequate. I wasn’t even embarrassed about my ignorance. 

Philip has a different mindset – he likes to know how stuff works, and what he can do to make it work better. Whereas, I’m more ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ type of personality (and my body was broken and still I thought I could carry on as usual). So, Philip did his own research – to see what made wool tend to felt more than other fibres; as well as enquired into what we could do to enhance that tendency towards matting/felting – did using a shampoo with a particularly PH make a difference to how fast the wool felted, for instance. There were umpteen questions he set for himself to answer. For the past ten years, he’s been thinking about all sorts of ways to ‘automate’ felt making and to help me work more efficiently. But I wouldn’t take him seriously. I waved him off with 'I like to use my hands', or 'you can’t make it felt any faster'. ‘That’s just the way it is.’ 

I can’t tell you the amount of times we locked heads because of my stubbornness to try something new, which if you really look at it is not at all ‘creative’. However, my body is broken (yes no longer in denial), and my recovery has been slow. Four years and I still suffer from numbness to both legs, and from night cramps that sometimes keep me up. Something had to give – and it was my attitude. 

Throwing my felt in the dryer was never an option – because I’m too much of a control freak.  I looked at the Snowy Creek felt roller but thought it too expensive, and I wasn’t convinced that it would help me roll my sort of felt – which is very fine. I like to use merino-silk blends, slippery carrier fabrics, such as old saris, as well as embellishments, such as velvets or gold threads and edges torn from saris – using up the ‘scraps’, which are all so resistant to felting.  My coats and jackets require several tens of thousands of rolls before I'm satisfied with the quality of the felt fabric. 

The Cooper sisters modelling Passion 
in the Square Coat (right), and (left)
the Summer Mosaic jacket

Philip worked closely with me – watching the way I made felt. We made samples – laying wool in different ways, using different surfactants in the felting solution, and over the months of testing and research, his prototype changed in shape and materials, as he was inspired to take his design to the next level. Now, that's a creative mind in overdrive... 

Philip, with one of the first protoypes.

When I made a large production run of scarves, I worked with an assistant, and Philip and the assistant monitored the roller – that’s how unrefined it was at the time. Now I can leave the GR and get on with other things. I don’t have to watch it, neither does anyone else. 

We’ve come a long way in two years, not least in the way we work together. It’s never been an easy collaboration, as we are chalk and cheese as human beings. And along the way I’ve come to admire and respect Philip’s skills and his determination to make things work, or to try something new – like make felt. I was prepared to give up and try something less back breaking – book-binding, consoling myself with the thought 'you love books'. Never mind that I really like making felt fabric too or that I'd be forsaking a passion. 

When Philip went to China last time round to finalize the ‘production version’ of the Gentle Roller, I prepared several scarves for him to test out, as I was unable to make the trip with him. We stabilized them with 1000 rolls or so, on a GR prototype, so the scarves could travel. While in China Philip felted the scarves using the roller and the fulling drum, with some instruction from me through Wechat ('How do I know the pre-felt is ready?'... 'I can't see the fibres coming through...' And from my end of the screen it was difficult to judge the pre-felt). The scarves weren’t perfectly done according to my finicky standards, but almost.

Gotta take off our felted hats to him for caring enough to take up the challenge of working with me despite all my moans, objections and hesitations, to make my felt-making, as well as every other felt-maker's, less dependent on tedious manual rolling…and for sticking with the project in spite of hiccups and hurdles along the way. Not least the one before us now of getting others to support us as we go forward into production ...

You can visit Kickstarter to pre-order The Gentle Roller.

Below is 'Blooper 5' from our Blooper selection - a window of insight into the Chalk and Cheese every day battle. 

What an arch can suggest for friendship

An arch is two weaknesses which together make a strength, Leonardo suggested when talking about buildings, but I think we can apply it to an idea of friendship.  When you look at an arch – the forces that compress need to hold together in a state of equilibrium.  Great and sustainable friendships are like the arch.  You will probably find that when one puts more weight in than the other does, that either one or the other or both, will collapse.

Sure, it is an ideal but we need not have to relinquish parts of ourselves to be in relationship with another, and we need not have to give more than the other is prepared to give.  Equal weight, balance, and negotiating the spaces between until that is achieved.  That in between space where the two weaknesses come together, where the compressive forces meet, the ‘third space’ (what theorists nominate as intersubjectivity), is actually a place where we find nurture and where we can birth and nurture something ‘other’ - be it our 'self' or a work of art.  Often it is the place where love grows.  I tried to capture this experience in a simple drawing some time ago – visually it captures an impression of what I mean.

Comfort (2002)

I bring up the idea of friendship or relationship as an arch, as a justification for my penchant for working collaboratively.  In collaboration, I either find or remember an aspect of myself or find a possibility for re-invention.  This is the way I have experienced that most primal of relationships - with my mother, who is my best friend.  She has always been a fabulous storyteller and our engagement through conversations now that her best friends have passed, have allowed her to continue with her story telling.  I've even been compelled to write down these stories before they pass with her.  In between, in the ‘third space’ is the expressive woman, which we both share.

What came to be called the ‘Friendship Scarf’ happened accidentally.  Fabienne Dorsman- Rey had sent me a few eco-dyed samples after I’d packed her an envelop full of eucalyptus leaves found in Sherbrooke Forest close to where I live - what you can call my ‘backyard’.  The bits from Fabienne weren’t enough to make a piece but I was so touched by their unique beauty that I wanted to make use of these ‘samples’.  So I started to sew them together along with other bits and pieces that I had – sari remnants from Glitz and Pieces on Etsy, other silk and cotton scraps until I had enough ‘carrier fabric’ for a nuno felt scarf.  I wanted to work in a way that left the beauty of the eco-dyed fabrics and sari remnants exposed as much as possible.  While I was ‘playing’ with this scarf, touched by the friendships that have bestowed all bits upon me, I was also making a few scarfs to enter in the annual Melbourne Scarf Festival.  I had never intended that the mosaic scarf would be entered in the event.  When Philip looked at the ‘results’ he thought the mosaic scarf was the best of the lot and that it needed to be part of my contribution to the festival. 

‘But I don’t want to part with it,’ I told him.  If I did part with it, it would go to Fabienne.  Then I thought if I priced it highly enough no one would buy it – even though priced, as it was, it was still a bargain given the hours of labour in the scarf and its psychological significance.  The theme of the festival was ‘the rhythm of my day’, and serendipitously it fitted easily with Facebook being a part of my day, and where I’d encountered my friends and been enriched both creatively, and personally.

The Friendship Scarf I

Detail of the back showing a piece dyed by Fabienne, and a sari  remnant bought from Glitz & Pieces 

You can see various bits were sewn together

The wrong side of the fabric

I wrote as my caption for the exhibition: 'The rhythm of my day – FaceBook and friendships forged with artists on-line.  An eco dyer in Amsterdam; a seller of sari remnants based in India; whose auras are present in this scarf.  I have collected leaves from Sherbrooke forest and sent them overseas, then received the ‘fruits’ in pieces of dyed fabric and I’ve been shown how to create my own eco dyed bundles.  Conversations, learnings, laughs, amity.'

I considered the scarf as a co-creation, in which not only bits and pieces from others came together to make one work, but as well, those bits enabled me to approach felting in a different way to what I would have normally. For me it inspired love - love of the materials, the process, and the people involved.

The scarf was subsequently bought by a woman who fell in love with it. 

The full quote from Leonardo's Notebooks is 'The arch is nothing else than a force originated by two weaknesses, for the arch in buildings is composed of two segments of a circle, each of which being very weak in itself tends to fall; but as each opposes this tendency in the other, the two weaknesses combine to form one strength.' http://www.fromoldbooks.org/Richter-NotebooksOfLeonardo/section-13/item-779.html