Long Beach never FELT so good!

 I am blessed and very grateful to live in Long Beach, California and within walking distance to the ocean and various inland waterways and bays that make my city a paradise.  There is sand and grass and bluffs and sometimes mud and muck with beautiful birds and jumping fish. There are blue waters and green waters and oftentimes brown waters.  It's clear, it's calm, it's a high tide cresting over the life guide chairs or a low tide making it harder to climb up the bridge to cross the lagoon. I never tire of walking or riding my bike to the beach and playing endless frisbee with my athletic dog Kiza.  The beach and the ocean offer solace, sun, activity, reflection and so much more.  

I was inspired by my routine visits to the beach, the bay and the inland waterways to create a nuno felted poncho reflecting my vision of a compilation of of these scenes.

 I wanted to create the texture I feel and see at the beach so I layered the piece with wool roving, silk and upcycled fabrics, yarn, beads, threads, felted balls and cords to create a texture of the beach from the sand to the water and the two ebbing and flowing into each other.

 I put some plastic under some of the Margilan silk to create the feel of whitecaps and seaform.  I cut the felted balls in half and placed them under some silk to create the feel of silt, sand loam and shells.  The cords reflect reeds and growth along the silty areas of the inland waterways.