The Art of Moy Mackay

Following her two previous successful books, this latest title from Moy explores some new ideas for combining felt and stitch and is bursting with examples of Moy’s colourful and inspiring felt works, depicting many beautiful Scottish scenes, and other subjects. Suggestions are given for the fibres that can be used in felting and the wet-felting process is shown with clarity. Moy demonstrates how the detail is then added using extra fibres and threads, with hand or machine embroidery, to give perspective and dimension to each piece. There are four projects, with step-by-step instructions, for the reader to try, and a gallery for additional inspiration.

This is a beautiful book for those who already love felting, or for anyone wishing to try something different, as, such is the nature of the technique, each piece of work produced will be as unusual and unique as the maker. Highly recommended.

* East Kent Embroiderers’ Guild *

I have always enjoyed using different media in my artwork to create sumptuous texture in my paintings. In this book, the artist offers up all of her knowledge and experience of using different fibres and stitch to create texture and depth.

I hadn’t heard of feltings before reading this book. They are the use of fibres to create a painting, a felt painting.

The artist takes you clearly through materials and equipment to start with. Lots of pictures accompany some of the unfamiliar bits of equipment, which was very helpful in the beginning.

I found lots of new ideas to try and plenty of inspiration for projects in the dedicated chapter which included lovely quotes and picture showing the steps in the creation of a project.

Felting techniques are covered extensively and the artist takes a very practical approach which I found easy to follow.

The final part of the book sets out step by step several different projects to try yourself, all of which would produce a stunning result.

-- Alex Scott

Moy Mackay is a true master of her craft. Her generosity in sharing her skill, and encouraging others to tap into their creativity through this book/guide, is a testament to Moy's role as champion of this very distinct art form that she has made wholly her own. Moy Mackay can rest assured that she has shown the world that fibre and felting, in her hands, rightly deserve a place at the high table of art

-- Kathleen Soriano, Independent curator and Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year Judge

The book buyer at the Hutt Public Library must be a textile artist – there are a whole lot of new and yummy titles on the shelves at the moment. The cover of this gorgeous book caught my eye, even though my felting prowess leaves something to be desired. Moy Mackay is a Scottish artist and the work in this book is what she calls ‘painted’ felt pictures. The painting is not on the felt but she uses a palette of coloured wools, silks, and embellishments to create landscape pictures. This could be twee, but Moy’s skill with colour makes them atmospheric and startling. The examples she makes use of in the book are relatively small (mostly less than an A4 size) so the process is manageable for a kitchen or small studio.

The process of wet felting supplemented with needle-felting, machine, and hand sewing, is described well, with a good description of equipment (and workarounds if you don’t have the best). There are several projects that are worked through step-by-step. Even if you are not a felter – and wet-felting is not for everyone – there is a lot of good material here about colour and working with samples to perfect your composition, tips on perspective, selection of colours to reflect a mood, mixing threads to achieve the colours, and presentation.

Her work reflects the often sombre moods of the Scottish highlands with dramatic Prussian blue skies, scarlet and orange sunsets, and purple hills. It probably won’t appeal as much to those who like pastels, but it was glorious eye candy for a wet week.

-- Caroline Strachan * Thread Magazi