Merino and Hemp pouch

Merino and Hemp pouch

Just before Christmas, Karen sent me some gorgeous fibres. One of the fibres was hemp. A couple of days ago I made a small pouch from Merino wool with the hemp as a surface embellishment.

I didn’t really intend to make a pouch, I was planning to make an unusual shaped vessel. I started by laying a piece of cotton gauze in the centre of a rectangular template, then added a couple of layers of merino and the hemp fibre on top. Just after I’d wetted it all down, I saw a 3d resist I’d used previously and thought that would work better than what I’d planned to use. I lay the resist on the felt (the resist is basically a couple of lightbulb boxes wrapped in bubblewrap and packing tape), then wrapped the felt around, snipping it in a couple of places to overlap. When it was almost felted, I removed the resist and shaped the bottom and sides to soften the edges.

I was really pleased with the way it turned out, especially the way the hemp looked with the white merino, and the texture of the gauze inside is really nice, too.

14 thoughts on “Merino and Hemp pouch

  1. I love the subtle effect of the hemp on the wool. It’s a nice looking pouch, how big is it?

    Funny, it says there are 2 comments but I only see one from Ruth.

    1. Thanks, Ann 🙂
      It’s about 6 inches tall and 4 and a half inches wide.
      I think one of the comments is showing that a site linked to the post.

  2. That turned out great zed, i like the effect of the hemp to. Is it soft after you felted it, i havent used any yet so just wondered what it feels like after lol

    1. Thanks, Kaz 🙂
      Yeah, it is quite soft after felting, I thought it might be because I’ve used flax which is similar.

  3. The hemp is super!! It reminds me of tencel in the way that it felts in lovely, wiggly, curves…not
    straight like wool fibers!
    …and the monochromatic look is very elegant! XXO-

    1. Thanks, Heather 🙂
      I think the fulling I did to make sure it was thick enough probably encouraged the hemp to wiggle more, too 🙂

    1. Thanks, Judith 🙂
      The gauze was actually just a gauze swab opened out. Looking at the packet, it was 100 of them from Boots (Type 13 light, 8 ply, 10 x 10 cm, if that helps) 🙂

    1. I didn’t really use it with that in mind, Kaz, it was more just for how it would look, the gauze I used was really very fine. I imagine it would make thinner felt stronger though.

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