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.