Today our guest artist/writer is Carole Gascoigne aka Craftywoman.  She also maintains a Facebook page just for fun — Bagsalicious.  Here is Carole’s contribution for the Third Quarter Challenge.

I have to say this is a first all round – first time attempting nuno felting and first time writing a blog for this felting site.

It was a treat to be asked, then came the big challenge: what to write about.

We have a quarterly challenge and this one is to take a photo, take it into a colour palette site and find the colours for a project.

I half completed this challenge, in that I found myself trying to capture the image into a nuno scarf or shawl, rather than, as I had originally envisaged, creating something more abstract.

Armed with my 3mm silk chiffon and pre-dyed coloured fibres, I started to develop my scarf.

Top and bottom I used merino and silk in greens and blues. To the blue part I added white viscose fibres for sheen, and turquoise locks. The poppies (sorry about the blurred pic) were first a layer of raw silk fabric cut up into random poppy shapes in salmony pinks, with pink locks and fine red merino over laid.

All of this, the silk fabric and the fibre design was laid out on bubble wrap – bubble side up.

Then came the hard work. I hadn’t appreciated how difficult nuno was going to be. Initially, I covered my design with net and wet felted the design into place. I then rolled it all up onto a foam roller, tied it together and started rolling. I think I rolled about 400 times, 200 each way – then I removed the net.

I re-rolled about another 600 times, changing the end I started with to ensure all the fibres had a chance to be on the inside and the outside of the rolling.

When I was happy that the fibres had migrated through the silk chiffon I added more hot water and threw the piece on to a towel. I continued doing this until I felt it had been felted enough.

Here is my ‘Poppies by the Sea’ inspired nuno felted scarf.

Carole, thanks for completing the Third Quarter Challenge and sharing your first nuno felting journey with us!  It was worth the effort the scarf is beautiful!