Since I started felting, my daughter in law Lia has been fascinated with the nuno textures. So, a while back we shopped for some fabrics we thought may go with her decor and she picked colors. Unfortunately, after making samples, the gold polyester fabric we chose even with open weave did not felt well.
She loved one scarf I had made in particular that I had hand dyed. So, I went to plan B and dyed more silk gauze and merino. She picked out the wool colors for accents.
Originally it was planned to be a very big wall hanging and I calculated a 50% shrinkage rate that I had achieved with the scarf. I had to recruit another table and used boards on top to give it more length and width to do the layout and felting. I couldn’t even get the whole table in the pic and I was standing on a high chair.
What was really fun was flipping it over to layout on the other side. Not.
When the first side was layed out, I wet it down and began my rubbing until I felt the fibers were catching enough to flip it. I did the same on the second side before I began the rolling.
The process went quicker than I expected and the shrinkage more than I wanted. But the ruching was what I wanted. I had to square it up and then figure out how to hang it. So, I pinned it to a towel and let it dry.
But when dry I noticed there were big spots that were bubbled up. It didn’t help the shape for hanging so I added some wisps of fiber and felted them in and had to re-block it and wait for it to dry again. Fortunately, I put enough fiber around it to get the edges to roll in for a nice finish. But I still had to figure out how to keep it’s shape for hanging.
After adding extra fiber to fill in big bubbles.
Lia didn’t want to put it under glass, but wanted to keep it floating against the wall. I wasn’t sure what a framer would suggest so I came up with an interim solution. I had some thin wire that I sewed around the edges trying to keep it concealed. It gave the nuno felt more stability and shape. I didn’t want to invest too much time in the event she didn’t like it or wanted to take it to the framer. There were a couple of spots I wrapped in scraps of silk that showed thru the front. I tried hanging it on the wall to see how it would look. It’s hard to see the detail.
I felt if she liked it I could wrap the wire later and sew the wrapped wire back on.
I haven’t been back to Florida, but I sent it for their anniversary and it’s now hanging on the wall and I’m told she loves it.
It doesn’t show here in these photos, bu the wall color is a very light yellow.
Smartly hung high enough so the boys can’t pull it down.
What do you think of adding two narrow panels one on each side to help fill up the wall?