Nuno and Pencil Roving Weaving
I’ve made a couple of camouflage inspired pieces lately. I think it must be one of my favourite ‘themes’, I know I’ve made a camouflage hat and drawstring bag, a shoulder bag, a notebook cover or two, and a felt cuff and coin pouches (I still use that one in the photo, 4 years on). Maybe it’s because I really enjoy doing felt layouts, choosing all the colours of wool and embellishment pieces. This first one uses some strips from a camouflage patterned silk scarf:
Here’s a close up of one half:
This next piece took a lot longer, it has patches of cotton gauze, the camo silk, cotton scrim, cheesecloth and some muslin Ruth dyed and sent to me:
There’s your piece in the middle, Ruth 🙂 :
I got a small kids’ weaving loom not so long ago, and finally had a go recently. One of the things I tried was pencil roving waste from World of Wool. I’ve tried weaving and felting with it before, but had to do it ‘freestyle’, this was the post about it: https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2015/06/08/pencil-roving-mats/ I think it was a bit ‘closer’ using the loom, and I left the edges longer, but it looked pretty much the same really:
Looking at it on an angle:
And close up:
I really like the pencil roving waste, it knits nicely and felts nicely. I’d use it more if I had more colour variety.
18 thoughts on “Nuno and Pencil Roving Weaving”
I tried something similar with some pencil roving that I got from The Woolery. It’s actually more purple and orange than it is showing in the picture. Now it will sit around waiting until I can figure out what to do with it!
(It’s a balanced twill. Unfortunately, I can’t figure out how to get the image transferred to this comments section)
I like how you put yours on a solid felt background. You could frame it just as it is!
Wren
Thanks, Wren 🙂
I don’t know how pictures show in comments either, sometimes a link shows a picture, if not we can at least click it to see, so try that.
I did get some pencil roving too, It’ll be interested to see how they compare.
Nice textures in your camouflage pieces. Did you find the muslin a bit harder to felt? What will you do with these camo pieces? What will you do with the weaving?
Thanks, Marilyn 🙂
No, I didn’t even think about the muslin, I’ve used it loads of times and always felt pretty much the same and rarely have a problem with fabrics, I just put them on and rub 🙂
I don’t know about the weaving, it isn’t very big, so it might just go in the box until I think of the perfect project 🙂
I love the weaving piece, felting it is incredibly effective! I’m sure it qualifies for the Q2 challenge too 🙂
Thanks, Teri 🙂
That’s pushing it a bit isn’t it?! 🙂 I do have some snippings I’m saving for the 4th Quarter challenge though.
The camo is nice. the weaving came out really nice. You can do some shallow water dying or plastic bag in the microwave dying to get more colours without messing up the pencil roving.
Thanks, Ann 🙂
Most of the colours I have left now are really dark-purple and the Mallard green. I might just have to visit WoW to pick my own! I did buy some chunky Norwegian roving to dye though, which I’d forgotten about.
Great camo Zed. I wouldn’t have remembered sending you that muslin if you hadn’t said anything and I certainly wouldn’t have recognized it. Love the weaving too.
Thanks, Ruth 🙂
I still have a biggish piece of the muslin, but tore a strip off a while ago, the shades are similar to my silk piece.
The camoflage is wonderful! The weaving really is a great idea and it looks lovely felted into a solid colour – you really have to expand this idea as it has lots of potential.
Thanks, Lyn 🙂
Funnily enough, I was spurred on to get the loom because I had a pile of rolled edges from silk scarves and other long lengths of scraps which I’d previously tried with knitting but thought they’d work better with a loom to use some as warp and some as weft, so nothing is safe now really 🙂
The pencil roving is very effective and I particularly like your first camouflage piece. I’ve admired the many and varied nuno examples you’ve made in the past but, until now, I hadn’t appreciated how physical the process is compared to purely using wool. I attended a nuno workshop this week and my arms/shoulders are still aching from all the rubbing it took to get the fibres to migrate through the fabric.
Thanks, Karen 🙂
You’ve got me wondering if I’m just generally kind of ‘heavy handed’ with my felting, because I never have a problem with nuno, I just felt the same way I always do. Maybe because I tend to make mostly firm to hard pieces, I just have a tendency to be more vigorous or something. Did you like the results you got?
Yes, I loved the results and I want to try doing some more. Clare’s work is wonderful and she is a marvellous tutor but I did find her process for nuno tough going. I am used to doing a little rubbing and plenty of hard rolling/throwing. Clare favours all rubbing which takes a lot longer and was hard work on my arms and shoulders! I will have another session at the weekend and go back to using my more heavy handed approach, something we probably have in common. It will be interesting to see if I get the same results.
I’ve just had a look at your blog post about it, your pieces turned out really nice! I can see why you’d find it hard though if you only used one layer of merino and shrank them down such a big amount. Maybe trying a ‘normal’ piece the same way that you might make a piece of felt firm enough for handling like you would for a glasses case or book cover, but with fabric on top would be a lot less work. I use two ‘regular’ layers of wool tops, and by that, I mean one layer going in one direction and the second at 90 degrees. I count a layer as a standard thickness as in the amount that pulls off wool tops if you grab them ‘normally’ (as opposed to softly at the tips for a finer layer), and you can’t see through the layer. I just put fabric on top and rub normally, not with force/pressure like for maximum shrinkage. I’d imagine the work you put into those pieces is similar to when I make really hard coasters/trivets!
Glad you liked the samples Zed. I am going to try it again at the weekend with two layers as you suggested. I had to laugh earlier as I found a nuno demonstration on YouTube entitled Nuno Felting on Steriods which you can see here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S76EX27Y-Pk it’s nuno felting using a car buffer…..now that would make life easier!!
I just had a quick look 🙂 When I first saw people talking about using sanders I wondered if buffers would be better. I made a couple of glass bead felting ‘tools’ recently and took them to the wet felting classes this week (where they were named ‘rubber-dubbers’!) just wooden discs with handles and glass beads on the bottom, they worked so well, one lady had her netting nuno’d on to her work. Have fun making more nuno 🙂