What To Do With All The Little Bits Or Fun Batts
I am very busy getting ready for the first Farmers market of the season and forgot it was my turn to make a blog post. I thought You might like to see this one from 2012 again.
Ann
Last week I sorted out my wool and put all the decent size pieces on the new shelves. this left me with a lot of little bits. I usually keep bins of little bits to use as accents. Now I had way to much of that too. I sorted it all, picked out the stuff I really wanted to keep and put the rest into 4 piles for carding.
I have a large carder, a Patrick Green Cottage Industry Carder.
A friend came over and we carded it into a 4 fun textured batts.
The batts came out really nice and will be great for felting or for spinning textured yarn. I didn’t think I had that much until we fluffed it up to card. It is amazing how much you can compress wool when you’re stuffing it into a little storage box.
20 thoughts on “What To Do With All The Little Bits Or Fun Batts”
Those batts are lovely – you’ve got instant landscape backgrounds from the blue/green and brown/grey ones!
And it kinda feels like you’re getting something for nothing when you re-use scraps doesn’t it?
Yes, I know what you mean about compressing fibres – I remember the first bag of 100g I received from the wool seller. It was in a tiny, sealed plastic bag and It didn’t look much and I felt a bit cheated – until I opened the bag and the wool just kept ‘growing’.
I have a small Ashford carder so I was overcome with jealousy when I saw the size of your carder, but then I thought about cleaning it out …………………..
Beautiful colors and shades, will be so fun to work with.
Debbie
Those are beautiful! Was going to pick out and comment on the one I love best, but couldn’t decide!
Thanks ladies, its fun to see what you get. We pulled all the wool apart and then tossed it like a salad before putting it through the carder.
The carder needs very little cleaning. when I am finished I just let it run and I get rolags that curl up under the bar that takes the wool off for it to drop the the big drum at the back. when there is only a fine mesh coming off it isn’t heavy enough or strong enough to drop onto the final drum as a web. I have a small hand powered drum carder too. You can’t put small amounts through the big carder.
Wow, they’re gorgeous, Ann! 🙂
The carder is cool too. I have a bag for saving all my bits of spare wool and ‘other fibres’, but I’ll be using my hand carders 🙂
Wowza! I’m jealous of your carder too. The batts are gorgeous. How big are they? I can’t see the measurement in the photo.
Thanks Zed and Ruth. They are about 21inches wide and 5 1/2 feet long. I was very lucky to get this and the power picker at fire sale price. I couldn’t have afforded it otherwise. What’s everyone’s favourite. Mine is the blue green.
They’re all lovely Ann, difficult to choose a favourite as it depends what you’re working on at the time.
I’m so envious of your carder! Just a small hand turned drum would be wonderful. I was watching one on e-bay recently and would you believe it – the computer went down and I missed putting in a late bid and it went for £10 +£25 P&P!!!!! Was I mad?????? Well I’ll leave you to guess!
I don’t have a carder at all , but I use all of my left over bits, including fabric scraps and thread bits + those from cutting off threads from washing hand dyes. I put them all together and use my embellishing machine to make textile collage and then further wet felt and embellish with hand stitching and bead work!! Don’t be held back by not having a carding machine!!!
Your batts are beautiful and you know if I had a carder I would be following right behind you!!!!
Elizabeth, that sounds like a great use of scraps. Have you seen Ruths tutorial for a scrap felt bowl?
Oh Wow Ann, i’m coming to your place lol
The batts are gorgeous and i love the bluey /green but i love the others to 🙂
Thats a long way to come just to do some carding Karen.
Yes i know but we could have some fun lol
Ohh love the carder! But this one does not card supersmooth right? what about putting other things in it besides fiber? Novelty goodies 🙂 Just curious
Thanks, Karla, not really smooth, more like roving then top. The little hand one I have is smoother. I haven’t runnanyting like that through. I should give it a try but if its gums it up its a big cleaning job.
Ohh big cleaning jobs does not sound good! I am looking to buy one of these “toys”
If you don’t mind could you let me know how much these run around for? spinningmermaid@gmail.com Thanks!
Wow what a carder! Love the bits and bobs batts!
Thanks Marilyn, they are fun bats to make and use.
This is wonderful to see, lovely doing it with a friend too
Thank you Judith, It is lots for fun to paly with fiber with friends.