My wonderful local arts centre (The Horsebridge Community Arts Centre in Whitstable) has an art bank.  People donate all sorts of lovely (and sometimes slightly odd) materials. Anyone can visit the art bank room, select things they’d like, then pay what they can.

I often have joint exhibitions in the arts centre’s galleries and do some volunteering for them too (mostly bar work). They work very hard to raise funds to keep the centre going and supporting the community. I live nearby so frequently pop into the art bank to see what’s there, and I sometimes walk away with a little challenge for myself. I’m going to talk today about felt testing two materials that are new to me: silk carrier rods and fine metal mesh.

A few months ago, I was unable to resist some beautifully dyed silk carrier rods. I enjoyed separating and sorting them; they reminded me of fish.

They got bagged up and filed in the ‘to do sometime’ section of my brain.

A couple of weeks ago, their time had come. If you’re not familiar with silk carrier rods, they’re a waste product of silk production. When silk is removed from silk cocoons, it is reeled onto a machine. Some of the silk thread and gum gets caught on the winding rods and has to be cut away. They resultant silk carrier ‘rods’ are quite thick and stiff with sericin gum.  You can peel each one into layers.  You can also stretch them length-ways to thin them out, but they don’t have any appreciable movement across the width of the rod. I suppose it’s because that’s the direction the individual silk threads lie and silk thread is strong.

I checked the internet for felting with silk carrier rods and although there were some images, it wasn’t clear to me how thin the rods that had successfully been felted were. I’d peeled mine as much as I was able but I didn’t want to stretch them out too far along the length as I wanted to keep as much of the shine and colour of the silk as possible.

I’d like to felt a school of fish shooting up through the ocean so decided I’d better make a small test picture to see how the carrier rods felted.

I selected a lovely red / yellow / green rod layer and trimmed it slightly to create a fish shape.

 Here it is with a non-trimmed layer for comparison

 I laid out 2 layers of merino to look sort of ‘watery’, placed the trimmed shape more or less in the middle and popped on a small eye using tiny bits of wet & rolled dark grey and white wool.

The felting went pretty well, though I started to worry that they eye wouldn’t attach so gave it a few stabs with a felting needle before I started the fulling.

Here it is after felting, still wet, with the other piece of silk for comparison.

 

You can see it has shrunk a lot along the length but only a small amount across the width, which is what I’d expected

And here it is dry.

So, what did I learn from my sample?

I’d soaked the silk briefly in water before I used it to see if it was dye-fast.  It was.  I also thought the water might soften it a bit, though I don’t actually know if this made any difference as I didn’t try felting with an un-soaked piece (good job I’m not a scientist).

I deliberately only pulled it out a little lengthways so I was running the risk of it not felting in well.  I also didn’t trap the silk with fine wool fibres: the idea was to try it and adapt if necessary for a future picture. The fish is fairly secure – I couldn’t easily pull it off – but I’d say it’s not fully integrated in the felt. There’s some movement if you rub it, especially in the central body section.  It feels like it’s partially sitting on the surface. The tail is the most integrated part; I probably pulled that bit out the furthest.

It’s probably OK for a picture but I wouldn’t want to subject it to a lot of wear and tear. Ideally it should be felted in more firmly.

Things to consider for a future picture.

• Soak for longer
• Stretch out more
• Add some fine strands of wool to trap it across the fish
• Scuff up the under-side slightly
• Put some light clouds of wool in similar colours to fish behind it (poss in addition to scuffing up the back)
• Trap it with wool strands round the edges

I may not do all of these but would probably do some and almost certainly stretch it out more.

I’m also not keen on the eye: it’s a bit cartoonish & feels like it should be slightly higher up on its head. Maybe next time I will bead the eye on at the end, or use grey wool instead of white. I’m not sure if I will ever make the school of fish, but I’m satisfied that the sample did its job.

My second test piece is a very small one.  I recently saw in the art bank some tubes of fine metal mesh and, as I often do, wondered if I could felt them.

 

The mesh is in different coloured tubular strips: I think they are intended for jewellery making.  You could put some beads inside the mesh tubes and place other, perhaps smaller, beads between them, on the outside of the mesh.

I like the idea of having the mesh on the outside of some felt, perhaps to make a seed head. You can see the mesh can be stretched out.

Again, a sample seemed like a good idea. I made it quite small, just to see if and how it felted. I didn’t want to waste too much.

I cut a small square each of merino prefelt and metal mesh, approximately 6 x 6 cm (or 2.36 inches)

 

Although it doesn’t look like it in this photo, the mesh is light blue.

And here it is when felted & dry.

Conclusions? It felted very securely: the metal mesh is well embedded into the felt. I managed to get 1/3 shrinkage. I tried for a while but it just wouldn’t shrink more. Perhaps I need a larger sample to test this.  The mesh didn’t give the felt as much additional structure as I’d expected.  It does fold into a slight crease and it bends a little to hold a curve.  Again, I think I’d need a bigger sample to test these properly. On the other hand, it looks pretty and is quite sparkly.  Perhaps even a bit like fish scales?

For now I’m parking this experiment too.  One day I’ll think of a really good use for it.

I do wander around thinking about what would happen if I tried to felt different materials. It’s always pleasing to have a go and make a little sample. It doesn’t always behave as I expect – which is exactly the point of a sample – but the results get stored away in my imagination for the next time I need exactly that effect.

Let me know in the comments if you’ve tried felting with a new or unusual material and what happened.