Browsed by
Author: zedster66

Different Fibre

Different Fibre

Comments 14 comments

I did another little fibre experiment a couple of weeks ago. I hoped to have more photos, but the light hasn’t been great again this week. Anyway, this is what I tried out:

And this is one of the locks:

I used 23mic natural white Merino, and this is the finished sample:

This is a close up of the top left where I fluffed up the fibres:

And this is how the migration looked on the back:

This is one of the felted locks:

Sorry there aren’t more/better photos, but did you guess what the fibre is? It’s my friend’s hair who gave me the extensions! I clippered it for her a couple of weeks ago and decided to see how it felted 🙂

More Hair Extensions

More Hair Extensions

Comments 11 comments

I mentioned in my last post that I’d played around with the hair extension fibre a bit more. This is the finished piece:

I twisted some of it around some wool twists I’d previously made, spun some with some white pencil roving, fluffed some up and made a kind of ‘ball’ out of it, blended some with Merino, and used a couple of pieces which were still partly plaited/braided. The two biggest patches on the bottom of this angled photo are, on the left, the loose ball, and in the centre, the blend with wool:

This is a closer angled pic:

This is one of the partly plaited pieces:

I undid the ends of this one, sorry, not the best photo:

This last pic is a small amount spun with pencil roving on a drop spindle. I just twisted it, then used it so it’s loose:

I’ve been trying out more unusual embellishments, so I’ll show that next time!

Experimenting With Fibres

Experimenting With Fibres

Comments 12 comments

I posted a couple of months ago about using some of my friend’s hair decoration as an embellishment. She recently had some more in really nice colours, and saved them for me when she took them out. They look something like this. I took them with me to the well being centre a couple of weeks ago, and it tured out there was just me there that day. So I kind of spread out a little bit!:

These are the fibres/hair extensions, they start out straight, but end up wavy or crimped depending on how they’re used:

I blended some Merino to match:

I started with matching the fibres to the blends:

I used the same wool blends twice:

But used different coloured fibres on top at the other end (not great photos)

As soon as I started to wet it down it felt like there were far too many fibres on top. They kind of look/feel like trilobal nylon, but not quite as fine.

It took a lot to get it felted, the fibres acted like a barrier between my hands and the wool, I had to rub mostly from the back. I even resorted to rolling the felt in a bamboo mat. This is how it looked when it was dry:

You can see how much of the fibre is loose:

Not quite as much at this end:

I tugged off lots of loose fibre and this is how it looked afterwards:

It looked like I pulled it all off, but it was more obvious looking on an angle:

And I had to get a supermacro close up!

I did have another play around with the hair extensions, I’ll show that piece next time 🙂

Mindless and Ugly

Mindless and Ugly

Comments 10 comments

We made some ‘mindless’ pieces at the Well Being Centre this week. They’re basically pieces without any planning whatsoever, we just grab some wool tops, start the layout, start nattering and just ‘mindlessly’ grab some embellishments and start adding them until we feel like we’ve finished 🙂 The weather hasn’t been great for taking photos, today it was so windy the clouds were covering and uncovering the sun so quickly it seemed like it was flashing! This is the full piece that I made:

I turned it 90 degrees to get an angled shot, it seemed to show off the different fibres better that way, which is good because most of the close ups were blurry:

This is some Nylon staple I dyed, it kind of has a ‘wet’ look when it isn’t fluffed up/teased apart much:

This is some viscose fibre and black viscose top:

I was thinking about Lyn’s first quarter landscape Challenge. I’ve always liked taking photos, especially interesting landscape ones. I was thinking of looking through my photos to find a really nice one, but when I struggled to take photos today, I thought I’d try and take some inspiration photos while I was out. The only problem being, I was going to a retail park. But that made me wonder if an ‘ugly landscape’ could be inspiration too! This was the view when I got off the bus:

I zoomed into the glass/mirrored buildings:

This was the retail park:

The clouds were impressive as I was leaving, dark and moody one way:

And a bit brighter and fluffier the other:

I’m not sure the retail park has inspired me much, but it’s got me thinking outside the box a bit! How are you getting on withthe first quarter challenge?

Vessels Update

Vessels Update

Comments 8 comments

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the coiled vessels we were making at the well-being centre, and last week I posted about the textured felt vessel I’d started. I finished them both on Monday so can give an update. This is one of the sides of the coiled vessel:

You can see from the gap in the pencil roving where the edge of the circular resist was. There’s a similar gap on the other side:

Fulling the pot caused migration/fuzziness. It’s dulled the silk threads quite a bit, so I’ll probably shave it when it’s fully dry.

This isn’t the best photo, but I held the vessel up to a lightbulb:

The Textured felt vessel still isn’t dry. It’s so thick I think it’ll take a few more days yet. Here’s a photo of it with the balloon still in it:

I couldn’t get really good photos of it, it was too bright near the window and the back was in lots of shadow, but here it is without the balloon:

Here’s the bottom:

Here are a couple of photos of the side of it.

Fulling the vessel meant that some of the looser locks felted in more, there was also more fuzziness/migration like on the coiled vessel:

I put this vessel around the lightbulb too, I like how this one looks.

If it looks any different once it’s fully dry, I’ll post an update.

Textured Vessel

Textured Vessel

Comments 11 comments

I’ve mentioned recently that I don’t have the space to do any felting at home at the moment. Well, my last post about Textured Felt reminded me that I don’t need the time/space to do the wet felting part as long as I can do the layout and find the time for stitching. So, a couple of days ago I started to ‘build’ a textured felt vessel. I used all natural wools, animal fibres and embellishments. For the texture scraps between layers, I used some unravelled wool knitting. I don’t know if it’s 100% wool. I found the time to do the layout, stitching and unpicking, but that’s as far as I’ve got so far. I did two ‘regular’ thickness layers on each side and two ‘half layers’, basically 3 layers but split one into 2 for even shrinkage. I didn’t put texture between the two ‘half’ layers. This is the top with a hole cut and the resist taken out:

This is what it looks like when I separate the layers to make it more 3D:

This is how the bottom looks ‘flat’:

And separated/3D:

There is quite a thick ‘edge’, I thought putting the resist on top would show how much, but I’m not sure it’s that obvious:

I used a fine ‘layer’ of raw/unwashed uncombed Huacaya Alpaca beneath the top layer of locks and embellishment fibres. You can see how fluffy it is:

I put lots of locks around the edges:

Here are some Bluefaced Leicester locks:

I still haven’t found time or space to finish off my coiled pot, but since I was taking photos today, I thought I’d get a couple that show the texture. This is the bottom:

And the side:

Hopefully, by my next post, both of these will be finished.

Textured Felt

Textured Felt

Comments 11 comments

I was updating my flickr page and had a look back over some old pieces when I found a photo of some textured felt I made a long time ago:

I think I made this piece in response to a World of Wool post asking for photos of pieces made from just their products. I used loads of different wools and fibres: Natural Merino tops, carded lambswool, English 56s, White Devon tops, washed Wensleydale, Washed BFL, washed Falkland, wool nepps, silk noil, silk hankie, silk carrier rods, natural bamboo tops, washed lambswool, Oatmeal BFL, grey and brown Merino, black jacob, grey Gotland, Grey Masham, Scoured grey/black lambswool. I made it using a felting technique of adding fabric and fibre scraps between layers of wool and sewing up the piece between sheer fabric and felting in a washing machine. One of the first pieces I made was this blue piece:

I used lots of fabrics and fibres on the piece including synthetic organza, silk fabric, silk noil, Bluefaced Leicester and Wensleydale locks, and dyed Icelandic wool and dyed carded lambswool. Here’s an angled close up which really shows the texture:

On this close up you can see the wool migration through some green synthetic organza:

The blue parts on this close up are dyed Icelandic wool, and the white parts are silk noil:

This is one of my favourite textured felt pieces, I had in mind a sunset over the sea:

I made a couple of bags with the technique, this is one of them:

I added a strap:

And this is another bag:

I can’t find any photos of it with a strap. I don’t do much self promotion, but what the heck, I like to eat now and again 😉 I just listed a quick guide on etsy for how to make the textured felt. It’s basically a slightly expanded version of the free tutorial on flickr, but in a handy PDF format. I thought I might make some more pieces using this technique so I’ll let you know how that goes!

I also finally joined Pinterest!

New Vessels

New Vessels

Comments 20 comments

We decided to make ‘coiled pots’ at the Well Being centre yesterday. At first we were going to coil pencil roving waste around a resist, but thinking about how fiddly that would be, we decided to do a coil on each side of a template. We made really rough resists:

This is the Pencil Roving waste we used:

We put some silk threads onto the resist first. This is mine:

This is Cath’s:

Then started our coils. I chose to do mine directly onto the resist:

Cath decided to make a coil first:

This is how my first side looked:

And Cath’s first side:

We added wisps of wool:

Then two layers of wool. I used some broken Merino tops:

Cath used a grey blend, unknown from Botany lap waste:

This is the coil on my 2nd side:

And with the wisps from the other side folded over:

This is mine with the wisps from the 2nd side folded over. We added 2 more layers each side

Here’s an action shot of Cath felting hers:

This is mine after I started to felt it:

This is Caths when she’d cut the opening and turned the bowl the right way out:

This is mine after I cut the opening:

Cath cut into her vessel opening:

I didn’t get chance to finish mine, but this is how I looked on the bottom just before I rinsed it to bring home:

I will show the finished vessel next time.

Year End Review and Giveaway Winner

Year End Review and Giveaway Winner

Comments 16 comments

I’m always surprised when I look back on the year and see I achieved more than I thought, even this year when I know I haven’t had the opportunity to make things as often as previous years. I’ve had quite a lot of changes this year, including an additional 2 people in our household, so I’ve had less space, and less time to make things. And, like I mentioned in a blog post not so long ago, production anxiety has made it difficult to just enjoy making things. Luckily, I have the Well Being centre sessions which help with having a nice space to be productive/creative in and the time set aside nearly every week to do it. I liked Ruth’s idea of splitting the year’s creations into two slide shows, so I’ve borrowed it! Here are some things I made in the first half:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The plan is for a couple of people at our house to move out before too long, and, I don’t want to count my chickens, but I’ve pretty much redesigned the spare room in my head to be my new studio! It’s a great room too, upstairs and facing South-ish, so it gets more ‘daylight’ than any of the other rooms at this time of year. I started working on a nuno workshop during the Summer, but just haven’t been able to get very far without space or light for taking photos and video, so hopefully, I’ll be able to work on that before too long. As well as liking Ruth’s idea for the slideshows, I like the recommitment to a daily dose of fibre too. I’m sure I must spend at least 5 minutes a day doing something to do with fibre, so I’m going to start keeping a log of what I manage. It might make me feel less like I’ve done nothing! Here’s a slideshow of stuff I made or did during the 2nd half of the year:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Thanks a lot to everyone who entered my Giveaway, and thanks a lot for all the really nice comments. If you’d really like to buy a copy of the book, it’s available via my blog: http://feltbyzed.blogspot.com/p/the-right-fibre.html or via the Shop here https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/shop/felt-by-zed/

The winner of The Right Fibre e-book is: Barbara King! I’ll email you via the e-mail address you used to comment, Barbara 🙂

E-Book Giveaway

E-Book Giveaway

Comments 73 comments

I haven’t done a Giveaway for a long time, so I thought the festive/holiday season is a good time to do another one! So this week, I’m doing a giveaway of my e-book, The Right Fibre.

It isn’t a project based book – I don’t tell you how I think you should use fibres, it’s an objective look at them. I profile 20 different embellishment fibres, and show lots of photos of how they look after felting in various ways, so it’s easy to compare them with each other and see similarities and differences.

There is also a section detailing various things which affect the way a fibre will felt and look after felting, so by the end you have the information you need to choose the right fibre and give you more control over the outcome.

For more information, have a look at the full blurb on my blog. To win a free copy of The Right Fibre, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post. If you’d like to spread the word through your blog or facebook etc, it would be very much appreciated but it isn’t a requirement. I will randomly draw the winner 8 days from now on Monday 31st Dec 2018, so please check back to see if you’ve won. Good Luck!

EDIT: SORRY! I completely forgot to link to the blurb on my blog! Thanks Ann 🙂