Guest Writer – Page 10 – Felting and Fiber Studio

Tenth International Shibori Symposium

February 1, 2017 ruthlane Comments 20 comments

This is a guest post by Kim of Flextiles. She recently attended the Tenth International Shibori Symposium and I thought you all might to get a glimpse of what she did and saw there. There will be a second post in February. Thanks Kim!

Last November, I attended the 10th International Shibori Symposium (hereafter referred to as 10iss) in Oaxaca, Mexico. The symposium is organised by the World Shibori Network every few years, and this was the first one I had attended. With six days of workshops, presentations, receptions and exhibitions it was a pretty full-on experience, but great to be in the company of so many other hardcore textile enthusiasts!

In this post I am going to describe some of the 10iss workshops that I and my Ever Supportive Partner (ESP) attended. ESP has no experience at all of working with textiles or shibori but was keen to join in anyway. If the alternative was letting him loose in the local mezcal bars for six days, I thought it best to encourage him. 😉

Shibori is a Japanese resist dyeing technique, like tie dye. As well as binding, you can use stitching, wrapping, and folding and clamping to prevent dye from reaching parts of the cloth to create a pattern.

Shibori workshop with Ana Lisa Hedstrom

I’ve long admired the work of Ana Lisa Hedstrom, and I signed up for her workshop mainly because she was covering katano shibori, but I came away with many more ideas and inspiration.

Katano shibori, named after Motohiko Katano, is a process of stitching through several layers of fabric and not pulling the thread up afterwards. Instead, the lines of stitching channel the dye, producing softer marks that look as if they are airbrushed. There is a more detailed explanation of the technique in Shibori: The Inventive Art of Japanese Shaped Resist Dyeing by Yoshiko Wada, along with some stunning examples. The World Shibori Network sells some sets of Katano postcards. Ana Lisa brought some lovely samples with her.

Here’s the piece of katano I did in the workshop, on silk noil dyed with cochineal and then overdyed with indigo:

All the dyes used in the workshop were natural – the indigo vat was made using limestone and local fruit, so smelled lovely! However, because we had limited time, we were unable to leave the fabric in the dyepots for very long, so some of the colours are paler than we would have wished.

One of the other techniques we explored was machine stitch shibori. As with katano shibori, you stitch through several layers of fabric at the same time before dyeing. Ana Lisa had brought plenty of samples that inspired us, especially where more than one colour was used.

This was one of my attempts on a wool and silk scarf, dyed with cochineal and then indigo.

We also used the sewing machine to stitch pleats in different directions before dyeing – this is the result of mine after unpicking.

Since coming home I have dug out my ancient sewing machine and will be working on developing some of these techniques!

Itajime workshop with Elsa Chartin

Next door to our workshop with Ana Lisa, ESP was experiencing itajime shibori with Elsa Chartin. Itajime or sekka shibori is where the fabric is folded and then clamped between resists, producing geometric designs. I thought this would be a relatively easy introduction to shibori for him, especially as he is not good at stitching or tying knots! ☺

In this workshop they used chemical vat dyes, which, like indigo, require reduction and then exposure to oxygen for the colour to develop. After experimenting with different folding and different shaped resists they moved on to dyeing with more than one colour (moving the resists in between) and also discharging colour from dark fabrics, again using resists. They also overdyed on commercially printed fabric.

ESP enjoyed this very much – the results are quick and can be done on relatively large pieces of fabric. Of course he now considers himself an expert and in an even better position to criticise my work! 😉

Cochineal dyeing with Michel Garcia

The official title of this workshop with Michel Garcia at 10iss was “Cochineal dyeing in four ways”. It was rather an understatement, as we ended up with 19 different colour swatches from cochineal!

Mexico was an appropriate place to do this workshop, given that cochineal is the most popular dye used there. The cochineal beetle, Dactylopius coccus, lives on Opuntia cactus species. The red colour comes from the carminic acid that makes up around 20% of its body. To make the dye, the dried beetles are ground up in a pestle and mortar and then added to the dye bath.

Michel used three different fabrics – wool, silk and cotton – along with different combinations of mordants and astringents to produce 19 different shades from cochineal, ranging from pink and orange to purple and dark brown. It was an extraordinary demonstration of the variations in colour you can get from one dye.

The different colour variations were achieved by varying the mordant (the ones he used included alum, symplocos, aluminium tartrate, aluminium acetate and ferrous acetate) and sources of tannin (such as pomegranate rind, persimmon and gallnut). For some swatches he used an all-in-one bath; others he premordanted before dyeing in a separate cochineal bath.

The final colour also depended on the type of fabric. Here are pictures of swatches of wool and silk dyed with cochineal.

This is a cotton strip mordanted with various combinations of aluminium acetate and ferrous sulphate, dyed with cochineal and pomegranate rind.

And this cotton strip uses the same mordants as above but is dyed with cochineal and gallnut extract.

Finally, Michel demonstrated his artistic side, using different combinations of mordants to paint an image onto cloth that didn’t appear until it was submerged in the dye pot.

Safflower dyeing with Kazuki Yamakazi

Safflower is an interesting dye because it contains both red and yellow dyes so, depending on the fabric and pH, it produces different colours.

There’s a section on safflower dyeing in Jenny Dean’s book Wild Color, which explains the methodology. ESP and I tried this out last year, using a pack of dried safflower we bought in Malaysia, but it wasn’t very successful. So ESP was dispatched to this workshop to find out how it should be done!

First the safflower petals are soaked overnight, squeezed, strained and removed. This dye turns alum-mordanted fabric yellow (better on silk than on cotton).

The petals are washed to remove the yellow and soaked in an alkaline solution for two hours to extract the red dye. After straining and before adding the fabric, citric acid is added to neutralize the dye bath. Distinctive small bubbles form at this stage. If too much acid is added the red dye will start to precipitate out – sometimes this is done deliberately to extract the dye to use in cosmetics.

Silk added to this dye turns orange, while cotton turns red or dark pink.

The difference in colour is because the red dye also contains a second yellow dye, which is absorbed by silk but not cotton. You can see in the photo below that the silk (top row) is more orange than the red cotton below.

To get pink silk, you need to use cotton as a “dye bank” to absorb just the red dye and then extract it. At around pH4 the dye is locked into the cotton. If you then put the cotton into a bath of pH6-7 the dye is released from the cotton. Squeeze out the cotton and remove it from the dye bath before adding more citric acid. Then add the silk – you get bright pink!

Japanese dyers might repeat the entire process six times to get intense colours into the dye bank.

The process doesn’t work well with wool, despite the fact that it is a protein fibre like silk. This is because wool needs to be heated to more than 30C to open the scales, but the pigment begins to break down at 30C, so you just get a pale pink.

A Peek at Terri Simon’s Eco Printing Class with Nicola Brown

January 14, 2017 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 16 comments

Thanks to Terri Simon aka Meterrilee on the forum for sharing her eco printing experience today.

Today, I would like to share my experience with eco-dyeing. Most, if not all, of our blog hosts and many followers have experience with eco-dyeing, but it was a first for me and I loved it! I decided to take an online class with Nicola Brown from Ireland. She is a wonderful teacher—very thorough in describing the process in an online format, including several videos to illustrate further. She was available daily for six weeks to comment, problem solve, and encourage us as we journeyed through that week’s lesson. Like other online classes, there are “chatroom” areas to post pictures and ask questions, and to comment on one another’s creations. The online environment is available for six months and all of the lessons were downloadable in PDF format. Additionally, Nicola created a Facebook page for us to continue communication. Thanks, Nicola, for a great online experience!

As a dyeing newbie, I had to assemble equipment. At a nearby thrift store, I found an aluminum fish cooker with all kinds of inserts for steaming, an iron stake, and a length of copper pipe which I cut into pieces to fit into the fish cooker. We had an outdoor fire source…a propane tank and hook-up for deep frying a turkey. It worked perfectly on my covered back porch (this is Southern Oregon’s rainy season). Here’s my equipment:

All for $20. Not bad!

I ordered a bunch of silk, silk/wool blend, and 100% wool scarves from Dharma Trading, which had a good selection and reasonable prices. I also made pieces of felt to experiment with. For vegetation, I used rose leaves, loose tea, red and brown onion skins, strawberry and blackberry leaves, Japanese cut leaf maple and eucalyptus, donated to me by a friend who has several trees. The rest came from my garden (and kitchen.) There are lots of different “brews” for obtaining the prints. Some involve rust water, others vinegar water and other things thrown into the cooking pot (different metals, plants…). And of course, there are multiple ways to prepare the fabric for dyeing, none of which use harsh chemicals (the harshest chemical used is vinegar). I really like this aspect of eco dyeing…it’s all very natural. I am amazed that the beauty of a leaf can be imprinted substantively on fabric, right down to the intricate veining.

Here are some photos of my experiments.

This turned out sort of dark and muddy. These are Japanese maple leaves. The scarf actually looks good with the right outfit, but the prints are very subtle and not what you want when you are just starting out (at least not what I wanted!).

These are pieces of handmade felt, with eucalyptus (the skinny and bright orange leaves) and strawberry leaves. The purplish looking circles are cut from red onion skins.

Next is a blend of wool and silk. You can really see the details of the onion skins on this fabric.

The scarf below is 100% silk. The print is much softer looking. I like the tie lines produced when wrapping the bundle.

Finally, I made some felt placemats and while they are interesting, I am not a fan of the muddy yellowish background. I found out it was operator error for not keeping the heat up high enough for a long enough time. I had to go out for a bit and turned off the flame under the pot, letting the placemats sit for about an hour until I got home to untie them. My mistake! Had I kept the heat up for the full five hours, I would have produced a much clearer print, such as the example pieces I have included in this picture. But, they are still pretty in a muted way.

I highly recommend Nicola’s classes. She is an excellent teacher, very thorough and organized and she has a delightful wit as well. You can find more information on Nicola and her classes here: http://www.nicolabrown.ie/

Australian Wool Show And A Winner!

August 1, 2016 ruthlane Comments 7 comments

This is a guest post from Sue B. (chookie on the forum) who recently visited the Bendigo – Australian Wool Show. She does apologize for the quality of the photos as they were taking on her phone in crowds with moving models. Thanks for sharing Sue!

Fibre anyone? 3 days at the Bendigo – Australian Wool Show saw me both exhausted,spent out and very satisfied. With seven sheds of crafts and handiwork plus so many fibre and craft sellers/suppliers and demonstrators of everything from sewing machines to felting rollers, it took all of three days to see everything. Not counting the sheep judging of every breed in Australia plus some goats, shearing, sheepdog trials and all the tents with outside sellers selling everything from food ,clothing to tractors and all in between. Another large marquis was given over to education and many higher education facilities had stalls plus some student work in the fields of wool and wool craft or wool fashion. I was so busy looking I often forgot to take pics. LOL

Eco dyed entry in the Wool Craft Section – one full shed contained entries for all types of wool craft and all under glass so it was hard to avoid reflections in the images – my apologies for them.

This entry was knitted and felted and contained all one needs in one bag.to go crafting – ingenious.

Felted Hat – gumnut or wattle style.

Banksia Hat

Felted entries

Woven entries

Felted Banksia man

Wattle Scarf

Felted Entries

On day one I was lucky enough to catch the Wool Fashion Parade with felting,weaving and knitting – and sometimes all on one garment – what fun and so well done. Unfortunately with the compere speaking and me taking pictures I didn’t get the details written down, but here are some catwalk images – sorry about the quality – I was using my phone and above and around spectators when I could get there.The theme for the entire show was based on May Gibbs Books “The Gumnut Babies”. Each catwalk entry was themed to this subject.

May Gibbs Book

This garment was spun and woven by the grower of the wool.

This was the winner of the Gumnut theme section and is spun and knitted completely by hand, amazing work, sorry no better images.

Felted vest

Felted donut vest

This entry was based on the Banksia Men from the story.(they were the bad guys).Felted, leather & metal.

Spun and woven garment with fleece felted trim.

Back view

Spun wool and woven garment

The Big Bad Banksia Man – All felted garment & boots.

Thanks for the post Sue!

And to announce the winner of the drawing for a place in Teri Berry’s online class Felted Concertina Hats… Drum roll please…

The winner is: Barbara Ferrante

Congratulations Barbara, Teri will be contacting you shortly!

For those of you who didn’t win and would like to sign up for the class there are a few spots left, first come, first served. Registration for the class ends on August 9th and the class begins on August 11th. See the class page for further information.

Reuse of Scraps with Roots in History.

June 24, 2016 Shepherdessann Comments 12 comments

My Friend Jan Scott took a great class at our guild a few weeks ago. It fit with our second quarter challenge ( http://wp.me/p1WEqk-3Mi ) so well I asked her to do a blog post about it. It was a two day workshop This is the post about day one. Day two will be my next post.

Tom Knisely workshop on Sakiori and Zanshi: Weaving Japanese Rural Cloth

Ottawa Valley Weavers and Spinners Guild June 2016 Our Guild was very fortunate to arrange a workshop with Tom Knisely’s and guild meeting presentation in conjunction with a talk he gave at the Almonte Textile Museum.

Tom is an internationally known Spinning and weaving instructor. Starting his career with the Mannings School at the age of 14 and eventually becoming education director and working for them for over 30 years. He has written books on rag rugs, baby blankets and created weaving videos for interweave press. He was voted teacher of the year by handwoven magazine in 2011. It’s easy to see why, he was always positive, supportive and unflappable.

He has an interest in recycled weaving in all its variations. Normally you think of rag rugs or cattalong, there are even shaker rug vertion similar to the Acadian twisted weft technique.

When Tom finally saw a rural northern Japanese obi woven with very fine strips of cloth he got very excited. As he researched he discovered a second group of textiles that were recycled but not made of strips of cloth but from threads ether the ends of warps or threads picked from scraps of cloth.

Notice the pile of samples, each one came with a story!!

There are two techniques, day one we worked with Sakiori. “Saki,” which means to tear or rip up, stripping it into pieces, and “ori,” which means weave. So it is reweaving thin strips of originally old silk or cotton. The second technique was Zanshi weaving / (sandhi orimono) is a Japanese for “vestige,” or “leftover”. Zanshi textiles were woven from the extra threads which remained after weaving. (Loom waste). The area these techniques come from are rather poor, tend to grow bass fibers and are rather cold in the winter. The source of the rags are Rag merchants traveled up the cost buying rags in the south (silk and cotton) and selling them in the north. Sometimes the rags were used like a patchwork to create a new fabric but others were stripped and rewoven or picked apart for the threads which were tied together with tiny knots then used usually as weft. This labour intensive practice makes much more sense when you remember Silk and cotton are much warmer and softer than linin or hemp.

The workshop was to introduce us to the two techniques and we would create a scarf from our samples. As you will likely have noticed from the fish episode of making cat caves, I don’t usually wind up with something that looks like the rest of the class. So let’s see what happened.

Day One; Sakiori .

Tom demonstrated and discussed preparing the strips for weaving. Originally torn in thin strips, he used circular cutters and a cutting mat. Then we got to give it a try. He also demonstrated how to lash on to the front beam of a loom and to hemstitch without difficulty. One of the students had brought a very large quilters cutting guide which worked well for a lot of our fabrics.

We had pre-class instructions to seek out silk or polyester colourful scarves or men’s ties at Value villages and Salvation Army thrift stores. I brought a couple of my old silk saris and decided on one of them and a couple of the scarves I had found. Since Tom had found that 2 large lady’s silk scarves made one new scarf I cut up a lot of the sari and all the scarves. I over estimated as usual and have enough to left over to get a serious start on another project!

Sakiori was originally woven as a 2 harness weave structure. So we had a ridged heddle loom (with 2 heddles to get the warp spacing and my little 2 harness table loom in the class. In the second class there was a 2 harness saori loom.

Often when you weave with rags you are making rugs. So you expect stiff cloth with little drape or flexibility. Because the strips are very thin and you have a second weft thread (most of us used Tensell-looks like silk but not as expensive) in between the cloth strips you get a very drapy silk cloth. You can sample with I 2 or 3 shots of tensell between the silk and see what you think. Or you can try it without any and just use the strips! I was enjoying my first sample so much I just kept going and did my whole warp in sari and scarf. I had enough to make a little sleeveless jacket! See it’s not really a scarf.

I think this might be interesting with strips of nuno felt or very thin strips of wool felt. I would love to see what you can remake with scarps and left over ends of felt!!

To inspire us further he showed a 4 harness vertion and the scarf it had been made from. There is a definite change in the colours from the original scarf to the newly woven one!

The blue and gold one is threaded similarly to an inkle pattern. Notice the really cool macramé fringe. See its coming back!!! Better dust off your books from the 70’s!!

Although Sakiori is not a difficult technique to grasp it was absolutely enjoyable to spend time listening to the stories and gentle suggestions from Tom. He is extremely knowledgeable and vary gracious. If you ever get the opportunity as one of my classmates said she “would take a workshop on how to boil water” with him!

Ok Now for what my scarf looked like. (Considering what my cat cave looked like this is a bit closer)

The inside

AND it sort of fits my husband. He didn’t think it went with his Canada post shirt.

Thank you Jan! It almost makes me want to weave. Maybe If I could get the loom already warped LOL.

Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival

June 14, 2016 ruthlane Comments 9 comments

This is a guest post by Elizabeth Sutherland one of our forum members who had the good fortune to visit the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival this year. Thanks for the post Elizabeth!

I had a free ticket Southwest Airline ticket to spend and a sister living close to the Howard County Fairgrounds, so I took the plunge and signed up for the Intro to Natural Dyes and Indigo Dyes classes by Jackie Ottino Graf.

Jackie is from Maine and was formerly the head dyer at Swans Island, a company that use locally spun wool and natural dyes to produce yarns and fabric. Jackie was with Swans Island when they were dyeing in small lots on the back porch to when they moved into a large industrial-sized building and began dying in much larger lots.

I really have done very little natural dying, so it was all new to me. We began with a lesson on the importance of keeping a log of our experiments. The log should include the type of fiber and weight (Weight of Goods – WOG), type of mordant, the dye, the dye’s material type and amount, and notes about the process.

Date:
Fiber to dye: Description of the fiber being dyed
WOG: weight in grams
Fiber Preparation: any notes on how the fiber was prepared before mordanting
Mordant: List the amount of mordant, temperatures, and duration
Dye notes: The percentage and type of dye used

Jackie showed us the differences in types of dye materials. She favors the powdered extracts for ease of use and consistent performance. She showed us the shopped madder root vs powdered, and the cochineal bugs vs ground bugs vs extract.

The dyes we used were:

Cochineal
Madder
Osage Orange sawdust (aka Bois D’arc)
Onion skins
Saxon Blue Indigo
Logwood
Cutch
Walnut Hull Powder

One thing that was an ‘ah-ha’ moment for me was when Jackie said that mordant provided a ‘primer’ between the fabric and the dye that allowed the dye to adhere to the fibers. Alum tends to make fibers sticky, so a pinch of Cream of Tartar helps counteract that.

I took many notes as Jackie was always mentioning things that I had never heard. She talked about when Swans Island build the large dyeing building and change the water supply. They never could get the new water to match the old and just had to change their recipes and dyes. One time she was teaching where the water had a lot of iron in it. The results were very unexpected. Iron ‘saddens’ colors (I like that phrase).

We proceeded with the dying – all fibers were pre-mordanted. The class was in an unheated metal barn, so it was pretty cold. We dyed in an outside area with an overhang. This was the setup we used. Jackie is in the olive sweater on the right.

We started with the cutch and walnut dyes. This is the walnut.

Then we proceeded to the madder (left) and cochineal (right). Cream of tartar added to cochineal takes the pH down for a brighter color. On the other hand, a higher pH for madder gives red and lower pH results in more orange. pH can be lowered with vinegar, citric acid, cream of tartar and raise with chalk, Tums.

We did a quick walkabout to find local materials to use for a mystery dye. We chose some wold raspberry leaves. We threw them into a pot with 2 skeins of wool at about a 1:1 ratio by weight. We were to end up with a ‘rainbow’ of mini-skeins dyed with natural materials, as so. By the way, the rings Jackie’s brilliant find and are usually used in lobster pots.

The Saxon Blue Indigo was to give a blue, and the Logwood was for Purple. The logwood looked very promising when the wool was initially put into the vat, but turned into an indigo blue at the end.

The Osage orange was interesting to me since it’s a native tree in Texas. It gave a nice yellow. The onions gave browner yellows. The raspberries did nothing , so we ended up overdying the skein with several colors to get a green. The colors were a little more subdued than if we had been able to leave them to soak overnight.

Here is the final ‘money shot’, with Jackie.

From Left to right:

Walnut hull powder with iron
Walnut hull powder
Cutch with iron
Cutch
Logwood
Saxon Blue Indigo on Gray wool
Saxon Blue Indigo
Osage orange sawdust with iron and then put in the logwood exhaust
Osage orange sawdust on gray wool
Raspberry with Dyer’s Chamomile powder (and I think indigo exhaust)
Osage orange sawdust
Onion Skins
Madder
Cochineal exhaust
Cochineal

The following day was a class that used madder only. They changed the pH to get a huge range of colors. When I saw the colors I almost wished I had taken it, but I’m still glad that I spent the day with my sister instead. Here is a photo of the skeins they dyed.

The second class I took was the indigo class. I was a bit hesitant to take an Indigo class as I had heard that the ‘vat’ took a long time to get going properly. Jackie dispelled that notion since she uses indigo powder that has already been fermented and stabilized (or whatever is needed). Also, since the leaves must be processed within minutes of picking (and the nearest indigo plants were hundreds of miles away), creating a true Indigo dye vat is not practical.

Two easy things about Indigo is that it does not require a mordant, and the measurement of the WOG to dye is not particularly important since you can just keep using a pot of dye until it’s gone. Two more difficult things about indigo are that it is temperature sensitive – you must keep it between 125 and 145 F. The pH needs to be 9-10. The harder thing is that you need to keep the oxygen out of the vat – no splashing around.

It’s not just a dump and shake, as there are chemical reactions occurring that you want to take care with. The indigo powder was mixed with a tad of water to get it wet (it doesn’t like being wet so you have to coax it). Then slowly add more water to about ¾ full. Carefully add the lye and stir. You should feel some heat coming off the jar. Add some more water to almost full, then ½ of the Thiox. The Thiox removes the oxygen, so you want to be able to adjust this as needed. Let the mixture sit and mingle for a while. It should turn a green after 20-30 minutes. If it’s still blue, then add a bit more Thiox. This stock should last indefinitely if stored away from sun and in moderate temperatures.

We pre-soaked our yarns and fibers while the water was heating up. When it was at least 125 F we added some of the stock and let it sit for another 20 mins to mingle and meld. After that Jackie showed us how to ‘read the vat’. The first two – temp and pH are simple since you can use a thermometer and litmus paper to test. The third, the Oxygen content, is more subjective as you have to look for the green color. Here’s Jackie showing us the green color.

When all looked well, we skimmed the ‘bloom’ off the top, since it would cause discolorations in the dye. You can see the scummy bloom here.

After this, the dying! Remembering that oxygen affects the colors, we slowly dipped our fibers and fabrics into the vat. We left them in for 2-3 minutes, then took them out to oxidize. That was interesting and fun – watching the colors change from green to deep blue. We just kept dipping and oxidizing until we got the color we wanted, and the class was finished. Voila!

The next day was Saturday and was the start of the MSW Fair. I went with my very patient sister. Her oldest son, his girlfriend, and their 9 month daughter, were soon to depart Maryland for a new job in Washington State, and she was hosting a farewell party, so our time was limited. I had thought about trying to get a fleece, but at one of the classes someone said that the fleece barn was usually packed with people. Since I had not a clue of what was a good or bad fleece, I decided to skip that and head directly to the prepared fiber sellers. When we arrived, the fleece barn had a long line.

Luckily the weather held up for us. The previous days were very rainy and cold for May. You can see the clouds in this view back to the parking area.

I hit the main shed first, so I could do some power-shopping. There were sellers of all types there – from raw fleece to finished apparel. There were a lot of sheep-themed nick-knacks along with the fibers and tools. I didn’t see a slant toward knitters, spinners, weavers, or felters, but I was pretty focused on getting the roving. After I had purchased all I could justify, and more than I thought I could take home on the plane, we toured the sheep sheds. I was wishing I had a small pair of snips so I could ‘sample’ the locks.

Many of the exhibitors had nice little displays about their breeds.

I was quite taken with the Jacob sheep and those horns.

Being a city girl, I had never seen a sheep shorn like this.

I thought that I was going to have to have my sister ship my purchases home to me, but I was able to fit everything into my suitcase and the bag I threw into my suitcase at the last minute. The fibers were packaged in plastic bags, so I just sat on them to remove the air and shoved them into the bag. I joked with my sister, telling her to watch the news that evening to see if an airplane crashed due to a sudden explosion of sheep fluff. Luckily, that didn’t happen. I had a great time at MSW, and visiting with my sister and her family. I hope I can go again next year, but stay longer to shop more!

Thanks Elizabeth, looks like next time you need to bring an empty suitcase with you!

Experimenting With Felting

May 25, 2016 zedster66 Comments 30 comments

Today we have a Guest Post by Lyn from rosiepink.

Experimenting with felting is the best way to learn, and you learn just as much from things going wrong as you do from things going right.
After making ‘The Fingerpost‘ picture, shown below, I was full of enthusiasm for the ‘chopped up bits of felt look’ and I wondered if I could make a small decorative pod with it.

So I spent ages getting sore fingers chopping up pieces of scrap fulled felt …

… then I arranged some of it onto one side of my circular resist. I had to use tweezers as the felt bits either stuck to my fingers or flew off to the other side of the table when I tried to place them – it was a painstakingly slow job and my eyes went a bit wobbly with the concentration.

I then applied two layers of white merino wool before flipping it over to start painstakingly applying little bits to the other side.
This is when the alarm bells started to ring…

…I realised at this point that I was going to have a white band running around the middle of my pod … unless I could perhaps pull the white fringe of merino wool from the other side v-e-r-y- snugly around to squish the layers together?
So I carried on to eventually complete the second side.

Aww – I thought it looked pretty – a bit like a plate of ‘dolly mixtures‘.

I had real nagging doubts about the success of the project but I knew that I would learn something from it so I carried on. As I started to wrap the white merino ‘fringe’ over one part of the edge, some bits fell off from another part. It was a struggle and it ended up looking like a bag of potatoes.

After I’d applied all the layers of wool, I had an embryo pod that was the thickness of a car tyre. There was no way I could roll it in a bamboo mat, so I listened to the radio while I rubbed… and rubbed… and rubbed until I thought it would be ok to remove the resist.

I cut a hole to remove the resist then turned the pod inside out to full it. As I did so, several colourful bits of felt flew off the pod – it looked like a boxer spitting out teeth – and lots more pieces were loose. It was unworkable.

I could see what I’d done wrong.

I should have fulled the pod a bit after removing the resist before attempting to turn it inside out. It might have been better too, considering the amount of shrinkage of a pod, if I hadn’t put the coloured bits on the resist so densely.

It’s frustrating when things go wrong but valuable lessons can be learned from the experience. I don’t give up on a piece easily, and I usually keep the felt to re-use, but this pod was definitely a lost cause and as there was nothing I considered salvageable for re-use, I consigned it to the felting box in the sky.

Workshop with Vilte Kazlauskaite in Slovenia

April 9, 2016 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 13 comments

Our guest artist/author today is Nada Vukadinovic also know as Halay on the Felting and Fiber Forum. She has generously offered to share her workshop experience learning a Fiber Inlay Technique.

A few weeks ago I attended a workshop in Maribor, Slovenia, given by internationally renowned textile artist and felter, Vilte Kazlauskaite from Lithuania. Her work is fabulous. You can see her creations here: http://vilte.tumblr.com/

She held three workshops, but I was able to attend only one. It was called Fiber Inlay Technique. Quite intriguing, I had no clue what this could mean and I was very excited to learn about it. I attended only one afternoon workshop. On the previous day attendants learned something about fabric manipulation in nuno felt, and the last day was devoted to the creation of a vest.

We were working with two types of silk: ponge and chiffon and were expected to create a piece of work, either a shawl or something similar, a flat piece anyway. I decided to make a square piece which I will probably use for a cushion.

First we were asked to draw a pattern on a piece of paper in the form of a mosaic that we would like to appear on the finished work, e.g. a bird, or something abstract.

I decided to draw something simple.

We used different sorts of fiber (mulberry silk, viscose, bamboo, and flax.)

When we were finished laying out fabric and fibers we began rolling and rolling. When we noticed that the wool has penetrated through all the layers of silk, we started kneading the piece and then rolled the project without the rod. The shrinkage percent was from 40-50%.

This is what we got in the end:

Unfortunately, we were working only with white silk and some blue and white fibers, but I imagine it would be interesting to play with different colours, especially different colour fibers. The fiber I personally used for the first time was flax and fell in love with it. I am already planning to buy some and dye it.

To put fiber inlay technique in a nutshell, it means lots of silk and different fibers. Here are some more photos showing Vilte’s work: beautiful textures.

And here is some yummy hand dyed silk.

Vilte uses natural dyes only.

It was nice to learn something new. Here in Slovenia we don’t have many opportunities for learning new felting techniques, but the situation seems to be improving. We are planning to invite another master from Ukraine and are getting quite excited about it.

Thank you Nada for sharing this exciting technique with us!

Three Tall Trees

April 7, 2016 zedster66 Comments 18 comments

Today we have a guest post by Karen from Lincs In Stitches.

Three Tall Trees

About eighteen months ago I discovered LINQS, a group of 5 ladies who had thrown down a challenge to anyone residing in Lincolnshire to create art quilts influenced, in any way at all, by the work of the great British artist David Hockney. Joining this group proved to be a great move for me as I’ve made so many good friends, all with a common interest, and learnt such a lot from being in their company.

Researching Hockney’s work was an eye opener. Before visiting the Hockney Gallery at Salts Mill the only paintings of his that I was familiar with were the “poolside” ones. At the Hockney gallery in Saltaire, Lancashire I found myself drawn to his landscape paintings, in particular his depiction of trees. Some of his work I really liked while other pieces I strongly disliked but the time spent researching his work led me to developing a fascination of my own for trees and woodlands, particularly tree skeletons stripped bare of their leaves in Winter. Influenced by what I had seen I began photographing trees wherever I went and my Three Tall Trees 30” x 40” quilt is based on a photograph I took while out walking in the woods at Woodhall Spa.

Once I had worked out my design on paper I set to preparing my fabric for colouring with Procian dye by soaking it in a solution of soda. Unfortunately I think I must have used too much soda. Although I covered it before ironing I still managed to burn the entire area of fabric above the tree tops! My nice crisp, white sky was ruined and my heart sank at the thought of having to start all over again! I set the fabric to one side, put the kettle on and broke out the cake……feeling happier now I decided, rather than start again, to cut out the woodland, back it with Vilene and make a huge piece of appliqué. Not only did I save myself time and fabric but this also turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it was so much easier to handle under the machine than the whole cloth would have been!

Layers of organza and netting were used to create shading and depth for the forest and then the background trees were stitched by machine using various coloured threads. I made a test piece first using free machine embroidery but it wasn’t giving the sharp edged look I wanted so I swapped to using the walking foot instead.

The textured woodland floor was created with painted muslin, organza and hand stitching. Vilene has become one of my favourite materials to work with as it won’t fray and can be cut, painted and sewn so easily, I found it was ideal for making the foreground trees which I painted using Inktense blocks and then added some detail with Inktense crayons, blending the colour with water. Once the the finer tree branches had all been hand sewn the three tall trees were tacked in position.

The final stage was to add a backing and then machine sew through all the layers to quilt the three trees in place. I figured I didn’t have to do too much more quilting with the backing on as I had done plenty of sewing through the various layers as the piece had progressed. As far as I was concerned it was already “quilted” but I made sure that it had enough quilting across the work to hold the back in place. It’s now finished and will be going on tour nationally, with the rest of the LINQS “Inspired by Hockney” quilts, starting with the Springfields Quilt Show in Spalding on June 3rd

Many thanks to Karen for writing this post for us.

Another Take on Using a Book Resist by Frances T.

February 7, 2016 ruthlane Comments 17 comments

This is a guest post by forum member Frances T. whose blog is here. Frances has a wonderful way of combining her passions of flower gardening and felting. She used a book resist for the first time in response to the First Quarter Challenge to make a rose pod and because she cuts the resist open differently, she gets a totally different result. There is a link to a PDF at the end if you would like to download the tutorial in PDF format.

1. Cut two (2) circles of the same size out of a pliable plastic. For this demonstration a 10 1/2-inch dinner plate was used as a guide.

2. Place the circles one on top of the other and sew a seam down the middle. This makes the book.

3. On side 1 place roving overlapping the right edge slightly and very thinly.

4. On side 2, place roving overlapping the left edge slightly and very thinly.

5. Cover the roving on side 1 with mesh to hold it in place and wet with warm soapy water and rub gently.

6. Repeat step 5 on side 2.

7. Place roving on side 3 overlapping slightly and very thinly on the edges.

8. Cover the roving on side 3 with mesh to hold it in place and wet with warm soapy water and rub gently.

9. Turn the piece over – side 4 – and gently pull the roving that was left overhanging onto the resist which will cover the edges of the circle. Then place roving on side 4.

10. Cover the roving on side 4 with mesh to hold it in place and wet with warm soapy water and rub gently.

11. Turn back over to side 3 and pull any stray roving around the edges up over side 3; smoothing towards the center to avoid thicker roving at the edges that will create a “seam” line.

12. Cover with bubble wrap and rub vigorously with a felting tool. Flip and rub the other side and continue flipping and rubbing until felt is holding together well.

13. Place felt on a bamboo mat and roll. Unroll and place felt in the opposite direction and roll. Roll 10 to 15 times in one direction and then change to keep the round shape. Felt shrinks in the direction it is rolled. Do this about 10 to 20 times.

14. Cut a small slit off the edge and remove the resist.

16. The rose bud can now be shaped and hardened the way any other vessel is completed. One method is using a balloon.

Using a Balloon to Shape and Finish a Vessel

1. Place a balloon in your vessel and then inflate it until the vessel fits slightly loose around (about ¼ inch space between the balloon and vessel). Place the vessel with balloon inside of it into a mesh bag and run under hot water and then put in the dryer on heat setting for about 15 minutes or until the vessel has shrunk to the size of the balloon. Use plastic inserted between layers to hold petals

2. Remove from dryer deflate the balloon. Repeat step one until the desired shape and firmness are achieved.

3. Finish by air drying.

A white one was made first and the difference in how the two came out when shaping is obvious. It is difficult to make exact duplicate vessels.

Thanks Frances for showing us your take on using a book resist. Not all of Frances photos are shown in the tutorial above so click on the link of the PDF to see extra photos with the explanation.

Book resist tutorial by Frances

Book Resist Tutorial by Teri Berry

January 22, 2016 ruthlane Comments 53 comments

This is a guest post by Teri Berry, a forum member, who is a wonder at making three-dimensional felt items including some fantastic hats. Please follow this link for more free tutorials and links to Teri’s fabulous instant download tutorials.

After my post about the First Quarter Challenge, we had a discussion on the forum about “book resists” and Teri offered to write a tutorial on how to use a “book” resist to make a more complex shaped felt item. Thanks Teri!

Following on from the Q1 Challenge, there was some discussion on the forum about what a “book resist” is, I’m sure these resists go by a variety of names but I think”book resist” is a pretty apt description as the “pages” of the resist do look a lot like a strangely shaped book. This post is a description of how I like to work with this style of resist but if you have any tips or alternative ways of working please leave a comment below, I’d love to hear from you.

Getting Started

You will need some flexible plastic sheeting, stiff enough that it will stand up on its own if you hold it by the edge but flexible enough that it will fold in half without breaking.

I like the plastic that carpets come wrapped in but this isn’t very easy to come by, an alternative are the plasticised (wipe clean) table cloths. As much as I love foam underlay for resists, I find it a little bit thick for this technique, especially if you want to use more than 2 layers, but it will do if you have nothing else.

Take a sheet of plastic and draw a line down the middle (this is where you will join your layers) then let your imagination go wild and draw out the template on one side of your line. I have added some photos of the resists and corresponding felt structures at the end of the post if you need some ideas to get you started.

Tip – make sure any pointy tips are rounded, if you don’t, they will poke through the felt and create a hole.

Tip – try to avoid putting wide sections on the end of narrow stalks, it’s not impossible, but it will make it harder to get your resist out.

Tip – remember the felt around the middle of your resist will open out to form a space. This can be needle-felted together at the firm prefelt stage if desired.

If you want a radial sculpture where all the arms are the same, fold your plastic in half along the straight line and trace your design onto the other side.

Stack additional sheets of plastic under your design, if you want your sculpture to have 7 or 8 arms you will need 4 sheets of plastic, if you want 9 or 10 arms you will need 5 sheets. Pin them altogether then sew along the line down the middle. You can use a sewing machine if you wish, but set your straight stitch to long so as not to perforate the plastic too much, as this could make it easy to tear when you come to remove the resist.

Tip – if you find it hard to push the needle through the plastic, gripping the needle with a pair of pliers might help.

Tip – if you want an odd number of arms in your sculpture keep two of the felt leaves together while you felt over them. Similarly, if you think you would like to use the same resist shape for making several sculptures but with different numbers of arms, use enough sheets for the largest sculpture and then reuse the same resist but encase 2 or more pages of the resist in wool to reduce the number of arms in your final sculpture.

Cut around your design, through all the layers of plastic.

Getting Wet and Woolly!

Start laying out your wool, at least 2 fine layers will be needed, more if you want don’t want your structure to shrink very much or if you want it to be sturdy / functional. I typically use 2 layers for lampshades and 4 layers for more structural sculptures. I like Blue Faced Leicester wool for this type of work but wrote a post on how several different wool behaves for small sculptural pieces here if you are interested.

Once you have laid out at least 2 layers (in opposite directions) wet it out.

Then lay a piece of painters plastic (or a strip of plastic bin liner) over at least half the wool then flip over one of your pages.

Fold the wool over the edges as you would when working with any resist being careful to smooth out any folds of wool where you are working on the outside of a curve.

If you need to cut the wool to fold it around an indentation in the resist, avoid cutting the last 1 cm/0.5″, to avoid creating a hole in your wool.

Then continue laying out your wool over the next 2 “pages” open in front of you (one page will be partially covered by the wool folded over from the previous page). Cover with some decorator’s plastic but before you flip to the next page, go back a page and fold the wool ends over so it is all nice and neat.

Continue laying out wool and flipping pages as you work your way around the resist.

Note: where you have folded the wool over from the previous page of the resist, if the wool is already quite thick, there is no need to add more on the reverse of the page, this usually happens where you have a narrow projection, as on the top of this resist.

Tip – if you are finding your resist is becoming a little lop-sided with a big pile of wool covered pages on one side, flip the first 2 or 3 pages (on the bottom of the pile) over to the other side from underneath. That should even it up and make it easier to lay wool on the remaining pages.

Tip: laying a few strands of wool across the top and bottom joints (where the pages are stitched together) will help prevent holes like this one from opening up when the resist is removed:

You are now ready to start felting…

Use a piece of painters plastic to gently rub the surface of each page in small circles, paying particular attention to the edges of the resist. I find going over the entire surface of each page 50 times is enough. The plastic should glide easily over the surface, if it doesn’t add some more soapy water.

Tip – If you are working with lots of pages you might find it helpful to remove the painter’s plastic as you complete each page so you know when you have reached where you started.

Tip – don’t forget to felt the pages at the back, the ones lying face down on the table.

Tip – work your circular motions from the edge of the resist towards the centre, this will help prevent wings / ridges of felt forming on the edge of the template (unless of course that is what you are trying to do!).

Do the “pinch test”, your fibres should be holding together well by now but if not, go through another cycle of rubbing (it may help to add some hot water too).

Removing the Resist

Now we have to decide where to make a hole to remove the resist. For most templates, a hole near the line of stitching makes it easiest to remove the template but anything is possible! I make my hole just big enough for 2 fingers, the hole will stretch some more as you pull the resist out so don’t make it too big.

Depending on the shape of your template, ones with long, spidery arms are the most fiddly, you may need to gently gather and work the felt over the resist in order to get it out without stretching or tearing the felt.

Once the resist has been removed hold the felt up to a light and look inside, through the hole where the resist came out, for any thin spots. Any holes should be repaired now , before fulling begins. Now you are ready to knead and throw it, stopping every 30 seconds to check the arms aren’t felting together. This is also the time to start rubbing it in any directions where you want it to shrink and to start shaping it.

Once you are happy with the shape, folds etc. it can be stuffed while it dries.

Variations:

Try adding wings by laying wool off the edge of the resist.

What would happen if you stitch different shaped resists together or stitched them at different positions (not just down the middle)?

How can you fold / shape / manipulate felt pods made from the same resist so that the final sculptures look very different?

Some example resists and their results: