Browsed by
Category: natural wools

Wool Supplies and Samples

Wool Supplies and Samples

Comments 24 comments

While I was laying out my white texture felt piece the other week, I had all my bags of white and light grey wools spread out on my floor, along with my stash of raw wool locks, so I thought I may aswell go ahead and do an inventory of my white wools, to see if I’m running low on any and need to order more. I usually keep a small stash of each wool breed (or colour) out in my felting boxes and put the rest away in my supplies bags and boxes, it makes it easier to have a large selection of breeds or colours to choose from without taking up as much room. These are the white wool tops, scoured and carded wools I most commonly use.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAMy favourite raw wool locks are Gotland, Teeswater and Wensleydale. There’s also some raw mohair locks here.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAfter scribbling down the names of all the different wools I commonly use, I checked whether there was a good amount in my felting box and whether I was low in my supplies and needed to order more. This took a while, and it suddenly occured to me that if I made myself a document on Word, I could print it out any time I needed to do another stock check. It’s only taken me about 4 years of felting to think of that 🙂

WHITE WOOLS INVENTORY

A few years ago, I spotted some really inexpensive index card holders in our local supermarket. I thought they would be perfect to use for wool samples, so I bought a few and made myself a cover for one.

4635492385_23f0e04d9f_oI like to pull off a small sample of wool tops and staple it to the index card with the name of the shade or blend. I buy almost all of my supplies from World of Wool, but on the rare occasion I buy something elsewhere, I make a note of that too.

coloursIt’s really handy for natural wools too, the texture and staple length can be seen as well as the colour.

naturalsDo you have a system for storing your wools and fibres or keeping track if supplies are getting low? How about storage? I know that is always a favourite topic for fibre artists! 🙂

Felt Boots Progress

Felt Boots Progress

Comments 12 comments

I have managed to  finish the first stage of my felt boots. They are now felted. You saw the tongues already. http://wp.me/p1WEqk-16m.

Next I had to make the loops so I will be able to lace up the boots.

loop barbells

First you make short ropes with fluffy ends

loops felted together

Then you have to felt them into another piece of felt. then I can cut them out to sew them onto the boots.

Then onto felting the boots.

resist on top

You do not wrap all the sides around the resist.

insert tongue

You have to insert the tongues.

boots cut apart

Here they are cut down the middle and you can see me working the back so there will be no ridge.

one boot shrunk

Here is one after fulling bedside the unshrunk boot.

finished stage one

and both boots done, on top of one half the resist.

leaves

I have started to make the embellishments.

Have you tried anything new lately?

Two Tongues Made

Two Tongues Made

Comments 13 comments

This week I feel like the worlds slowest felter. I managed to get the two tongues for my boots made and that it. They look huge when you start but when your done they are the right sized. The final shrinking does take some work but these are boots so they need to be sturdy.

tongue before and after

One of the reasons I haven’t had time is the lambs. This little guy is called Mr Boots. He is one of a set of quadruplets. He was the first born and got cold while his 3 sisters were born. He was 4 pounds when he was born and looked like a lamb shaped chicken wing, all skin and bone and no substance. He ended up in the house in a dog cage in my living room. It’s a good thing I am not house proud. He is filling out and has a really good set of lungs.

boots

These are his 3 sisters under the heat lamp staying warm. They are doing well and no longer need the lamp.

Mr Boots sisters

We are heading in to some warmer weather this week so things should be a little easier all round. I hope that I have more to show you about boots in my next post.

January Projects

January Projects

Comments 14 comments

I’ve been trying to find ways of having a few projects on the go so I can work on them for a few minutes at a time where possible. A few months ago, I posted about a couple of felt pieces I’d made with the intention of practising stitches for the Take A Stitch Tuesday challenge. I didn’t keep up with the challenge, so had the pieces spare. I decided to add some stitching to the first piece. This is how it looked originally. I started by machine stitching around the patches of colour.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is a close up:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOver the next couple of days, I added some hand stitched straight stitches, first in in yellow and then added some in orange.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnother project I got started on this week is a white texture felt piece. Liz from That Fuzzy Feeling blog, recently made a gorgeous piece of texture felt and it inspired me to make one. I decided to make a natural white one, so I got to play with (and smell!) my collection of wool, alpaca and mohair locks. They are mostly unwashed so my hands felt really nice afterwards.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe first day I managed to get as far as laying it out and sewing up around the edges.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAHere are some of the gorgeous locks I positioned around the edges:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASo far, I’ve managed to add the stitches from the top to the bottom.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThanks to Ruth for encouraging us to find ways to fit in a few minutes of fibre time each day, I’ve managed to get a lot more done this week than I otherwise would have. It might not be much each day, but before long, it all adds up to finished projects I wouldn’t have had without the challenge 🙂

around the web

around the web

Comments 4 comments

felting around the web 5 small 400

http://www.peaceindustry.com/page.php

Recycled Knits and Fabrics combined with Felt Scarf by Sassafras Design

Heather’s Red and Yellow Scarves

http://mjuliarossi.blogspot.ca/

Have you been following Liz’s journey with her students for Holocaust Memorial Day?

http://www.feltinhand.com/gallery.htm

http://woollove-functional-fiberart.blogspot.ca/2013/01/under-big-top-scarf-part-1-of-2.html

knitting around the web

http://vimeo.com/54243073

stitching around the web

http://www.wendyfeldberg.ca/galleries.html

Nell’s Textile Art Gallery

mixed media around the web

Simple Directions for Covering a Lamp Shade with Felt

Acrylic Leaf Printing for your Art Journal Pages

Shrunken Books Tutorial from Maggie Grey

http://cornit-felt.blogspot.ca/2012/06/about-our-roses.html

dyeing around the web

http://wendyfe.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/eco-prints-to-start-the-year/

2012 4th Quarter Weather Challenge

2012 4th Quarter Weather Challenge

Comments 16 comments

I didn’t get a chance to felt my pieces for Karen’s 2012 4th Quarter Weather Challenge until New Year’s day, but I have been thinking about it since she posted it. I like to take pictures of the sky and clouds anyway, but I started looking at them and thinking how I could try to capture them in felt. I also started to make up some blends of wool and fibres to capture the colours and tones.

I didn’t want to try to recreate any of the photos, just try to capture the feeling of the ever changing sky and clouds. This first piece is based on some of the sunsets here recently, they haven’t been as deep or spectacular as usual, probably because it’s been wet, dark and warm instead of bright and cold, but sometimes there’s a little hint of peachey copper.

weather challenge (5)This is a close up of the coppery silk throwster’s waste

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis next piece is based on the thick white and grey cloudy days; billowing, rolling clouds, subtley changing as they grow and float past. It is made from lots of different natural white and light grey wools blended with flax, soy fibre and bamboo for soft golden highlights. The locks are Gotland and Mohair and Bluefaced Leicester.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI love days when we get huge swirling black and grey clouds, constantly changing as they storm through the sky. These next two pieces are part of a larger one inspired by dark, cloudy days. I used carded Gotland wool for the background and laid raw Gotland locks in shades from light grey to black on top for the rolling clouds.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis last piece wasn’t based on a photo I took or anything I saw out of the window, but it was inspired by many photos of the effects of the torrential rain we’ve had in the UK over the past 3 months (or last 9 really). A lot of the photos haven’t been pretty; muddy brown water waist deep, roads and pavements broken, whole rows of houses collapsed…but there have beeen some spectacular ones of stormy, cloudy skies and stormy seas, raging rivers, and some great ones of large stormy clouds in bright blue skies reflected on miles of  flooded fields. I wish I’d downloaded the photos, but I’m not sure I could post them without infringeing copyright. This last piece is probably my favourite.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIf you’d like to see some of my sky photos, they’re in a set on flickr

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Suggestions Please

Suggestions Please

Comments 15 comments

I haven’t had much free time to felt or make things lately, but making the collage notebook cover made me realise I could have a sewing project on the go that I could spend 15 minutes on here and there when I feel like taking a break (instead of watching cat videos on youtube!) I still had my felt offcuts to hand so I made myself a glasses case to match the notebook. I needed a sturdy one for the glasses I keep in my bag, so they don’t get damaged by all the other useless stuff I pile in there 🙂

I got some nice fabric from Ikea a few years ago and used some to make a nice lining.

When I was sorting through my spare felt and offcuts, I came across a few pieces of felt that I made earlier in the year to use for stitching practice. You may remember a few of us said we were going to do the Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge? I did try and probably lasted about 10 weeks, but I found the instructions too hard to follow. Ruth kindly looked up videos to help us, but sometimes there wasn’t one available, so I lost interest when I was spending more time looking for understandable instructions than actually doing the stitch. So, now I have 4 spare pieces of felt and thought I would ask everyone for their suggestions what to do with them. These first two are both about 8 x 12 inches


And these two, made from all natural shades of Merino and Bluefaced Leicester are about 10 x 12 inches



I look forward to hearing your suggestions and I will post photos of what I finally decide to do with them 🙂

Online Suppliers

Online Suppliers

Comments 36 comments

Do you buy fibres, wool or other felting supplies online? Could you spare a minute or two to tell me your favourite places to buy supplies online and what your most commonly bought items are? I’d also like to know what fibres you would like to try that you haven’t yet. For a long time, I’ve been planning to do a blog post comparing the prices of online suppliers. I’d like to choose one main supplier each from Australia, Canada, UK and USA, then compare the prices for a few commonly bought felting supplies and the shipping costs to each of the same countries.

I know everyone would like to support their local communities and small businesses, but with the current economic situation, we also like to save as much money as we can wherever possible. I know too, that for a lot of us, we just don’t have local shops that sell fibre supplies or nearby farmer’s markets, or there are other reasons which make buying online a necessity.

I’m hoping that by being more informed about the costs of supplies online, we can find the best places to buy from. Hopefully, it will make a wider variety of fibres more affordable and accessible.

I think it will really help new felters too, it can be overwhelming searching for online suppliers and trying to compare prices in different currencies and a variety of weights.

I’d also like to post about any bargains or exceptional quality wools or fibres, so if you have a favourite seller/supplier who you think deserves being more widely known, I’d love to know about these too. They don’t have to have a huge range of items, just something of great quality and great value for money.

Thanks a lot for your help and input 🙂

Giveaway

Giveaway

Comments 41 comments

We thought it was time for another giveaway!

A few weeks ago I did a post about a piece of felt I’d made with lots of natural fibres, with the intention of making a notebook cover out of it. Well, I’ve finally made the cover 🙂 So if you’d like to win a notebook with a handmade, hand sewn felt cover, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post.

This is the front of the book:

Back:

And inside:

The notebook is lined and a standard A6 size, which is about 4.25 x 6 inches.

The competition ends next Tuesday at 10 am UK time. I will announce the winner sometime on Tuesday, so please check back then, and if you have won, please leave a comment on the post so I can contact you for shipping info. Thanks a lot and Good Luck!

Even more Natural Wools and Fibres

Even more Natural Wools and Fibres

Comments 12 comments

Earlier this year, I made a piece of felt intending to make a notebook cover out of it. The base is natural grey Merino and on the top there is: crimped viscose; black viscose top; banana fibre; hemp; soybean fibre and top; milk protein fibre; black and white bamboo top; ramie; ingeo; flax; silk top; egyptian cotton and cotton gauze.

I’d really like to use a yarn or thread spun from natural grey wool to sew it up, preferably not too expensive. If anyone knows anywhere selling natural yarns, I’d be really grateful to know 🙂

Every now and again, I like to try felting with things found in the garden. A while ago I tried bamboo leaves between layers of felt which turned out really well. I also tried some pampas grass flowers (Cortaderia) at the same time, and was surprised how well that felted with very little anchorage. The pampas is felted to the surface and on this piece is just artistic/decorative, it wouldn’t stand up to handling etc.

I don’t know what plant I used in the third piece, it is some little branches from a tumbleweed my girlfriend saw while out walking her dog and brought home for me. I love the way it looks held up to the light, it almost looks stitched.

 

*** Sorry for the lay out and the use of the carousel yet again. I did originally format the post so that the photos appeared between the text in the relevant places, but, like Ann last week (and me every time I try to include photos) what was published was nothing like how it was originally layed out. After 3 attempts to get it to stay how I write it, I’m giving up. To see larger photos, click ‘permalink’ under the photos in the carousel.