I taught a Nunofelt Scarf class a couple of weekends ago. I had a fun group of ladies who were really interested in learning this technique.
Here are a couple of pictures of the setup with the ladies working on thier layout. They used hand-dyed silk blanks and Merino wool. Then there were lots of extras for them to add, lots more merino in many colours, handspun yarn, speciality wools and several types of silk, silk top, silk hankies and silk throwsters’ waist. A few brought some of thier own alpaca too.
and the scarves they were working on.
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And then we were too busy enjoying the felting for me to remember to take more pictures. Well, I thought I took more pictures, but I guess I didn’t do it properly.
I had two ladies who had to leave early as they had a long drive. They worked diligently to be done before they had to leave. They did a great job, and I hope to see them again.
Here are the other 6 ladies and thier finished scarves. I am pretty sure they had a good time.
After that fun I had to get to work myself. I had to resupply The Log Farm store. They sold the last of everything during Sugar Bush. I have been busy making Dryer Balls and Felted Soap
Next are some drop spindle kits.
All 3 of these are fairly easy to put together and sell well at a relatively low price point. What do you make and sell in this price category? I have been thinking that cards with pictures of my felt might be a good idea.
In my recent art and design class, I painted a series of tree spirit portraits. In researching tree spirits, I found many photos of young women with ‘beautiful’ faces. I thought that if a tree had a spirit, it would be the same age as a tree, which can live for hundreds of years. I decided to base my tree spirits on the beauty of older women, with wrinkles, grey hair and wisdom shining through. Once these were painted, I decided to create tree spirits in felt and stitch. I will be continuing with this series as I found stitching and creating portraits a challenge.
I printed a copy of the original artwork and found a piece of deconstructed screen printed fabric that worked for the background. The fabric was silk organdy and I nuno felted it to a dark green wool. Then I taped a piece of water soluble fabric to the artwork and traced it on the light box.
I pinned the traced outlines of the face and the pinecone down to the nuno felt. Then I used a dark green to stitch the face outline and a dark brown to stitch the pinecone. It’s not shown here but I used a white thread to stitch the outline of the hair. The tree on the left hand side was developed free hand as there was already dark green in the background fabric that reminded me of the shapes of the tree branches. Once the outlines were stitched, I dissolved the water soluble fabric and let the piece dry.
Then on to stitching. This will probably seem like an exercise/game of find the differences as some of the photos seem very much alike. I used 1-2 strands of cotton floss and stitched in a distorted cross stitch. Unlike regular cross stitch, this is a very loose form of cross stitch where the stitches do cross but they are different lengths and directions to fill the space. It is a fairly easy way to shade for darks and lights without doing precise stitching such as long and short stitch. I started with the eyes. I have found when stitching a portrait before, that I stitch the “important” areas first. If I don’t like the eyes, I can either re-do them or start over without wasting loads of time on the rest of the face.
I continued using various shades of green and developing the face and then on to the hair. It was a really interesting process as it seemed like I would add more dark into an area and then find that I needed to add more dark to other areas. There are many layers of stitched threads and hours of work in the final piece.
As you can see, I didn’t take many photos of the tree development or of the pinecone stitching. But I continued with the distorted cross stitch for these areas too. The pine needles were done with stem stitch.
I changed the hair multiple times. I had added stem stitch curls but those seemed to stand out too much. I went back in and stitched over that with a variety of shades of lighter green to make the hair look more natural. I also worked on deepening the wrinkles around the eyes and mouth.
I probably could have kept working on this piece but decided to stop.
Once I was satisfied with the face, I needed a background fabric. I had linen that had been screen printed at the same time as the silk organdy. I tried an overlay of blue green silk but ended up choosing the linen for a background. The nuno felt was stitched to the linen background and laced over a matte board. The final piece is 10″ x 10″. I was planning on framing it but couldn’t find the correct size frame for it. I ended up covering a 10″ x 10″ canvas with green felt and stitching the edges of the fabric matte to the canvas. Sorry that I don’t have a photo so that you can see the edge of the canvas and how that looked.
The piece is named the Essence of Nature and will be in an exhibition in May at 4 Ravens Gallery in Missoula, Montana.
I am still working on the “watercolor landscape” samples that I created. This one is nuno felted paper that has had watercolor applied after the felting process. It needs a bit more, doesn’t it?
I scanned the piece on my printer so I had the exact size of the piece printed out. I then drew a tree over the landscape in pencil. Instead of trying to transfer the design of the tree on to the piece, I decided to just mark where the edges of the trunk were on the top and bottom.
I didn’t get any photos of the stitching process as I stitched it mainly while traveling. I had found a variety of grey yarn that I couched down with a dark grey cotton machine thread. I tried to give an impression of depth of the tree with the values of grey. I followed my sketch but “edited” out some of the smaller branches.
Here’s a couple of close ups of the stitching.
The next step was to find a piece of background (matte) fabric. I stitched the felt piece on to this hand dyed grey background that I already had in my stash. Luckily, it was a blue grey tone that matched the watercolors. The piece was then stretched and laced around matte board. Then it’s ready for a frame.
Here it is in the frame and ready to go to the gallery. This piece in the frame is 8″ x 10″ and I have decided to name it “Solitude”.
As you probably know, I firmly fall in the camp of the recycling fans: I love a good chance to use bits of recycled fabric, yarn or fiber, found objects and so on, often to surprising effects. Mostly the surprise is a good one, eh. My drawers and charity shops (or thrift shops, if you want) bargain baskets are source of plenty of materials to use in a creative way, and there is a particular satisfaction in using pre-loved materials and giving them a whole new life.
Some time ago I have bought 3 skeins of multicoloured recycled banana chunky yarn from Oxfam charity shop thinking that I was going to felt it into something and give that something a bit of jazz, much in the same way that I use recycled sari silk fiber. My idea is to use it by teasing the fiber away, but future experiments could involve using the yarn as is, as embellishment and to try maybe a bit of creative weaving with it, who knows.
Here they are:
The Banana fiber yarns: they are colourful and shiny, they instantly grabbed my attention. They were a tad expensive, but I will have plenty of fiber to use, they will last me a long time.
I like the fact that they are not solid colours, as I can see them combine well with different palettes, without much thought about colourways on my part: when you are unsure about which colours to use together, a ready made mix of colours that you can already see is pleasant will hugely help you decide!
I have chosen to go for felting a loop scarf/cowl because it is a simple and fast type of project that I have already had success with. I have measurements that are fine for me, and I only had to find my rectangular resist that must be somewhere in there, maybe in the first drawer..or no, maybe in the second drawer..or no, maybe in the bubblewrap bag..or likely on the projects shelf..or..(do you think that I can blame the future guinea pigs or is it a bit too much?)
You know what, let’s forget the previous resist, I have my measurements in my project notebook (thanks God!) and I can just cut a new one from a piece of bubblewrap, of which I have an ever multiplying pile (they are possibly breeding in there, I started with just a couple pieces a few years ago, I do not know, they talk about rabbits but they are nothing to bubblewrap).
Here, so, my resist is a plain rectangle, 17 inches by 15 inches or 43 cm x 38 cm. The shrinkage was not supposed to be huge. I was aiming for a lightweight type of soft scarf with only 2 light layers of Merino wool.
My resist was in pale blue, so I guess you can see it, just barely.
I started by choosing my banana yarn, the reddish one that they have called Rainbow, then adding to it matching silk fabric from charity shop silk scarves, and I went on choosing the Merino wool colours to match and complement the other fibers. I toyed with the idea of a white background but I really did not have enough white Merino wool (I need to restock it), and I felt that a royal blue would make all the other colours pop out. So it was royal blue background, and coral, white and eggshell for the Merino wool accents.
Spotting similarities among different bunches of textiles is a lot of fun.
I was ready to start with a first layer of banana fiber: I teased it out by unraveling the yarn, and laying it in a clouds layout, trying to keep all the colours as mixed and varied as possible. I covered the whole resist, taking care of leaving maybe 1cm of free resist at the top and bottom (as the cowl needs a hole for my head!), and of going a bit out of the resist when covering left and right sides, to ensure that the design will run smoothly all around my cowl.
Pulling at the yarn to release the fiber.The yarn was made of many small strands in different colours.The effect is good and my first side is all covered.
When I was done with it on the first side, I decided for a thin layer of the royal blue Merino on top of the banana fiber before turning it to the other side, as I was afraid that the banana fiber would not stay put if I just wet it and turned the resist, as it was loosely laid out. That is not ideal, as I then had to carefully tease away the banana fiber from the Merino thin layer on the other side when I turned the resist, so by any means if you have a different design where you have a first uninterrupted layer, just wet it and turn the resist to the other side before adding a second layer. The right way to do it is to have the wet fabrics layer as first layer, I suppose, so that it is easier to turn: well, I just wanted to try out the banana fiber (shoulder shrugging), I have been waiting months to have the right chance, so that is what I used first! The felting police was nowhere in sight, so I guess I will get away with it, if there are no snitches here to make trouble.
I started from the edges all around, and then covered the whole resist with a first thin horizontal layer of Merino wool.
Starting from the edges with the Merino wool.First layer of Merino almost done
I put on it a net curtain fabric, wet and lightly soaped it, then carefully lifted the net away and turned the whole to the other side.
Wetting the side after putting netting over it.The view from the other side, after folding the banana fiber coming from the first side.
As I said, I had to separate the banana fiber from the Merino where I had to fold it on the resist at the sides. Then I covered the resist with a layer of banana fiber, making sure that some would go also on the bits from the first side left and right, so as to make it seem a smooth continuum. You can not really see the layer of fiber on this second side of the resist on my photo, but it is there!
Folding of the Merino wool over the left and side edges, over the first layer of banana fiber
Then, I folded over it the Merino sticking out from the left and right edges and went on covering the rest of the resist with a thin horizontal layer of Merino, exactly as I had done on the other side, but without doubling up on left and right edges, to avoid having two thicker areas at the sides.
After wetting and soaping it, I turned the whole again to the first side of the resist. I tidied up the upper and bottom edges with my fingers, pushing the wool fibers to form a neater edge. I do not care much about very straight edges, personally, but if you prefer them you can always cut your top and bottom edges with scissors and then seal them by rubbing them, towards the end of the felting process.
At this point I added a second thin Merino wool layer, vertical layer, and repeated the wetting and light soaping with a bit of pressure on the net to make the soaped water pass through the wool and fibers, but still no actual rubbing. I flipped it to the other side and laid out the second layer there, repeating all steps.
Two Merino wool layers done.
After flipping it again to the first side, I repeated the tidying of top and bottom edges.
Time for the silk scarves fabric and the embellishments! Firstly I added accents with coral, white and eggshell Merino Wool. Then, I cut out my 2 chosen fabrics in irregular pieces and placed them on the wool alternating the 2 designs. I made sure to overlap the side edges of the resist, so that the design could run in a smooth way all around the scarf. I usually take a photo of my design at this point, so that I can use it as reference for the other side and not go on completely differently once I turn to the second side (It happened, yes).
It looks like total chaos but it will turn out one single felt, I promise.
After turning my cowl again, folding the fabric and wool overlapping the left and right edges, and completing the second side as well by following the same steps as the first, it was time to go back to the first side, net it again and put a little bit more soap on it to start rubbing properly. The aim is to have the silk bits be grabbed into the wool fibers.
Wet and soaped.
I did that for both sides, and then something not related to felting happened and I had to stop everything. Nothing dramatic, I just had to go out in a bit of a rush, and one thing that I love about felting is that you CAN stop, put some bubblewrap on it and leave it there, and then come back to it after a few hours and all is fine. Not only fine, the soaped water has probably better seeped into the wool fibers, so it can go quicker after the pause.
When I got back home, I got out my sander, checked that all the prefelt was fully wet and soaped, covered it with bubble wrap and used the sander to make sure that all the fabric was securely rubbed in. One of the silks in particular was slower than the other in getting felted in, so I had to work on it a bit more.
After being sure that all the fabric was securely attached, I rolled the cowl, still with the resist inside it, for a few times in all directions. I did not insist too much on the rolling, though, as I like to manipulate my prefelt to take it to the felt stage and be able to keep a close eye on how much it is shrinking. Well, to be honest, I do not enjoy rolling as much as rubbing and kneading and throwing and so on, so I find a lot of excuses to cut the rolling short!
I did my rolling, and I have proof of it!
Thus, after a bit of perfunctory rolling so the rolling gods be appeased, I took the cowl from the resist and took care of the left and right edge by opening up my cowl, folding it in a different way so that the edges were now resting in the middle, putting a hand inside the cowl and rubbing the edges on the bubblewrap underneath. I will agree that this is a bit yuk! in colder months, as you have your arm inside a cold wet thing, but it is very quickly done if you have taken care not to overlap too much wool and fabric at the side edges. You may have to open up a little bit the wool (very gently) if you have pinched together a small amount of wool at those edges, but a bit of energetic rubbing will help smooth it all to nothing.
yuk! but needs doing.This is fun!
After that, it was all swishing the cowl on the bubblewrap in different directions, gently kneading it and a bit of gentler throwing, keeping an eye on the forming of more and more wrinkles on the silk and on the shrinkage. I may have overdone it a bit, as the cowl ended up slightly tighter than what I wanted, but still a good comfy size when I tried it on after the drying.
I do not know if you can spot the light blue resist behind the wet scarf, it shows the shrinkage that I obtained.
I rinsed it with clean water, and put it to dry on a rack close to a radiator.
Here it is: I hope that you like the effect of the banana fiber as I do! it felted so easily that it was comparable to silk or other plant based fibers that I have tried (mint and rose), and I definitely liked to work with it as fiber, as it was easier than silk fiber to lay out, due to it being less fine and less prone to flying away at a wrong breath.
Side ASide BHow it looks like when you put it on.You can also wear it on your hair, very comfy, warm and soft, keeps your ears all warm if you like.
I also made a normal cobweb scarf with the smallest amount of yellow Merino wool and the pinkish banana yarn, just to try a very bright combination of colours:
Two bright colours for this cobweb scarf, daring a little bit more than my usual. It was fun to use this recycled banana fiber!
Now the only banana yarn that I have not used yet is the white one, so that will be the next one to try.
Do you also have an irresistible new upcycling material to try out?
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.
I have been continuing with my experiments with trying to create a “watercolor” effect in nuno felt. I decided to take a few of the pieces that were the least successful with the dye/paint application and add more. The first addition of “more” is with sheer fabrics.
This is the piece I decided to start with. It had lost a lot of its color and still looked like a landscape but I felt it could do with “more”.
I started with adding in some torn tulle trees on the right hand side.
Then I took some sheer green fabric and added it on the left to give a feel of hills in the background. Some of these steps might be hard to see as the fabric is very sheer but it’s the layering that achieves the final effect.
I then cut off the left edge of the green sheer and added it back into the “hill” area. This gives a bit of value change as you add further layers of sheer.
After looking at the tulle trees as compared to the green sheer on the left, I decided to change the trees. Since the background was mainly yellow, I thought the addition of purple/maroon trees would give a neutralized tree color but still feel there was additional color added. That seemed better so I added in the shadows too. I added a bit of the purple/maroon on the left for a bit of foreground in front of the green hills.
Next up was to try and change the “straight line” over the trees on the right. It felt too abrupt a change in color. So I added a couple of layers of light blue sheer over the trees and then a full piece of blue sheer over the entire piece.
The next step was looking over the piece to see anything else that stood out. I noticed that the green sheer I had on the left needed a little work. It felt too straight along the bottom and there was a weird kind of ‘flag’ in the middle of the hills. So I changed those and then began stitching. It’s hard to see but there is light yellow stitching in the foreground. That wasn’t meant to add a hard line, just to hold the blue fabric down and keep the smaller sheer pieces underneath in place. I did add a broken darker brown horizon line which you can see I have started on the left.
I continued adding stitch to the horizon line as well as the sky. Again, in the sky, I didn’t want a hard line so I used a very light gray thread, not pure white that might “stick” out too much.
The final step was to make very small stitches all around the edges of the piece to hold everything in place. I am happy with the result, a bit more color but still an abstract, dreamy effect.
I recently wrote about using watercolors to create abstract landscapes. My purpose was to try the technique on paper and then try to translate it to silk and nuno felt. I experimented with a variety of small samples, the largest being 10″ x 13″.
My first attempt, I soaked 3mm silk in soda ash solution and placed it on white paper. I then mixed up a paste of fiber reactive dye with a bit of water and used a palette knife to apply the dye paste to the wet silk. I used dye colors pewter and daffodil. I added water with a spray bottle and with a paint brush. The photo above on the left shows the silk drying on the paper backing. The photo on the right shows the paper underneath after drying.
The picture on the left shows the silk after rinsing and the silk after nuno felting with fine white merino. It still is a landscape but I lost so much of the lovely green color. I love the paper that was underneath but the end result is a bit disappointing. I will be still using all these samples and adding further dye, paint or stitch so don’t worry, they will be improved. And I will see what other surface design techniques will give the end result I want. But I forged on trying to get a better result from the beginning.
The next step was to try painting the dye with the silk laid out on plastic. I covered my print board with plastic and laid wet silk soaked in soda ash on top. I used the same application with a palette knife and adding water as needed to spread the dye. The photo on the left is after applying the dry. The center photo is after the dye has dryed in the silk and the right photo is after nuno felting. This was a bit better and I can see the landscape in this result. I kept track of my results by taking photos, pasting them in my sketchbook and writing out the process for each piece. I also kept a running list of “what ifs” and further ideas to try.
Experiment number three was to nuno felt the silk first. The left photo shows the white nuno felt (a bad photo), the middle is after applying the dye and the left is after rinsing. The dye does not move very easily on the felted silk compared to plain silk. Therefore, the dye doesn’t spread as much. This is still using fiber reactive dye, so I asked myself “What about acid dye since now I have added wool to the equation?”
I think you can tell from looking at the results from left to right, there is some improvement in keeping the color in the end result.
I got a little off track here as I next decided to try felting some paper and see how that worked. I used small pieces of Kitakata handmade paper that I already had on hand. The photo on the left shows the felted paper. I got in a hurry and the paper didn’t felt in as well as I would have liked. But I decided since these are mainly samples, it didn’t matter. Forge ahead! I soaked the nuno felted paper in soda ash and then added fiber reactive dye for the landscape. I continued to use the palette knife method of dye application. The photo on the right shows the piece after rinsing and drying. My next thought was “What if I used the nuno felted paper but painted it with watercolor and didn’t rinse it out?”
I nuno felted more paper on to the merino and added the watercolor paint with the palette knife. I forgot to get a photo with the paint still wet. The photo on the right shows the dried result. The interesting thing with this one was that the water I applied above the horizon line (and none below) caused the water to seep into the dry paper moving most of the paint below the horizon line. Interesting end result though. Work upside down the next time?
In the middle of these experiments, I helped a friend with how to dye cotton fabric. She had not dyed before so we had a fun afternoon playing with dye. I had my pieces of silk ready for nuno felting and I thought I would dye some a very light blue for sky colors.
This next piece has the blue silk, nuno felted first and then soaked in a vinegar solution to get ready for acid dyes. I applied the dyes as usual, forgot to take a photo and then steamed the piece to set the acid dye. The dye shifted all over the place and the end result looked nothing like the original application of dye. It still looks like a landscape, kept the color better but I didn’t want this much shifting of the dye.
So I tried a second one with blue sky silk and acid dyes. It’s not a good photo because of the glare but you get the idea of what it looked like after painting with dye. I picked it up, did not think to put it on a tray or flat surface and the dye came pouring out and the landscape was lost. I just rinsed the piece and you see on the right, that a slight amount of dye took without steaming. That gave a nice misty background that I decided would work for depth.
I then added watercolor of Payne’s Gray and Quinacridone Gold Deep in the usual manner. I let the watercolors dry and didn’t rinse as this will be a wall hanging and will not be washed. This is getting a little closer to the outcome I want.
Next up was to treat the silk as if it was a silk painting. I stretched the silk over a wooden frame and used tacks to attach it to the frame. I then applied the dye with a palette knife and added water. The edges were a bit tricky as I didn’t have any gutta resist to keep the dye from spreading but again, it’s just a sample. Then I decided I could dry/heat the silk without removing it from the frame with my heat gun. Oops, I burned a hole in it. Perhaps next time, I will let it dry and then iron it. Or I could use silk paints and the proper resists. The right photo is the piece after nuno felting. Still looks like a landscape and I don’t mind the edges.
I still have quite a few ideas to tweak the process and I want to try adding more on top of the results I have shown here. I am having fun experimenting and perhaps one of these days, I will decide to make a bigger piece once I have an end result that works for me.
Since my last blog in November I’ve been very busy, though not necessarily making felt. I did, however, have a week’s exhibition with two friends in a local gallery the second week in December, and this afternoon I’ve dropped off 12 pictures for an open-call print exhibition, so that’s what I’m going to talk about today.
Sitting in the gallery, I had time to do a little needle felting – I generally prefer wet felting but needle felting is better suited to gallery-sitting. My friend Lynzi (yep, same name but different spelling) asked if I’d make two small brooches for her to give to her mother for Christmas. Lynzi liked some earrings I’d made previously …..
….. so asked me to make a mussel shell and a starfish brooch. I’d not needle felted a brooch before but didn’t think it would be very different from an earring so I set about it.
The trickiest thing was that she wanted them very small: she suggested between 2 & 4 cm. The smallest mussel shell earrings I’ve ever made were about 5.5cm and the star fish – which was a one-off – was considerably larger. I didn’t think 2cm was practical, not least of all because of the size of the pin needed to attach the brooches, so we agreed on approximately 4cm. The mussel shell was relatively straightforward. For earrings I make them curved like shells. For a brooch, I just made the back solid rather than curved and was sure to felt it very firmly so I could sew the fastening pin securely onto it.
I had to adapt the starfish design as the centre of the starfish – which had to conceal the brooch pin – had to be a larger part of the overall design than it was for the earring. I started off using a small star-shaped cookie-cutter to help me get an even star shape. I concentrated on working the length of the arms and the centre of the starfish, so that when I stopped using the cookie-cutter I could work into the sides of the arms to make it less like a star and more like a starfish.
Here are the end results.
Mussel shell and starfish broochesBrooches with a coin for scale
Lynzi was delighted and I’m looking forward to hearing what her Mum thought.
Now here we are in 2026 and I’ve had to put in quite a lot of studio time this week to create work for a print exhibition. Another local gallery (The Horsebridge Community Arts Centre in Whitstable) had an open-call for a print exhibition. The only requirement was that pieces had to have some element of hand printing. I wondered if my felt pictures with a printed tree would meet the criteria so had a chat with the organiser. She said ‘yes’ so I decided to enter some. The deal is that you pay per piece for a framed, wall hung item and you can put up to 5 unframed items per wall piece into a browser. The gallery takes 10% commission on sales of the framed pieces (which you’ve also paid to submit) and 35% commission on the unframed, browser pieces (which you haven’t paid to submit). I opted for 2 framed and 10 for the browser.
These were the framed pictures I already had
And two unframed pictures presented with a card back and mount.
So, I just needed to make 8 more unframed pictures this week to fill my quota for the wall and browser. That didn’t seem too unreasonable when I decided to do it, but it has felt a bit less sensible given the time I’ve had available. It’s also quite cold here (for England). My studio is in an old industrial building (it used to be a bottle capping factory for Shepherd Neame, the oldest brewery in the UK). It has very little heating, so I had to decamp to my house part way through the week when my hands just could not cope with any more freezing water.
The unframed pictures have a mount with an aperture of 20 x 20 cm (about 8 x 8 inches) so the felt is about 24 cm square. I thought the best idea was to make 4 pictures in one sheet and cut them apart during the fulling process. By ‘best’ I mean most efficient while still being a size I could handle on my felting table. I drew myself a little sketch to help me decide where to put the silk
Option 1 would mean the nuno felted area was the same in all 4 pictures so it was an easy decision to go for option 2.
I spent quite a long time sifting through my embarrassingly large collection of second hand silk scarves to select the pieces I wanted to use.
I was keen on a grey leopard print scarf with a white background but it had stripes of more and less dense silk running across it. I thought I should just check that the dense section would felt OK so I did a very scrappy little sample. If you’re wondering why I got so little shrinkage, the felted scrap started off considerably bigger than the non-felted one.
It’s not easy to see here – more visible on the finished picture – but the more dense stripes produced a little more ruching.
It all seemed to felt fine so above you can see the first batch part way through the fulling stage.
Below is the layout for the second batch of pictures
I put a stripe of second hand wool (usually tapestry wool) along the top of the silk section. For the brightly coloured marbled scarf I auditioned a few different colours (red, yellow, dark brown, green)
And went with the green
So, here is the first group of 4 pictures with their printed trees
And here’s the second group of 4
I took the photos very hastily today and not in very good light: they are not as grey as some of the images suggest.
I’ve presented them with a back board and white mount and dropped them off at the gallery this afternoon. The deadline for submissions is tomorrow so, that’s pretty good for me. I have marked ‘last minute’ tendencies.
I print the images with a heat press – the kind of thing you might use for printing and image on a t-shirt. As I was heating it up anyway, I pulled together some pieces of felt that were test pieces or offcuts, cut them into small pieces and printed on those too. I will make these into cards.
Well, that’s me for now. Wishing everyone a joyful, healthy and creative 2026.
Last week I taught my final workshop of the year. It was Nuno Felt Scarf. I had 8 students. Previously, I have been restricted to 6. The old class space at the guild was a snug fit with 6, but since some rearranging of space, I can now teach 8 students comfortably.
This was a fun class; one lady had bought 5 spaces to surprise her family with a Christmas workshop. They had no idea what they were doing until they arrived. They were all game, but I did see some scepticism there too.
I started with a little more explanation than usual to help the surprised students get a better idea of what we were going to do. I had lots of samples to show them to help decide how they wanted their scaves to look. Then I explained all the embellishment fibres. It’s a lot to take in when you’ve just started thinking about it. Most students have been thinking about it for a while and have an idea of what they want to do.
They picked scarf blanks and then base colours. There was a lot of back and forth to pick wool colours, and then the embellishment fibres. Everyone was encouraging and helpful with colour choices and what goes together. All colours go together, just in case you didn’t know. I always enjoy watching everyone work out colours and often working up the courage to be bold and add all the extra bits of colour they want.
After everyone gets their scarves wet, it’s time for lunch.
Usually, lunch is a bring-your-own, or there are a couple of fast-food places around. However, the student who had bought her family had decided to provide everyone with lunch. It was very tasty, cold cuts, cheese, salad and bread. Then there were homemade cookies and fruit for dessert. I felt very spoiled.
After lunch, they moved on to rubbing and rolling.
I am sure some of them thought it was never going to work. Then they noticed it was really shrinking. Then, when it was time to finish fulling, it was so fast, and they could hardly believe they were done. They were all very happy, and there was talk of doing another class; it was so much fun.
Although a recent eye test showed I didn’t need a new prescription, I decided to buy some new glasses anyway to give me more colour/style choices and also hopefully reduce the time I spend trying to find my glasses. I have a place at home where they’re supposed to live but I often thoughtlessly plonk them down somewhere and then get cross with myself as I play hunt the glasses.
On seeing my new glasses’ accompanying dull acrylic felt cases, I decided to make some wet felted wool cases of my own, either for myself, or to sell or give as gifts.
I want the cases to fit snugly, so that the glasses don’t slip out but also don’t need any kind of closure fastening: a simple wet felted sleeve. I like the simplicity of this idea and also the challenge of working them to exactly the right size.
While on holiday recently, I bought a carded (mostly) Wensleydale wool batt from a farmers’ market in Ithaca, New York, that I thought might be suitable and I was looking forward to trying it out.
Here’s some of the batt, the work of Windsong Farm in Burdett NY www.windsongfarm.com
I like a sturdy glasses case as it has to withstand being bashed about in my capacious handbag, so I decided on 4 layers of wool: two natural white merino tops and two of the Wensleydale batt – which includes quite a lot of locks.
I calculated a generous size for the case and multiplied the finished dimensions by 1.7 to give me a nice firm felt.
Resist2 layers of natural white MerinoFirst layer of Wensleydale battSecond layer of Wensleydale batt with a few extra locks
And here it is dry: side 1, side 2 and end-on to show how thick the felt is.
I was happy with the result, though because of the thickness and shrinkage it took quite a long time to felt it fully.
My second case I decided to treat more like a seascape picture. First, I rounded the corners on one end of the resist to give the case a more rounded bottom. I laid out two layers of wool: pewter for the top half that would become the sea and white for the lower half, that would become the beach.
I laid two layers of blues with white angora highlights over the pewter section to form the sea, and two more white layers topped with a strip of very sheer recycled spotted silk scarf which I hoped would look like pebbles for the beach.
I then ran a line of kid mohair top along the length of the case where the sea meets the beach to form a wave. I find this type of mohair felts with a nice wiggle that suggests a breaking wave.
layout layers 1 & 2adding the sea a silk scarf for the beachkid mohair for a breaking wave
Joining the silk so as not to leave a gap or have a bulky overlap was a bit fiddly but I find it works most easily with a very sheer silk. It’s interesting how dominant the wave looks in the photo because of the curvature of the sides.
The finished seascape case
Once that was done, it occurred to me that perhaps people view their glasses cases more in portrait mode than landscape? I decided case 3 would be less ‘landscape’! I also started to think more about how people use glasses cases. I’m sure some, like me, have them rattling around in a large bag. But I suppose some people want to put them in a pocket, so may want something a little thinner?
As I was rummaging in one of the giant boxes of charity shop silk scarves I’ve collected for nuno felting, I found a very sheer small orange scarf with wonky purple circles that I thought I’d try for case number 3. I laid out 4 very fine layers of orange merino tops (to reduce the overall thickness).
My plan was for the orange of the silk to merge with the orange of the wool so that the circles were more prominent than their background. I added three pieces silk to each side of the case.
4 thin layers, of merino, 3 wonky silk circles per side laid out then prefelted ready to full
I’m still felting these very firmly. You can see the shrinkage when comparing the finished case to its resist. I’m not completely sure why, but I’m getting more shrinkage in the width than the length. Probably it’s because it’s easier to roll it in that direction, using my hands and various thicknesses of pool noodle inside the case during fulling. Whatever the reason, it’s nice and firm so I can afford to chop a bit off the length of the resist.
Left – finished & dry; top right – testing the fit; bottom right – showing the shrinkage
For case 4 I decide to go thinner still (I’m thinking of someone putting their glasses in a jacket breast pocket) so switch to 2 layers of wool – this time a natural marled grey merino – which I think looks quite pebble-like. I added a little white wool to the surface to enhance the pebble look.
I forgot to take progress shots but here is the finished case.
It is definitely thinner and a little softer, though it’s still felted very firmly.
Now I’m starting to think about the time these cases are taking to felt. I have a week in a gallery in December and will also be offering some things for sale in two other galleries that that have a local handmade artesan ‘market’ throughout December. I could sell some cases as they might make nice gifts, but I’m not sure how much people will be willing to pay for a glasses case.
Cases are generally supplied free when you buy glasses and I know most people have no idea how long something like this takes to make. There’s not a whole lot I can do but I thought that making two at once may reduce the making time a little.
So, cases 5 and 6 will be twins. I cut a new double-length resist and laid out some natural marled grey Corriedale wool.
I like the white veining on the merino ‘pebble’ case but it’s fairly subtle so I add more of it to these ones.
Top: double-size resist with wool laid out and wetted tightly round the resist. Middle: case 5 (rounded bottom). Bottom: case 6 (rounded both ends)
I keep twin one (case 5) the same as the previous cases, with a rounded bottom and flat top, and cut a rounded top of twin two (case 6) to make it overall more symmetrical. Actually, I really like the symmetry of this rounded one, but realise that the top is a bit more flimsy than previous cases: presumably because I’m overlapping more wool at the ends of the resist than in the middle, where I have cut these two apart.
Because I prefer the single to the twin cases, I decide to make the next pair alongside each other but separate.
I have some lightly prefelted ‘pebbles’ that I made earlier, so set these out on the bottom halves of two resists (on two layers of merino wool) with 4 layers of blue & green merino wool and strands of white angora on the top half to create the idea of sea.
Left – layout; right – prefelted
I soon abandoned working on both at the same time as the pebbles were a bit tricky to felt round so many corners so I worked on the two separately
Comparing the finished one with the wetted out one, you can see that I lost quite a bit of the pebble definition but I’m still fairly happy with them and they are very sturdy. Indeed, when dry and lightly shaved you can see more of the pebbles, in particular the nuno elements.
I have some Corriedale wool that I dyed ages ago (to make this bag)….
….so for the next pair I go for a blue, green, purple colour fade.
This time I use just 2 layers of wool and they are (not surprisingly) considerably thinner and slightly smaller than the previous pair. They are also much quicker to produce as the layout is fairly simple.
For number 9 I try lightly prefelting 2 mussel shells (one for each side) which I felt into a sandy-coloured background.
Left & middle – layouts side 1 & 2. Right – nearly finished case
I only made this yesterday and it’s still a bit damp. The finished image isn’t a great photo as I’ve taken it in domestic electric light but it gives you the overall impression.
And finally, another recycled scarf but this one is white dots on a red background from a fairly open-weave wool fabric.
To get round the fiddliness of joining / overlapping fabric on this size and shape of resist, I cut out two sections of the scarf and laid one on each side, with gaps along all the sides.
Here’s the layout and here’s a photo of the finished glasses case. I only made this today so it’s very wet. I’m hoping the dots will be a little clearer when it’s dry.
So, what have I learned from all this? Well, I’ve enjoyed playing with all the different layouts. I drew up a list of ideas and I haven’t even completed half of them so there’s plenty more to play at when I have time.
I think my favourite more complex ones are the combined pebbles & sea. For the more simple layouts I like both the grey & white pebbles and the blue / green / purple hand-dyed Corriedale ones. To sell the glasses cases I will have to focus on the simple ones as the more complex layouts take way too much time to make. I’ve already made a couple more of the grey & white pebble ones and will probably make a few more simple brightly coloured ones before I move onto other things. I’m not sure yet which ones I will keep or give as gifts. Do you have a favourite? Or any you don’t like?
