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A nuno felted loop scarf in royal blue and rainbow colors is on a grey surface
Trying out recycled banana fiber: an easy loop scarf project

Trying out recycled banana fiber: an easy loop scarf project

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Hello all!

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:

Three skeins of colorful chunky yarn are displayed with their labels saying that it is a recycled banana yarn sourced by Oxfam. The top one is mainly bright pink, the middle one is mainly white and the bottom one is mainly red blue yellow
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.

A light blue bubble wrap rectangle is on a table covered by a white towel and clear bubblewrap.
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.

There is the banana yarn in rainbow and there are small bags of Merino wool in royal blue and coral and white and eggshell. There are also two silk scarves in various colors, particularly red and blue and brown and yellow and pink.
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.

There is a hand pulling on a chunky multicolored yarn in the foreground, and a wooden floor in the background
Pulling at the yarn to release the fiber.
In the foreground there is a hand with a small piece of multi stranded yarn in it. in the background there is a clear blue bubble wrap.
The yarn was made of many small strands in different colours.
There is a rectangle covered in small strands of yarn in many different colors on a bubble wrap.
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.

A rectangle shape is covered in rainbow fiber and in blue wool on three of the four edges.
Starting from the edges with the Merino wool.
A rectangle of rainbow fiber is almost completely covered in royal blue Merino wool fiber, and a hand holding more blue wool fiber is in the foreground.
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.

A green hand sprinkler can be seen emerging from the top of the image. At the center of the image there is a rectangle of blue wool under a netting, and it is becoming wet.
Wetting the side after putting netting over it.
There is a rectangle of colored fiber and some blue wool and colored fiber is sticking out from the sides of a rectangle of bubble wrap that is over the fiber.
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!

After laying out the rainbow banana fiber on the second side, I folded on it the blue Merino wool fiber that was along the left and right edges
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.

A rectangle of royal blue Merino wool that is wet, on a white towel covered in bubble wrap.
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).

A rectangle of wet blue wool is covered in a design of pieces of silk fabric and wisps of Merino wool in coral white and eggshell colors.
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.

A rectangle of wet nuno prefelt with pieces of silk fabrics in different colors on a blue background.
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!

A piece of prefelt is being rolled on a table covered in a white towel and bubble wrap.
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.

An arm is inside a large wet prefelt tube and rubbing it on clear bubble wrap.
yuk! but needs doing.
A hand is rubbing a blue wet felt onto a bubble wrap.
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.

The wet finished loop scarf is on its pale blue resist, showing the difference in size among the two.
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.

A finished and dry wet felted loop scarf with rainbow fiber over a royal blue background is resting on a grey surface.
Side A
A side of a nuno felted loop cowl in blue, red , yellow, pink and white, on a grey surface
Side B
A person that is cropped out of the photo is wearing a nuno felted loop scarf in blue and rainbow colors by Kiki Peruzzi
How it looks like when you put it on.
Kiki Peruzzi is wearing her nuno felted loop scarf on her hair.
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:

In the foreground there is a tall oblong white paper lamp with a bright yellow and pink scarf wrapped around it with a knot.
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?

Kiki

http://www.kikistextileart.com

Instagram: @kiki.textile.art

Felted Lantern Cover Workshop.

Felted Lantern Cover Workshop.

Comments 22 comments

I got to teach a felted lantern cover class recently. It was mostly people who had never handled wool before. This class is fun, interesting and technical. This project requires a very thin layout, but if it develops holes, that’s ok because it lets the light out.  It’s a great one to use to practice thin layout.

I made a new sample with prefelt shapes on the inside and sari silk on the outside. I didn’t have a sample of either of those. It always amazes me how much the sill disappears when you wet it, even on contrasting colours

And the finished sample. The inside shapes worked really well. Some of the mwere swallowed by the scrunched-up part, but that’s ok.

I had eight students. I let them choose if they wanted to make it all enough to be able to make part of it scrunched, or just tall enough for it to fit the glass vase/lantern. I almost forgot to take pictures.  It was about an even split. Scrunching them makes a fairly simple design stand out.

I almost forgot to take pictures. Here they are laying out their wool, lots of different ideas.

Then, of course, there was all the rubbing and rolling

Here are some finished but still wet. I am not sure how I ended up with only 5 of them. I was sure I took a picture of each of them.

And here are some pictures my students sent me when they were all dry.

I think they look great. This is a great project if you don’t have a lot of time, but want the satisfaction of start to finish in one session.

Felted Flower Workshop

Felted Flower Workshop

Comments 12 comments

You may remember I did a post about dyeing silk hankies for a workshop at Pinhey’s Point.  https://wp.me/p1WEqk-j91  Sunday was the class.

I was set up in what was originally the dining room of the house. It was a bit tight with 10 people around 2 tables,

But everyone did fine. Everyone kept thier elbows down and we had a great time.

First, we did a petunia/morning glory. More in general shape than reality.  This is a nice, simple flower for people who have never felted anything before. Not a great picture, but it was the only one I could find that I had uploaded before. I used to be terrible at naming my pictures. I am much better now. Makes it much easier to find what you’re looking for.

Once everyone had their flower done, we had a break. The museum provided a great snack table for our break. We all felt very spoiled.

Then we moved on to the silk hanky flower.  I explained about what they were and how they were made, and everyone had to pick a colour. It was so hard to choose.

They learned how to make the stems and the stamens for a more complete flower. Here they are doing the dry rolling to compact it before wetting.

Then it got busy, and I was running around the tables helping people. It is always tricky getting the stem and stamen centred on opposite sides. But everyone managed.  The biggest problem was with stems not sticking. We had 3 with stems totally detached and one partial detachment. I think it was a combination of felting the base of the stem too hard at first and pulling it away when moving the stem to a different position to rub the flower. All but one had felting needles at home with instructions on reattaching the stem after it’s dry. I gave a needle to the last person and explained how to use it to fix the small area that was not attached properly.

No more pictures until the end. All in all, a great day. Everyone seemed happy, and there are definitely some new addicts in the making.

 

I have no idea what the white spot is. It is on the original in my phone.

Ann

 

 

 

Nuno felt scarf class

Nuno felt scarf class

Comments 16 comments

Hi all, although I haven’t been doing much felting myself I have been teaching others to do it. I ran my Nunofelt scarf class again this last weekend. I had five lovely ladies at the Ottawa Valley Weavers’ and Spinners’ Guild classroom.

The first part of the class is talking about all the fibres. Students are amazed at all the kinds of silk. I usually bring hankies, tops, throwsters waste and recycled sari silk along will wool BFL locks and sparkly nylon. They get to pick their hand dyed scarf blanks and then spend at least 15 min trying to decide what embellishments they want to use. It’s lots of fun watching and helping with colour and texture choices.

Silk hankies
Silk Tops
Dyed Silk Throwsster’s waste
sari waste
Sparkly nylon

It is so hard to pick.

Then it is on to lay out the wool. Once this starts I put the silk blanks away so no one is tempted to change their mind halfway through the layout. I keep all the wool and embellishments out until they wet everything.

 

Everyone enjoys using the ball browser sprayers to get everything wet.

 

In this group, they all stayed together during the different stages of felting. Often they become staggered; someone wants to be first done and another will be very relaxed and go slower. In the end, they always finish  and it’s interesting to see the different styles of learning and doing the same thing.

I didn’t get any pictures of the gently squishing and tossing to full but here they are finished.

nuno scarf
nuo scarf
nuno scarf
nuno scarf
nuno scarf group
nuno scarf group

All in all a great class with happy students.

The only odd thing that happened was one lady had brought her own wool, marked merino and she was sure it wasn’t superwash. She added my embellishments. One of her colours did not stick to the scarf anywhere. My first thought was it was superwash. However, it did seem to felt and grab the silk embellishments on top of it.  Nowhere she had used the copper coloured wool stuck to the silk backing. It was attached by other colours surrounding it so it’s all one piece but I have no idea what was/is going on with the wool, any ideas?

 

The Mother of Invention

The Mother of Invention

Comments 18 comments

There’s a proverb I like: “necessity is the mother of invention”. Apparently it started with Plato. I’m going to test it today in two ways. Firstly, I’ve had a lot of sales and exhibitions recently and I haven’t made much new work. I’m writing this while stewarding an exhibition. So, as my blog is due and I’ve nothing new to show you (necessity), I’m drawing on some work I did earlier in the year and reflecting on that (invention). Secondly, it was actually the need to create a lot of pictures quickly (necessity) that led me down the different style of pictures (invention) that I’m going to talk about.

As I’ve covered in previous blogs, I had a large exhibition to fill in April/May this year so had a big push from January to March to make lots of new pictures. As all wet felters will know, wet felting is not a quick process and there’s no mileage in trying to hurry it. So, as well as making my usual style of pictures, I had a think about the quickest felt pictures I could make while not skimping on the quality of the felting. Quicker pictures would also allow me to offer them at a slightly lower price than my other work.

Nuno felting (which is including fabric in felt) with patterned fabric is a quick way of creating colour and pattern as it bypasses complicated and time-consuming wool layout. And now that I can print onto felt (again covered in a previous blog) that’s a comparatively quick way of introducing images. 

This was my first picture. 

Square wet felted picture with patterned grey fabric on the lower half, two blown trees towards the top left on a white background with wisps of grey cloud in the white sky
“Monochrome Tree #1”

The fabric was a lovely fine wool scarf that I had bought (as always) in a charity shop. I have the solid beech frames made for me in batches in advance so I knew what size I was aiming for. I used a commercial prefelt of merino wool and silk  – again trying to minimise the layout time and it’s also lovely to work with. There are plenty of legitimate, free-to-use images on the internet. Sourcing, scaling, printing and transferring them to felt is quite time consuming, especially as I only planned on using each tree once for this first set of pictures, but I’m sure I will come back to them.

Monochrome Tree #2
Two square wet felted pictures similar to the previous one but without the clouds and with a dark line at the top of the fabric
Monochrome Tree #3

For the next (and subsequent) ones I decided to make them slightly smaller than the frames, leaving a small border around the felt. I added a line of recycled tapestry wool at the top of the fabric, just because I liked the look of it, and decided against patterning the sky. 

I then fished out some black and white silk scarves from my charity shop finds and used those instead of the wool scarf. 

Square wet felted picture similar to the previous ones but with a crow shape in the top left hand side of the tree. Swirly grey and white fabric
Monochrome Tree #4 with crow
square wet felted picture similar to the previous ones but with patchy lined fabric
Monochrome Tree #5

I added a crow silhouette in the tree on the left picture. A bit fiddly but I liked it.

Square wet felted picture similar to the previous ones, using the same fabric as #4 but with two trees instead of one
Monochrome Tree #6 Two Trees
Square wet felted picture similar to the previous ones but with a flowery patterned black and white fabric
Monochrome Tree #7

My next experiment was to switch from black and white to coloured silk, tapestry wool and trees.  

Square wet felted picture similar to the previous ones but with yellow and green patterned fabric and a green tree.
Green Tree #1
square wet felted picture similar to the previous picture but with a different shape of tree
Green Tree #2

When I was printing on Green Tree #1 I accidentally pressed a fold in the corner. It came out with a hot iron but I didn’t remember to photograph it again afterwards.

After I’d made these two, it occurred to me that I could double the width of the wool and fabric to make two pictures at the same time, cutting them apart before printing on the trees.  Why hadn’t I thought of that sooner? Super-speedy. 

Continuing with the limited colour palate, I chose a silk scarf that was red / orange with some colour fade across the scarf. 

rectangular wet felted fabric with orange / red silk felted in, covering just over the bottom half of the fabric. There's a variegated line of red/orange wool yarn felted across the join between the silk and the white wool background.
After felting and before printing

When the felting was finished I wasn’t sure I liked how much the white fibres showed through the red / orange silk. The previous fabrics had either been partly white or were light coloured so the movement of the white wool and silk fibres through the fabric had been less visible. 

As I contemplated this, I decided that I liked the long rectangular shape for a change.  I happened to have some frames that were more or less the same shape and proportions….and so “Red Trees” became a double-width landscape with two trees. 

Rectangular wet felted picture as in the previous image but with two orange/red trees printed in the top left of the felt with the bottom of each trunk touching the yarn line as if growing from there
“Red Trees”

That wasn’t where I thought I was heading but it’s fun to take an unexpected turn,

I have now sold more than half of these pictures, and I’d say they’ve sold slightly better than other work. I’m a little ambivalent about this. I like the new pictures but I don’t feel as much for them as my usual bird, beach and/or water pictures. I suppose that shouldn’t matter. They have definitely attracted a slightly different audience. When I get back into the studio I will be making some more. Not because of their speed as I’m not now under the same pressure, but because people seem to like them and I’ve enjoyed trying something new.  I think I will stick to the monochrome fabrics but try out some different colours. Having a group of different strong colours like the red and green might make a good display. 

And so, it seems, on this occasion, that necessity was indeed the mother of invention. I made a new line of work and I have a blog to post! 

View of finished cowl multicoloured hand dyed with procion dyes wet felted onto margillan silk
Rethinking old sayings

Rethinking old sayings

Comments 16 comments

My American Aunt, Rose (born in Ireland but she lived her adult life in the US as a religious sister and kids’ teacher) used to have a phrase about nice things.  They were ‘for special occasions and bonfire nights’. I suspect it was from a time when folk had one good outfit in their wardrobe but it’s a phrase that has stuck with me and, while the saying sounds fun, it has led to me not letting go of beauty, storing them up in boxes or in the wardrobes for that ‘special occasion’ to come along.  As I get older I have come to realise that every day I get to be on this beautiful earth is a special occasion and so it is time to get out the glad rags and let loose!  I am finally applying this simple principle to my fibre stash; so in this post I want to talk about some of those gorgeous samples that I made during the various dyeing workshops I have taken over the past nine months.  I wrote about them in my last three posts and you can find them all here if you would like to catch up with them. Adventures in colour Part 1; Adventures in colour Part 2; Dyeing to Eat.

I have to confess, it took a while for me to brave using the results of the workshops – the special occasions and bonfire nights phrase was stuck in my head and I was afraid I might ruin the samples (silly!).  In the end, I decided to simplify things and just play.  I started with a little weaving.  Some time ago I bought a small loom, nothing fancy, it cost less than €13.00.  It’s from Sostrene Grene, it’s a great shop for reasonably priced bits and pieces and it now is online.  Their website is here

Here is a photo of my little loom.  It’s great for playing as I watch TV:

Wooden hobby loom
Small wooden hobby loom with pen included in the photo for size perspective

 

As I did not have specialist thread and as this was just a play, I set the warp up using cotton thread.  Then I got to work, using some of the fibre and yarn which I dyed during the natural dyeing workshop last November.  I also used a cotton yarn for the background of the piece.  Here is a photo of some of the hand dyed fibre:

The final result for the fresh nettle dye. I love the variety of tints!

Here is the result of my first play:

Hand dyed (natural dyes) fibres were woven on a small hobby loom. Background is cotton yarn and highlights are provided with wool skeins merino and linen fibres. beige and yellow colours
Background is cotton yarn and highlights are provided with wool skeins merino and linen fibres.

Next, I decided to use some of the yarn which I dyed during the Procion dye workshop.  At this stage I had purchased proper warp thread and I decided to use a metal hoop for my base. I used a small nylon ring within the hoop and I set this off centre when I was setting up the warp.  Again here are some photos of the fibre and thread used.  I love the vibrancy of these colours!

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And here is the result.  I plan to add nylon fishing line to this and hang it as a mobile.

Hand dyed (procion dyes) fibre woven onto a circular hoop. Autumnal orange colours
Hand dyed (procion dyes) fibre woven onto a circular hoop.

Next, it was finally time to be a little brave and use one of my favourite fibre samples.  This is merino wool which was randomly dyed in the dye pot.  I loved the result as it reminded me of photos taken of deep space by Hubble. Here are two photos of the fibre sample I made.

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I felt I might ruin the effect if I didn’t felt it carefully.  So my layout had to be simple.  In the end I decided to make a cowl with it.   The sample length was 60cm and it was quite thick so I divided the fibre lengthways into two equal bundles being careful to keep the colours intact.  I took the two bundles and stretched both out very thinly width wise, again being careful to maintain the colours.  As the fibres were going to run in one direction I decided to use the nuno technique to stabilise the piece. I used margillan silk for this purpose (measurement length of sample x 2 by the width of the stretched fibre).

Then I cut a resist which was the same length as the sample.  I wrapped the silk around the resist as it was to form the base of the cowl.  I wet this to keep it in place (margillan is so light it has a habit of wandering!).  Then I carefully laid the fibre on top of the silk. (Tip: the start and end of each of the two lengths of fibre were not placed at the edge of the resist to avoid any possibility of creating a ridge).  I wet the piece down, rubbed and started rolling. (lots of rolls to encourage the fibre to go through the silk).  Once this was done I started fulling the piece.  Here are some photos of the process:

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And here are photos of the finished piece.  I am pleased with how the colours have kept their integrity and it has not become a muddy mess!  All set for the cooler weather.

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Next, I took some silk fibre which has been dyed in the same pot.  Here is a photo of the fibre:

Front view: Silk fibre. I can’t help thinking about Hubble when I see this photo!

This time I set it onto a black background.  I was so pleased that it adhered well to the fibre but the black did not destroy the colours.  This was probably helped by the fact that I did not fully felt the piece as I intended to frame it so I knew I could stop my process whenever I found it aesthetically pleasing.  There’s lots of texture in it which I am pleased about.  The black background definitely reminded me of deep space! Once rinsed and dry, I set to work doing some free motion embroidery. Lots of little stars.  I then added some silver seed beads for a little starry sparkle.  What do you think?

Hand dyed silk fibre (procion dyes) wet felted onto black merino free motion embroidery and silver beads for the stars
Mixed media: procion dyes were used on silk fibre which was then felted onto merino. Machine embroidery and hand beading introduced stars to the piece

Next, a quick update on my more recent dyeing exploits.  I attended  wedding recently and I needed a cover up which would tie in with my dress.  I did not have time to felt a piece but I knew that I had some light wool fabric which would be perfect if dyed.  Previous samples from the Mexican dyeing course I attended confirmed that I could achieve the colour I wanted from avocados.   I prepared my fabric (scoured and used an alum mordant) ate the avocados and then I dyed the fabric.  I threw in a little prepared merino and silk fibres too to see what might happen.  Once dyed, I hemmed the wool shawl.  I am delighted with the result.  This is one piece that will not be kept for ‘special occasions and bonfire nights’.  Here is the result:

woollen fabric which has been dyed with avocado skins and stone and made into a wrap. colour is light golden brown
Handmade wool fabric wrap (dyed with avocado skins and stones) natural dyeing

Then I decided to use the merino and the silks which were dyed in the same pot to make a flower.  The colour achieved was a lot lighter but I am pleased with the result of the experiment:

hand felted and beaded flower (dyed with avocado skin and stone) colour is pink tinged brown
hand felted and beaded flower (dyed with avocado skin and stone) Merino and silk fibres used Natural dyeing

Finally, every year, there is a local collaboration between two of our neighbours a farmer and a food producer (we live in a rural area).  They grow a field of sunflowers which members of the public are invited to pick and make a donation either online or through their honesty box to the local hospice charity.  It is always a popular event.  I picked some sunflowers this week and they are now looking gorgeous in my sun room.  I took off the bottom leaves from the plants before placing them in water.  I decided it might be fun to see if I could extract dye from them.  I also made a little pigment.  Unfortunately, the photos do not fully do justice to the beautiful green tones I achieved from the dye, but I thought I would share them anyway:

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I know I am not alone in my need to behave like a squirrel and hoard my treasured items.   I am so pleased that I have taken a tiny percentage of my mine and transformed them into something else which in my view are aesthetically more pleasing.

Now it’s time for you to share.  Are you a hoarder too?  If so, what do you hoard and do you ever think about transforming some of your stash?

Happy creating,

Helene x

 

Making a cover for a teapot handle and July’s page is done.

Making a cover for a teapot handle and July’s page is done.

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I have a teapot I really like, it has good balance and is easy to pour from.  I like it, except that it has a metal handle that gets hot resting on the teapot.

I decided to make a cover for the handle. I did it for another teapot years ago. Here is the link to it https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2016/07/18/a-busy-week-2/

 

I made 4 thin layers. 2 thicker ones would have been good for this small project but I can’t layout thicker without really working on it. I got a nice firm felt at 50% shrinkage.

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Once it was the right size, I rolled it into a tube to dry. The silk pops  so nicely once it is dry

Rolled up to dry

Dry tube ready to go

The only thing left is to sew it onto the teapot. I used some thick, black cotton thread and whip stitched it on

And here it is.

The funny thing in the lid handle is part of the original messy background I couldn’t get rid of. I made a cup of tea right after finishing and it worked perfectly, no more burnt fingers.

The other thing I finished today is my July Page of slow stitch on felt. No hidden meanings this month, just some random designs.

 

 

 

May and June and the Moose Bag

May and June and the Moose Bag

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The last time I showed you my May page, I just had a little to go.  Once I finished the stitching I cut away most of the stabilizer so I wouldn’t have to rinse it as much to get it all out of the felt.

colourful felt with stitching and wash away stabilizer

And this is it all done. It’s a bit sparse but I like it well enough.

Hand made felt with stitching. tulips, MOM, maple leaf and crown for Queen Victoria's birthday.

 

The tulips are for the tulip festival we have every year. Many are sent as a gift of thanks from the Netherlands.  The Dutch Royal family was in exile in Canada during WWII. We designated part of our hospital as part of the Netherlands so Princess Margriet would be born on home soil.

The maple leaf and crown are for Queen Victoria’s Birthday. She gave us self-governance so we have a holiday.

And of course Mother’s Day, at least here in North America.

 

I picked out a new piece of felt for my June page. I have some ideas for June. I was thinking I may do some more needle felting this month along with the stitching but I am not sure yet. I like the way the fiber goes across leaving lots of the white background showing.  I did this a long time ago but I am pretty sure the fibres are silk. The other thing I am not sure of is which way is up. the difference is more pronounced in person

 

The other thing I did was add some yarn to the antlers of my moose bag. I think it is all I will do. I like him the way he is. Not very ambitious but there you go.  I may add something to the other side of the bag. The yarn is handspun silk. I am not sure how well it will stand up to being on the bag.

 

 

February’s Slow Stitch

February’s Slow Stitch

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If you recall I did a small slow stitch piece in January. Look here if you missed it:  https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2024/01/26/slow-stitch-on-felt/ I enjoyed it so much that I thought I should do one a month. They are not very big, 4 inches by 5 inches or 10 cm by 13 cm. The base and all the bits and pieces fit in a sandwich bag in my purse.

February has Valentine’s Day so I decided on a heart theme. I rummaged through some offcuts and found this piece with lots of silk embedded in the surface.

Hand made felt with lots of silk on top.

I then had fun going through my threads to pick out my colour palette. Mostly pinks and a contrast. Later I will add a dark blue as a contrast.

many embroider threads for colour pallet.

As you can imagine with this being a slow stitch project and a portable one I didn’t take as many pictures as I should have but I think I have enough to show my progress through the month.

I wasn’t sure where to start so added the month and a felt heart with a simple outline stitch heart to make it pop a little. You can see I was thinking about the second heart when I remembered to take a picture

A felt heart stitched to a background. A paper heart pinned to a background and a stitched FEB

Some were online I saw someone stitching over an object and wanted to try it. I wove some pink floss over it.  I didn’t like the white and did try to carefully cut it out but that did not work at all. The cardboard was much too stiff.

pink weaving over a paper heart

so I did some unstitching and then tried again. this time I took a Ferrero Rocher Chocolate wrapper and after smoothing it out some, covered the heart. and tried again.

Just as an aside I was very disappointed in my Quality Street chocolates this year when I discovered they were in waxed paper. One of my favourite things to do at Christmas as a child and now was to flatten and smooth out the foil and transparent plastic wrapper. I know it’s more environmentally responsible to not use shiny plastic and foil but it is just not the same.

Anyway here is my foil heart.

Pink thread woven over a gold foil heart.

I added more hearts as the month went on.

You can see in the last picture I added some multi-strand multi-coloured colonial knots, here’s a close-up. I didn’t like them they just didn’t seem to have anything to do with the other part of the piece. I was hoping the multi-colours would tie them in but it didn’t.

multi colour colonial knots on a felt background

So out they came. I decided that scattering little X’s around to represent kisses would work better.

Here is the finished piece for February.

I know there are no X’s on the left edge but I did that on purpose, with a view to making them a book later and that would be the bound edge. So now I am on to March, You will have to wait to see what it ends up.

Adding leaves to my summer tree.

Adding leaves to my summer tree.

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The next step to do for my summer tree is to get it some leaves. I decided I wanted some texture so thought I would use some silk fabric to make some needle felted nuno felt.

I found some of my boxes of fabric and had a rummage for some green I found mostly silk and some stuff labelled nylon which is a very good imitation of silk.

The green and brown was my first thought but best to try them all.

I pulled out my sampling tree. The one that looks like a peg having a bad hair day. 😉

I then thought maybe I could put the dark fabric down and then add some other fibre on top. the dark fabric is the nylon. It’s a very loose weave so it pulls threads when you poke it.

I tried adding some loose threads but they just looked messy. I think they would make great vines in a swampy picture

I decided it was a waste of fabric to put the dark green down first It would be too hard to leave some showing properly and it would prevent any of the branches from showing.

On to the real tree, I did fiddled with the branches in the middle and it does look better naked. Not that much of it will show but still, it was good practice.

I tried adding it all as one piece but I couldn’t scrunch it properly. So I pulled it off.

I added the silk in small amounts

and all done, I left a few holes for the sky and a few branches peek through. I left the edged raggy to add to the texture.

 

    

 

And here’s the finished overall look. I like the overall look. I am going to have to fiddle with the roots. Combined with the slant of the land, they are making the tree look like it’s leaning over. I think a little poking in on one side and poking out on the other should fix it. I am going to have a look for the wool I used for the grass portion of the background to maybe put a little over the roots. I will have to do some googling for pictures of roots.

Next, I think I will add some rocks around the roots and maybe a few around the field in the thin spots. Then maybe some tufts of grass with stitching.  I may fiddle with the cloud too. I am still thinking.