I really challenged myself the beginning of 2015. I was determined to try free motion embroidery and used Rosiepinks (Lyn’s) instructions for making a round bowl. It turned out nice, but it was a little tense going round and round.
My fan has to be the hardest felt project I’ve done so far. Getting and keeping all those fan blades in place was maddening.
Then I began work on making batts and bootie favors for my daughter in law Mari’s baby shower. 60 of them!
I attempted a felted box.
A clutch/makeup bag for a new Grandma.
I gave my drum carder a workout blending colors and making a color wheel for the 1st Quarter Color Challenge.
Still in baby mode, I felted over a wire baby buggy.
Cathy and I received our first order from WOW, so the sample making began using wools I hadn’t used before.
A wine bottle cozy.
Going back to my roots, I made denim paper, then felted it, and later made a glass case.
Stepping out of my comfort zone, I started using neutral colors and some wildly bold combos.
Some wooly fun with my Grandson Luke.
For a short period, Cathy and had a fish off.
For the 3rd Quarter Challenge I used a color generator, dyed, carded some batts using those colors, then made in Ipad cover.
My sister invited me to her quilt group for a Trunk Show.
To keep my earrings organized while I travel I made a jewelry roll.
I tried getting my work space organized.
Cathy and I attended the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival.
Dyeing for special projects. Some yet to be seen.
A nuno wall hanging for my daughter in law Lia.
A challenge in combining techniques to make an elephant pic for my Sister.
The 4th Quarter Challenge – monochrome panda with dimension.
Odds and ends.
Making ornaments with my Grandsons.
I had a lot of help this year and want to thank Cathy Wycliff for posting about making arm warmers, learning to make batts, her artist residency in Breckenridge CO, dyeing with natural plants, and Bengala dyes; Zara Tuulikki Rooke for showing us her process for making batts from raw fleece, shearing sheep, lambing in Sweden, making a rug from raw fleece and sampling different Swedish wool breeds; Leonor Calaca for giving us a virtual tour of the Knitting and Stitching Show in London; Carol Gascoigne (Craftywoman) for submitting her 3rd Quarter Challenge; Lyn (Rosiepink) for her 3rd Quarter Challenge submission; Mary Stori for her advice on beading; and Jill Chadek for sharing her journey to becoming a felt artist.
Happy New Year! On to new felting journeys for 2016!
Thanksgiving was supposed to be in Florida with the Grandsons, but the whole family was sick so we postponed our trip for a week. I had promised Luke I would bring more wool next time I visited, so I did along with some foam balls to make some ornaments.
I prepared by making some batts in different colors and brought embellishments and different colored roving for the boys to choose from. I thought the batts would be easier for them to work with on a round surface and I was right.
Josh had never played with wool, but seemed to be more fascinated with the soapy water.
I let them choose their colors and embellishments. After putting all the wool on the balls, we dipped them in the soapy water and I rubbed to get it started. Then I had the boys roll the balls in bubble wrap. ( mostly to keep them engaged in the process.) Of course, the Florida boy had to get into the swing of working with water. I put the balls in nylons to make it easier to work with for them.
When the wool started to shrink I put the balls thru the washer and dryer.
Luke also started to pull wool off to make a snake. Later, he abandoned the idea, evidently Grandma wasn’t working fast enough.
The finished ornaments. Three for Luke.
Two for Josh.
I made another for pink one Baby Lisa in California. Josh asked me about the pink one. When I told him, he picked up his green one and said he wanted Uncle Brad to have that one. Awww. Such a sweet boy.
I was really happy to share my love of felting with the boys and they both seemed to enjoy it. And now they have a souvenir for years to come. Best Christmas present.
I’ve been planning this picture for a while. It’s not the first time I’ve combined techniques, but this time I wanted to add more dimension to the picture.
It may seem like an odd choice of subject, but my sister Lorraine has loved elephants all her life and this is a little thank you for the Trunk Show I had at her Quilt Club a few months back.
I started by dyeing some silk and wool, then making batts. My original intent was to use the silk for texturing on the trunks, but the area was too small and since I wasn’t going to use it over all the elephants I let the idea go.
I built up the trunks, faces and foreground legs with coarser wool underneath, sewed them closed with wool thread and used resists under the ears. The eyes are garnets. I don’t know why the pics look brown, the prefelt was shades of gray.
The base was made beforehand with Corriedale. Before placing the elephants on I used batts for the water, sky, background and tree tops. The light beige ground is hand dyed silk gauze. I also used bits of Oussant fiber (from France) sent to me by forum member Aphee. They are the brown and beige areas in the foreground.
Of course, I had to add a little silk to the water and sky.
The tree trunks are silk/merino mix.
Once the background was all laid out, I added the elephants and needlefelted them down. This is before felting and fulling.
I did get some texture in the elephants, but the picture was a little flatter than I wanted so I added some needlefelting and fiber to the tree trunks and around the legs, hand embroidery on the toes and around the eyes, stitching and free motion stitching in the foreground grasses. Also the Oussant flattened losing it’s springy texture so I needlefelted more of it to give better dimension.
The treetops in the background were purposely left vague to let the elephants have center stage. More needlefelting and adding fiber for dimension and texture.
Some detail closeups.
Final hanging on the wall. I may have fulled it a little too much but I was worried about the thickness of the dimensional parts.
The first two years I was felting I used the shoe storage method to store my fiber. But as a fiber enthusiast and one to try new things my inventory and tool collection kept growing. So, it became quite unruly. The picture doesn’t show the overflow and piles in bins I couldn’t fit in.
I had piles of things everywhere.
For the past year I’ve been trying to find a system to keep my fiber and tools organized. I tried a wire cube system next. This was a real test of my patience.
I liked the openness of this system, but didn’t like it was so deep and I’d have to juggle the fibers to see all the colors I had. I did put my batts in bins on the floor.
So, I continued to look for another system. I wanted an open bookcase, but because of the dimensions I was limited to, I couldn’t find something that worked.
Then we had a big discussion on the forum about fiber and bugs, so I decided to try plastic drawers.
Now I have drawers organized by color. Here’s just a few. I also have one for alpaca, one for merino and silk mixes.
But I wasn’t finished. I organized my embellishments in two separate units.
This one is under my table.
I also used the furnace room door for coarser fibers and to hang my scarves and hand dyed yarns.
Here is my table with my tool drawer and a bin full of WOW fibers, some foam for needle felting and other useful tools all close at hand.
More fiber and bubble wrap marked.
Behind my table is my felting machine with more tools close at hand.
And my drum carder set off to the side next to another table.
The cube system is temporarily holding some folders until I figure out what to do with it.
Then there is the daybed covered with samples, bins of yarn, ribbon, scraps, etc. This still needs a bit of work. And my “paper” room which is now my dyeing room. That will also have to wait.
This system works for me right now. Its by no means perfect. I’m fortunate to have two water sources close at hand and extra space. I don’t think we intended it to be a studio but that’s what it is for me right now.
After market today we separated the rams. We do not want lambs born at Christmas time. Tex on the left and Burt on the right.
This is the future Ram. Poor guy has no name. Do you know a good name for him?
This week we also got a new old tractor. Ford Super Major 5000.
The early apple tree is almost ready for picking. It looks like a good crop this year. Maybe I will get some cider.
That’s a few of the things that have happened on the farm this week. I will try not to forget (almost) to post when it’s my turn next. Have a great week every one.
My friend Mary came over to get some mohair carded. We mixed it with some merino to make it easer for her to spin later. I have never done mohair before. It was very fluffy. It added a lot of volume to the batts.
This is the batt. It is not as compact as a straight merino batt. If you wanted it more blended you would split the batt into layers and put it through it again.
She also had some left over bits from other projects that we carded together.
Now for the surprise. My son came in from feeding the bottle lambs there lunch with a very noisy bucket.
We have a rogue chicken and she hatched 11 chicks in a hidden nest in the barn. They are now in a box with water that they splashed everywhere and some food that tastes best if you stand in it.
It will be interesting to see how they turn out. They will get a pen next to the older chicks today. They can’t be left with mom or they will not survive. Between the barn cats and the wild predators they all disappear when we have let them try to raise them.
As you may be aware my daughter in law Mari is due to have a baby girl any day. While we wait for the “phone call,” I decided to make her mother a small cosmetic case/clutch. This is her first grandchild and she has traveled from Japan to be with her daughter and my son for the big event.
I made a template allowing for a 30% shrinkage rate. I had planned to use some prefelt and merino, but I realized I was almost out of black merino. So, I substituted some black Corriedale for a middle layer. The bottom half of the resist was 9″ x 11″ (23 cm x 28 cm).
The inside layer was a turquoise merino.
The second layer was the Corriedale batt and the last layer was a black prefelt. Then I laid out the embellishments. As usual, I was so engrossed in the process I forgot to take pictures. The embellishments were 100% Peruvian thick and thin hand dyed wool yarn, a turquoise and metallic silver mohair yarn, silk hankies and green and turquoise throwsters waste. The template for the flap was not used as a resist, but as a pattern for the shape and size of the flap.
Once I was finished felting and fulling, I shaped the bottom and sides using an ice cream scoop. The shrinkage was less than I expected. But it was well fulled so I was satisfied. The finished size was 8″ x 7″ high (20 cm x 18 cm)
I used the yarn to put on her initials — ST on the flap and embellished it with a silver button and will either use a velcro or magnetic closure.
I was pleased with the outcome. It is sturdy, yet not heavy or bulky.
Our guest artist today is Cathy Wycliff aka Luvswool.
After several months of taking a hiatus from felting–due to a work project and family health issues–I was starving to get back into it.
Fortunately, Marilyn suggested a lesson in carding batts. I don’t own a carder and my experience with blending fibers has been minimal, that is, using my dog brushes to blend a few bits of wool roving. Last Friday, Marilyn came over with two carders: a Louet Junior with a very coarse cloth (40 tpi?), and a standard Brother with fine (120 tpi) cloth.
I felt more comfortable beginning with the Louet, and grabbed some neutrals to begin the carding process. I used these fibers with no particular plan for my first batt: Mystery fiber chunks and fibers, possibly some Finn hand-spun; hand-dyed vintage yarn (early 80s); small amount of Domestic 56s and Navajo churro–all in various neutral shades, mostly gray.
Then it was time to move on to the Brother for some finer carding. This time I went for color: Indigo-dyed Domestic 56s, dark blue Merino, hand-dyed mulberry silk, white Tencel, green mystery fiber, possibly Corriedale. The machine was a bit more sensitive, and so the fibers needed to be fed more carefully onto the drum.
I tried the Brother once again, using slightly different fibers and colors: Hand-dyed Indigo Domestic 56s, dark blue Merino, white Tencel, unknown white fiber (possibly cotton), and Milk protein. Marilyn suggested we make two passes through with the fibers.
Some things that surprised me about the carding experience: it took a lot of time and was more difficult than I imagined; the fibers don’t necessarily cooperate, in that bits get caught on the smaller drum; and finally, it’s probably a good idea to have a plan of what you want to make with the batts before you begin. This was an experience I really enjoyed and I have made a couple more batts with the Louet coarse carder, which Marilyn generously has loaned me. The neutrals below were passed through three times.
More mystery fibers in green and yellow.
Thanks Cathy for sharing your first experience with carding batts. Do you still have carder envy? Personally, I am happy to have the carders. They have come in handy more than once. I love making batts just for fun. I don’t always have a use for them and often give them away. Its always a creative learning experience!
Our guest author/artist today is Zara Tuulikki Rooke. She generously offered to take us through the process of preparing fibers from her own sheep to use for felting.
As I enjoy felting, I feel very fortunate to also be able to keep a couple of sheep. My four ewes are crossbreeds, from traditional Swedish breeds including the more well-known Gotland, and the perhaps internationally less well-known Rya and Finull. In any case, they do have really nice locks.
In Sweden, the common recommendation (with exceptions for certain breeds) is to shear the sheep both in the spring (to remove the thick winter fleece before they have their lambs and before the summer) and in the autumn (when they return to the barn and start spending more time indoors). The summer fleece (sheared in the autumn) is considered to be of higher quality. It has been grown while the sheep have been out grazing nutritious green grass, and not full of hay and straw like the winter fleece. Below is a photo of their summer fleece, sheared last autumn. The lighter, brown tips are from bleaching by the sun (and probably some dirt as they are unwashed).
My ram is from an old breed called Åsen. His fleece is straighter, without real locks. This breed can have a variety of fleece characteristics and different colours in patches on the same individual animal. My neighbour also has a ram of the same breed, and the darker fleece (black-brown-grey) on the photo below is from one of her lambs.
In addition, I also buy raw fleeces from pure Gotland sheep from a farm in a neighbouring village. The photo below shows some of the variation you can get between individuals, both in colour and in the size and shape of the locks. The lambs are born black, but later the wool turns grey and the once black tips are bleached by the sun. Or rather, they grown an increasing proportion of white hairs – there are no grey hairs, just different proportions of white or black hairs making the fleece look grey.
To a felter, this abundance of raw fleeces must seem like an ideal situation. And I certainly think it is. But, the process of turning raw fleece into carded wool is quite time-consuming. And that is what this post is really about.
After shearing, the fleece needs to be skirted and sorted, to take away wool that is too short, dirty or tangled. The short wool can either be from the head or legs of the sheep, or the result of what we call double-shearing (i.e. shearing a patch a second time to even it out). You usually also need to remove a fair amount of grass seeds and other vegetable matter that gets stuck in the fleece. That can take a lot of time, but it helps to do the sorting on some kind of wire mesh that allows small bits to fall through.
Then comes the washing. I try to get as much washing as I can done outdoors in the autumn, after shearing, up until the temperatures drop below freezing (in the North of Sweden that can be quite early in the season). I leave the wool to soak overnight in net-baskets in an old bathtub filled with cold water. The next day, the water will be really brown, but that just shows how much dirt you can actually clean out from a raw fleece with just cold water. I change the water at least twice after that, allowing the wool to soak for at least a few hours between changes, until the water no longer looks dirty. In my opinion, washing the wool in just cold water is sufficient if I am going to use the wool for wet-felting. During felting it will anyhow get washed again with hot water and soap.
During the winter, I do the washing in my bathtub indoors (which prevents anyone in the family taking a shower/bath for 24 hours), and then I usually use lukewarm water. If the wool is very dirty, I also add some washing powder (the type used for knitted wool items). The main rules when washing, to avoid felting the wool in the process, it to avoid too hot water, or quick changes in water temperature, and to disturb the wool as little as possible.
After washing comes drying. The net-baskets are easy to just lift out of the water and then I usually hang them up for a while to drip off a bit. If I am washing a smaller amount of wool, I often use one of those contraptions meant for spinning water from salad. Then I lay it out to dry, on a wire mesh or on towels on a clothes drying rack. Drying takes time, usually several days. It helps to turn the wool over each day and fluff it up a bit each time. It may seem dry on the surface, but wool has an incredible capacity for retaining moisture.
Finally, you have your washed and dried wool, ready for carding. However, some locks do need to be teased first. This means pulling apart the locks/fibres – and you will probably find even more grass seeds now. The photo shows washed locks, before and after teasing. It´s an extra step in the process, but if the locks are tangled in the tips, teasing really does facilitate the carding.
I own a drum-carder, which really does save time compared to using hand-carders. The wool is feed in under the small drum, which in turn feeds it onto the larger drum, as you turn the handle. After two or three runs through the drum-carder, you can finally lift off a batt of lovely, fluffy, carded wool. Then you can start felting!
It does take a lot of time and effort, and I do swear about grass seeds through the whole process, but each step also has its own charm. I often find it very relaxing to sort, tease and card wool. It provides an opportunity to really feel and look at the locks – and to plan what to do with them. And at the end of the day, when I look at my washed locks and carded batts of wool, I feel really wealthy. Perhaps, in part, because I know how much time and effort has been invested into those locks and batts of wool.
Thank you Zara for such a wonderful tutorial with exceptional pictures to show us the whole process from fleece to wool batts!
I had been traveling during the holidays and on the return home I had to start working on baby shower favors for the shower I’m throwing in California for my daughter in law later this month. It’s an exciting time, but also stressful with additional travels for graduations and birthdays coming up.
One of the first things I did when I returned was to go to The Fold to stock up on fiber. I needed primary colors to work on the color wheel for our first quarter challenge.
I also bought some Yak and ramie.
I’m not a pink person, but my first granddaughter will be born soon so I stocked up. I’ve been making booties for party favors, but I don’t think I bought enough roving. Thank you to forum member (Tina) Cherry for providing me with the template.
While we were in Hawaii my husband Craig and I had the opportunity to meet Tina Cherry and her husband for lunch at Duke’s On The Beach. Thanks for lunch Tina and Stan! We had a great visit.
Samples made.
I wanted one side to be lighter than the other so I proceeded to make batts combining white and pink to lighten the color.
I made 12 resists. Since I’m not sure how many people will attend the shower, I expect to make extras. I used two layers. One light and one darker.
Process started.
Here’s the third side done waiting to put the final layer on.
So far I’ve made 24 experimenting with different ways to speed up the process. Since we are in the middle of a blizzard here in the Chicago area, I ordered more fiber from Paradise Fibers in Spokane. I’m hoping it will arrive by Wednesday when I’m sure to be out. And of course, I have to decide how to decorate and fill them.
