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More Natural Wools and Fibres

More Natural Wools and Fibres

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I was looking through my flickr account recently for some photos to use on a flyer for the well being centre, and I came across some felt pieces I made with natural fibres and natural wool combinations. I haven’t done a post about ‘naturals’ for a while so I thought you might enjoy this old post from 2012:

Another couple of natural wool and natural fibre combinations I’ve used recently are Oatmeal Bluefaced Leicester with Ingeo top, and Humbug Jacob Tops with black and white Bamboo tops.

Humbug Jacob tops are a stripey blend of black and white Jacob wool tops. Just on its own it produces a nice result, but I thought I’d try using strips of black and white bamboo tops for effect. Both bamboos are really soft, white bamboo looks silky, but black bamboo is fluffy and more like fluffy cat fur. They felt quite differently too, the white keeps its silkiness and shines really nicely, and the black almost fades into the background, staying very matt.

Ingeo is made from corn, it is soft and shiny and smells faintly of caramel 🙂 I decided to cover the whole piece with Ingeo as it has such a lovely sheen. This was another fibre which shone even in dim light. The effect after drying is gorgeous, Ingeo is such a nice silky fibre and went really well with the Oatmeal Bluefaced Leicester. I think this combination would make a lovely soft and shiny scarf.

*The previous post I’d made was also about natural wools and fibres, if you’re interested, you can find it here

Textures

Textures

Comments 16 comments

I was really happy with the way the green vessel I showed last time dried. I was worried it’d lose shape, but it kept it and also ‘came to life’ when the textures/sheens of the different wools and fibres appeared after drying. This the vessel from above:

This is my favourite side:

I can’t remember which fibres I did use, I know it wasn’t many, I think the blue on the bottom is bamboo fibre. Most of the texture came from BFL locks:

This is a few of the tiny locks teased apart:

And this is a different angle of the single lock and orange BFL from the 2nd photo, where the side curves onto the bottom, there was a small amount of carded lime green BFL on top of the Merino, which helped create the texture:

This is the soft, wispy piece I was making in the photo from the well being centre:

I thought at first this was silk noil, but it looked a bit too shiny, looking closer I realised it was soy staple, just a bit more dense than I’d normally use. But we always do get carried away piling on the embellishments on these pieces!

Some red nylon, clashing nicely with the Green Merino:

The end of a purple Gotland lock, anchoring down a synthetic thick/thin yarn, with some pink viscose trapped underneath:

Just out of curiosity, has anyone used a ‘print on demand’ site for t-shirts? I’ve been looking at a few like Society6 and Teespring, but thought I’d see if there were any recomendations before choosing.

An Old Piece and a New Piece

An Old Piece and a New Piece

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I only realised yesterday when I started to plan my blog post, that all my photos are still on my old hard drive. I was looking for another felt scrap piece that I recently started on when I came across a piece I made quite a while ago which I never posted about. If any of it looks familiar, it’s because I used it for the banners for the studio site and the forum 🙂
I wanted to make a piece with colours and textures inspired by the natural colours of the landscapes between Manchester and West Yorkshire. I used lots of different coloured natural wools and wool tops: Merino, Bluefaced Leicester, Manx Loaghtan, Zwartble, Black Welsh Mountain, Jacob, Gotland. I also used raw gotland locks and Lincoln locks.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI mostly used mid to dark shades of wool and animal fibre, there’s some sandy coloured Alpaca in here too.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAFor texture I used some wool nepps.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd also some silk noil, I added a lot of this so it would look like a solid band.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERATo create a kind of mossy/spongey moorland type grass look, I blended some plastic fibre with some natural shades and  green shades of merino.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI was really pleased with the way it turned out, especially the shape, I wanted an organic shape because I thought this suited it better.
I did find the scrap piece that I was working on, I think this will be the outside of a notebook cover.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Finished Texture Piece

Finished Texture Piece

Comments 13 comments

I mentioned in my last post that I’d finished my white texture piece that I’ve talked about recently.  Here is the photo from the last post of it all sewn up.  I finally managed to get a bright enough day to take a photograph.  With all of the locks it’s really quite big, so I had to take it outside and photograph it on a large piece of cardboard.  It’s roughly 16 inches x 11 inches, but the locks at the bottom are almost 11 inches long.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI wanted to try something different, so when I laid it out I left a space in the centre without any wool then added a piece of cotton gauze after the second layer of wool.  It was here that I added the wool locks around the edges as well.  I then added another two layers of wool. The surface texture around the edge of the gauze is soybean top, a piece of cotton gauze and silk noil.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIn this close-up, you can see a few wisps of wool have crept behind the gauze.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe wool locks all kept their shape really well and none of them tangled together.  The Angora, Wensleydale and Teeswater locks in this next photo show how nicely they turned out.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI kept the whole texture piece soft and spongey by using wools like English 56s, Swaledale, Texel and Cheviot.  For surface texture I used cotton gauze, scoured Bluefaced Leicester and Wensleydale as seen in this photo.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI also used Mohair, wool nepps, raw Gotland, Teeswater and Wensleydale locks, and embellishment fibres soybean top and silk noil.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI’m really pleased with the way it turned out, especially the gauze panel in the centre.  Doing this piece has given me some good ideas for future projects.

More Natural Wools and Fibres

More Natural Wools and Fibres

Comments 10 comments

Another couple of natural wool and natural fibre combinations I’ve used recently are Oatmeal Bluefaced Leicester with Ingeo top, and Humbug Jacob Tops with black and white Bamboo tops.

Humbug Jacob tops are a stripey blend of black and white Jacob wool tops. Just on its own it produces a nice result, but I thought I’d try using strips of black and white bamboo tops for effect. Both bamboos are really soft, white bamboo looks silky, but black bamboo is fluffy and more like fluffy cat fur. They felt quite differently too, the white keeps its silkiness and shines really nicely, and the black almost fades into the background, staying very matt.

Ingeo is made from corn, it is soft and shiny and smells faintly of caramel 🙂 I decided to cover the whole piece with Ingeo as it has such a lovely sheen. This was another fibre which shone even in dim light. The effect after drying is gorgeous, Ingeo is such a nice silky fibre and went really well with the Oatmeal Bluefaced Leicester. I think this combination would make a lovely soft and shiny scarf.

Curly Cobweb Felt

Curly Cobweb Felt

Comments 4 comments

I adore crimpy and curly locks. My favourite curly wools are Gotland, Wensleydale and Teeswater and I love the shiny fibres from Angora goats and soft fibres from Alpacas. Inspired by the Twists, Twirls and Spirals challenge (and my recent obsession with Egyptian cotton top), I pulled out some of my favourite fibres and made a couple of cobweb-type pieces of felt. The main fibre I used was Wensleydale, laying down rows of raw Wensleydale locks, adding some locks of raw mohair, and Suri and Huacaya Alpaca and adding a few wisps of cotton top between the two layers and on the top. There were a few tight crimpy curls of Bluefaced Leicester too.

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