Felting and Fiber Studio

Terry Berries Popular Hat class will be running again. The price for this four-week course is £50 GBP (approx. $66 US, $85 Canadian, €56, $88 AUD, $97 NZ) and the number of places will be limited to 30 students.

The class will still run in July / August as originally planned. Registration for that class will open on 2 July 2020.

First felting tutorial posted on 16 July 2020 with another tutorial posted in each of the following 2 weeks. The class forum will remain open for you to share your work and ask questions until 27 Aug 2020.

This week I made some samples. First is a sample for my guild summer poker challenge.  In this challenge, you get to pick 4 cards that have instructions like colour fibre or yarn weave structure, spinning type and more. I asked if we could add a felting challenge too. because it was close to the time we play we used the spinning cards but removed the spinning type. You get to exchange one card from the hand you are dealt with.  I got cotton, fluorescent and metallic. I tossed back fluorescent and got blue. Every one thought cotton was very funny when I pulled it. Little do they know I had a project planned with some cotton. I couldn’t find my big bag of cotton but my memory was that it was gauze. I had a little bit of that in a draw.

I laid out some blue merino on top of 2 layers of gauze. Then added some coppery silk and some white silk and some orange sparkly nylon and a square of one layer of gauze. I meant to take a picture dry but wet it down to add the next piece before remembering to take a picture.

I then added some scrunched up cotton. It needs to be wet or it won’t stay scrunched up.

and the back

The sample worked out very well.

I did find my bag of cotton. I had put it in the laundry room to wash. It has a very open weave but it is nothing like this, so it will have to make another sample.

The other sample I did make this week was some Tunis. My friend Bernadette gave ma a little bag to try out. I have never tried Tunis before.

I divided it in half so about 25 grams of wool.

I carded it into little batts with my hand carders. I place them in 2 opposite layers and wet it all down and rubbed and rolled. It didn’t take long. The square was 10×10( 25.5 cm by 25.5 cm) to start and it ended up 7.5 inches by 7.75 inches( 19 cm by 19.6 cm).  so shrinkage is about 25% I could have made it square if I had stretched a little one way or rolled a little more the other. It ended up as a nice fairly smooth dense felt. It would make great slippers or boots I would think. It feels a little prickly if I put it under my chin. I like the way the coloured tips gave it a mottled look.