I mentioned in my last post that I liked the effect of the plain green fabric so much I altered another piece I laid out. I can’t even remember what my original plan was, but I made a flat piece with various greens. I added some strips of the green fabric which looks like a chiffon (I haven’t tested to see if it’s silk, yet), and strips of cotton gauze and scrim. I overlapped the strips in places. This is how it turned out:
I always think angled photos show some textures you can’t see straight on:
I need to look at the fabric (headscarf) I tore the pieces from, it seems to have a texture or pattern to it I hadn’t noticed, like a basket weave pattern:
I liked the different textures that resulted from the fabrics overlapping:
Two pieces of scrim, usually very open weave, became a dense pile:
A big tangle of cotton gauze:
I don’t know if you remember the multi handpun yarn I showed a while ago, but I finished of a weaving with it. It looks less grey and dull when you get closer, but overall it looks dingy 🙂
I know you’ve been dying to know how my handspun yarn knitted, so here’s the little rectangle I made:
Here’s the other side:
And here’s a close up:
I still can’t do the cast off so it doesn’t pull and seem tight compared to the rest of it. I plan to felt this piece when I get the chance, by hand, not in the washer. This is another piece I’ve made specifically for felting, I promised Nada I’d make a piece with the pencil roving to see how it felted:
It’s quite chunky:
Another piece I made recently turned out really nice, the colours and shine are gorgeous:
This has a really nice texture:
When you open the yarn out, it’s actually a kind of netting, I bought it with felting in mind before I could knit:
I’ll show the photos when the top pieces have been felted.
A few weeks ago, my mum was talking about getting her bedroom redecorated. I’d been struggling to think of what to get her for her birthday, so this gave me an opportunity. I casually asked about the colours and she said she wasn’t sure because she wanted to match the paint to the wallpaper she was having on one wall, luckily, she knew what the wallpaper was called, so after she left, I looked it up:
My first thought was to try to convince her to have the nice blue and brown version! But, I resisted and downloaded the picture. Then I opened it in Photoshop and tried to pick out all the colours and made an image with a few stripes in the various shades.
Then I printed out the sample and stripes and started to plan a wall hanging for her new room. I wanted something soft, texturey, not too neat. ‘Raggy’ is the best word to describe what I was after, I think. I spent a couple of days making blended batts in the shades I wanted. Then I spent a few days making twists of wool and fibres and also spun some ‘arty’ yarns for the piece. Unfortunately none of the photos I took came out 🙁 but when I’d finished making them there were at least 150 lengths of wool, commercial art yarns and fibres twisted or spun together. I laid out a couple of layers of wool tops, then carefully added all the twists where I wanted them. I had to take my table outside to felt it because it was so big and I knew I’d make a mess.
This is a close up of it with the netting on:
And a peek under the netting
It didn’t take as long as I thought it might for it to felt, probably because it took so long to make sure it was all thoroughly wetted! This is when it was all wet down and starting to felt.
And this is the finished piece:
I knew as soon as it was dried that my mum would want it as some kind of rug/mat and the first thing she said was ‘Oh, this is going on top of my drawers, it’ll be perfect.’ Some of the yarns I made were by plying handspun merino with commercial yarns, but mostly I just plied half thick, half thin merino together. Closer view of the middle:
Here are some commercial boucle yarns, one twisted in on the left and the one I laid on top is mohair from Marilyn, I think. There are a couple of my yarns in there too:
I’d forgotten I used some organza and cotton gauze in the twists too, you can just see a bit of organza here:
Yarny Texture:
I thought a bit of colour might make a change from all the natural wools and fibres this week 🙂
I always think angled photos show some textures you can’t see straight on:
I need to look at the fabric (headscarf) I tore the pieces from, it seems to have a texture or pattern to it I hadn’t noticed, like a basket weave pattern:
I liked the different textures that resulted from the fabrics overlapping:
Two pieces of scrim, usually very open weave, became a dense pile:
A big tangle of cotton gauze:
I don’t know if you remember the multi handpun yarn I showed a while ago, but I finished of a weaving with it. It looks less grey and dull when you get closer, but overall it looks dingy 🙂
It looks even less dull when you get closer!
