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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

Ingeo

Ingeo

Comments 15 comments

I haven’t had chance to get my felting stuff out for ages, so I’ve been working on my epic ‘Other fibres project’, which originally was going to be a simple e-book guide to embellishment fibres, but has turned into something of a 7 year journey to try every fibre with every breed of wool and animal fibre I can get my hands on, as it constantly gets shoved aside for other things. Looking through some of my samples, I found a couple of pieces using Ingeo. I like Ingeo fibre. All embellishment fibres have something which sets them apart from others, and for Ingeo, I think it’s the way it looks soft and fluffy, and slightly matt. Although it isn’t particularly shiny, but it does have a sheen.  This first piece is natural grey Merino.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAYou can see on this closer pic how it pulls together where it’s laid out thicker:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAGetting in closer, you can see the Merino migration through the Ingeo, and though the Ingeo is thick, it is still smooth:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis close up of the bottom shows what it looks like when it is sparser.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAWhen I used Ingeo on this piece with dark grey Icelandic, I didn’t lay it so thickly:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI like the way it looks so different with the Icelandic, where it’s sparse it even looks a different colour.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThere’s a lot more migration with the coarser Icelandic:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAYou can see on this close up where the Ingeo is quite dense, it pulls together in a similar way to on the Merino, but isn’t quite as smooth:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERADo you have a favourite embellishment fibre or animal fibre and embellishment fibre combination?

Even more Natural Wools and Fibres

Even more Natural Wools and Fibres

Comments 12 comments

Earlier this year, I made a piece of felt intending to make a notebook cover out of it. The base is natural grey Merino and on the top there is: crimped viscose; black viscose top; banana fibre; hemp; soybean fibre and top; milk protein fibre; black and white bamboo top; ramie; ingeo; flax; silk top; egyptian cotton and cotton gauze.

I’d really like to use a yarn or thread spun from natural grey wool to sew it up, preferably not too expensive. If anyone knows anywhere selling natural yarns, I’d be really grateful to know 🙂

Every now and again, I like to try felting with things found in the garden. A while ago I tried bamboo leaves between layers of felt which turned out really well. I also tried some pampas grass flowers (Cortaderia) at the same time, and was surprised how well that felted with very little anchorage. The pampas is felted to the surface and on this piece is just artistic/decorative, it wouldn’t stand up to handling etc.

I don’t know what plant I used in the third piece, it is some little branches from a tumbleweed my girlfriend saw while out walking her dog and brought home for me. I love the way it looks held up to the light, it almost looks stitched.

 

*** Sorry for the lay out and the use of the carousel yet again. I did originally format the post so that the photos appeared between the text in the relevant places, but, like Ann last week (and me every time I try to include photos) what was published was nothing like how it was originally layed out. After 3 attempts to get it to stay how I write it, I’m giving up. To see larger photos, click ‘permalink’ under the photos in the carousel.

Lots of ‘other’ fibres

Lots of ‘other’ fibres

Comments 13 comments

Although a lot of the speciality fibre tops seem to look very similar at first, especially the white ones, they all have their own unique qualities. It’s interesting to try the different fibres on different types of wool to find out how they work together. Sometimes, they really compliment each other. Other times, like Banana fibre on grey Suffolk, they give interesting textural results. One thing I like to try is lots of different fibres on one type of wool. This shows the differences in how the fibres work with the same wool and also which would work well together with the same wool. I recently got some nice brown Finnish wool tops and tried 7 different speciality fibres with it. I alternated between the white/silvery fibres and the creamy/golden fibres. In order from Top to Bottom, I used: Banana fibre tops; Soybean tops; Ingeo tops; Flax; Milk Protein fibre tops; Hemp and Ramie tops.

Earlier this year I made a Merino and Hemp pouch which was ‘lined’ with cotton gauze. The texture was gorgeous. I’ve used the gauze a few times along with other fibres, and it always looks great, so I thought I’d try it on its own with some dark brown Corriedale. I’d planned to use it just as a test piece, but I really liked how it turned out, so I tried it in a frame I’d recently bought and loved the way it looked.

What have you been working on lately? Do you have a favourite combination of other/speciality fibres that work well together? Or a fibre or fabric like the gauze which makes a great feature by itself?

*** If you want to see decent sized pictures, click on ‘Permalink’ under the photo. For some reason that carousel thing makes them ridiculously small

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.

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