nuno felt – Page 8 – Felting and Fiber Studio

Nuno Challenge Experiment One

May 27, 2013 Shepherdessann Comments 21 comments

The second quarter challenge over on the http://feltandfiberstudio.proboards.com/ is mine but I have yet to start. Today I started. Months ago I made a shrug jacket and then died it blue. It would not stop bleeding. I rinsed it for days. Changing the water several times a day. I reheated it in vinegar water and still it bleeds, so I gave up. with all the work it has great texture.

To get the great texture it shrank a lot. It will no longer fit anyone.

Next I unpicked the sewing. Not an easy task. The stitching was really sunk into the felt. Next it was into the washer. I have a front loader. I hope it works well it isn’t as aggressive as at top loader. I have shrunk a sweater down from an extra-large to a child’s small in it so I had high hopes.

Here is the finished twice washed piece. The red piece is the original finished sized before all the rinsing and washing. The coke can is for size reference.

Here are the close-ups. The texture is much tighter and the piece is much stiffer.

The biggest surprise was that there are definite lines of wool on the silk side. I am imagine it’s where each rows of wool overlapped. I only laid the wool in one direction for this piece.

Classes at the Conference

May 7, 2013 Shepherdessann Comments 10 comments

This last weekend I was teaching at the Ontario Handweavers and Spinners biannual conference. Here are pictures of the Nuno felting class. There where only 3 people in this class. It was a preconference class. The full conference started that evening with the workshops the next day.

Here they are putting the wool around the edges.

Then laying out the pattern.

Close up

Fixing a spot that didn’t take. We needled it down and gave it a little rubbing on both sides and it was all fixed.

Finished scarves

And the happy ladies with their scarves and a sample done on cotton that they had time to do at the end of class.

At the last minuet the needle felting teacher had to pull out with a family emergency so they asked me to fill in. I didn’t take any pictures of the process we only had 3 hours to complete a project so we really had to move. Here they are at the end, happy with their projects. Four sheep ( I supplied the legs so they would have time to complete them. ), one pincushion flower and a little person.

All in all it was a great time with lots of friendly people. I will share more about the conference in another post later.

Sewing and Experimenting

May 1, 2013 zedster66 Comments 10 comments

I’ve been trying to continue with the things I learned during Ruth’s challenge for getting 5 minutes of fibre time into each day. I don’t always manage that and often end up with one or two days where I have a couple of hours fibre time, and 3 or 4 days without, but I’m organising my time better and having projects at different stages, ready to work on when I do have the time. On my desk I have a box of felt pieces that have been measured and cut and are waiting to be sewn. I also have a box of part made up items; things like purses, glasses cases and coin pouches which have been sewn on the machine and are waiting for me to finish off with blanket stitch. These are a few of the purses at various stages, the blue ones just have the back pocket mahchine stitched into place, the white piece on the left has some stitching around the pocket edges, and the one at the front is just in need of a button and buttonhole.

This is one of the camera cases I’ve been working on. The gray fibre is carded silk carrier rods. I blended some of the silk ‘fluff’ with merino and used some for surface texture.

I mentioned last time that I had one more felted piece using the pink synthetic fabric. It isn’t really meant to be anything but an experimental piece, combining nuno techniques and using a resist. This is a compilation of images.

Another experimental piece I did was one using some crimped acrylic fibre that looks like a synthetic version of laps.

It produced a really nice effect.

I have managed to finish off a few pieces and must get them photographed for listing on etsy. This ring pouch is one piece I finished. I first made some heart ring pouches a few years ago so I had somewhere safe to put my rings and bracelets when I take them off for felting. I’ve made a few more for gifts. They’re only small, about 2 inches high and 2.5 inches wide, this photo makes this one look huge!

If any of our UK readers use a lot of fabrics (I know we have some who are doing City and Guilds courses) you might be interested in a post I did on my blog the other day, about Abakhan, the fabric/craft shop I buy most of supplies from. I’m always interested in learning about others though, so if you have a favourite, feel free to share it, we all benefit from others’ experiences, especially if it saves us money 🙂

Dyeing for Class

April 29, 2013 Shepherdessann Comments 16 comments

This weekend and next I am teaching nuno felt scarves. I had to dye silk for bases and wool so there would be a good variety to work with.

For the scarves I used the scrunch method in mason jars. To do this you use fiber reactive dyes. You have to pack you scarf blanks tightly into a container. Next use 2 colours, pouring one then the other over the silk so that it is covered. After 10 min to an hour you pour the sodium carbonate over the whole thing. Then leave it for at least an hour but really can leave it till tomorrow if you need to. When you rinse you get great mixed patterns. For complete instructions go to Paula Burch’s amazing dye site. http://www.pburch.net/dyeing/lowwaterimmersion.shtml

I also renewed dyed wool supply. I spent 2 days with a large pot dying in 100 gram lots. this is two thirds. of the wool I split one third off each ball and fluffed them out for the students to use.

There are a couple of colours that are from using up the dye left in the pot after doing a colour. I hope my student like the colours I picked.

Pink!

April 25, 2013 zedster66 Comments 15 comments

On my last post I showed you a sneaky peek of the ripples and ruffles of the nuno felted piece I made for Ann’s challenge. Well, here’s the finished piece in full:

Here it is from another angle:

It’s kind of double-nuno because I started with some pieces of cotton gauze that I’d dyed a while ago. I wanted it to be extra sturdy to make a camera case out of it:

I really liked how it turned out, so I thought I’d make a similar piece. I measured this one carefully to make a book cover out of it. I also added some wisps of orange, beige and white to the merino at each end to match the patterns and colours of the fabric.

You can see the texture more from this angle:

And of course, a supermacro close up 🙂

I have just one more piece I made from this fabric, but it is still drying.

Coppery Bronze Felt

April 19, 2013 zedster66 Comments 19 comments

I hadn’t handmade any new felt for a few months until this week. I knew I’d have a spare couple of days for doing layouts and felting, so I went through my supplies and got a few things together. I wanted to make a texturey piece in coppers bronzes and metallic tones, so I chose some commercial art yarns, ribbon, silk tops and silk throwster’s waste in those shades:

I also looked through my organza and found a few different gold shades:

I mainly used a shade of Merino from World of Wool called ‘Rust’, but used a few other shades and blends aswell so it wasn’t too ‘flat’. I really like the way it turned out.

I can’t resist a couple of Supermacro close ups of the texture 🙂

This is one of the organza pieces.

Another piece I felted yesterday was a nuno felted piece for Ann’s challenge. I found a quite gaudy vintage pink synthetic headscarf in my supplies and thought I’d make a piece using that. The weather was great yesterday: storm clouds, lightning, thunder, hailstone, but it kept going too dark to take good photos so here’s a sneaky peek at some close ups and I’ll post the whole piece soon. Ripples:

Ruffles:

Has anyone else made anything for Ann’s challenge yet?

Synthetic Fibres and Fabrics

April 11, 2013 zedster66 Comments 15 comments

A couple of felt pieces I chose to make into things for etsy recently were both made using nylon fibres. This first piece has crimped nylon fibre which I dyed myself, blended with merino tops. The felt had a really nice feel to it, thick and kind of spongy but still light, and the nylon gave it a nice texture and sheen, a kind of wet look.

It was the perfect length for making into a notebook cover, and I got to keep the natural edges again too.

I decided to use the orangey yellow side as the front cover:

The other piece was one I made a while ago with trilobal nylon. It comes as rainbow tops and I carefully separated out some of the colours and blended them with merino. The result was hard to capture on camera but it gives a nice texture and shine to it, and when the light catches it, it really sparkles. The piece was big enough to make two camera or gadget cases out of. I’m just finishing a slightly larger one than this, but this is the first one I made:

I hadn’t realised how small my new camera was until I used some props for demonstrating the size of the cases, apparently mine is about the size of a pack of cards, it makes the new iPods look huge 🙂 I used a standard sized camera to test the ‘fit’ here:

I was really pleased with the way the flowery camera cases came out. These were made from a piece of nuno felt I made with a polyester scarf on the top and muslin underneath.

And because I keep moving all my sewing stuff from upstairs to downstairs and back in a shoe box, I thought I’d make myself a little case to keep my glasses safe. It was made from a piece of felt I made ‘just for fun’ last year and has as many different fabrics and embellishment fibres on there as I could find room for!

Second Quarter Challenge: Nuno Felt

April 1, 2013 Shepherdessann Comments 14 comments

This quarters challenge is about nuno felt. If you have never tried it, try it. Pick an open weave fine fabric and have ago. If you have tried it before put it on something you have never put it on before. If you make nuno scarves all the time try putting some fabric on a hat or pot or bag.

If that’s old hat they try some different fabrics, silk, cotton, linen, hemp, or synthetic.

If that’s not enough of a challenge try some fabrics you don’t think will work. Maybe thicker silk or cotton, maybe some lace or a woven plastic.

If you need some inspiration you can download Zed great book called: BEYOND NUNO: A Guide to Using Fabrics in Wet Felting. http://feltbyzed.blogspot.co.uk/p/e-books.html

Be creative and take Nuno where you have never taken it before. Don’t forget to tell us about what you’ve tried and how it turned out.

Latest Projects

March 24, 2013 zedster66 Comments 24 comments

I decided to take the plunge and open an Etsy shop. Don’t worry, that doesn’t mean I’m going to start making sticks with feathers and crystals stuck to them or adding ironic moustaches to all my notebooks 😉 Lyn was telling me that etsy have started doing instant downloads, but it appears to be in the trial stage at the moment. I added a digital download to my shop and applied to join their ‘team’ in the hope I can try it too, but I’m still waiting to hear.

I don’t have much in there at the moment, mostly some silk fibre packs and a felted notebook cover. But on Friday I was having a rummage through my fabric and with 3 large boxes and 5 shoe boxes open and contents all over, I thought it might be nice to put together a fabric sample pack of the different fabrics I used in my e-book. How long could it take? About 20 minutes or so? Ha! 2 hours later I was still cutting and measuring, taking photos, making piles on the floor, standing on the tape measure and almost slicing my neck open, getting sidetracked with a pile of fabric perfect for this, that or the other! And then I had to edit the photos and do the listing. I don’t know how people find the time! Of course, I’m pretty sure my fabric supply is dangerously low now, so I’ll probably have to re-stock 🙂

Yesterday I found a bit of time to go through my box of felt pieces to make things with. I had quite a large piece I’d made with black merino and strips of coloured cotton gauze. The back was blues and greens with silk embellishments. I thought it’d make a nice purse or wallet, with two sections. I’ve almost finished it, I just need to add the button and button hole.

Trying a button:

The back:

I still had quite a big piece of the felt left, so I cut the pieces out for another one:

The other project I found time for was sewing a notebook cover. I made a piece of nuno felt a while back from a patterned pink, green and blue silk scarf. I had always intended to make a notebook cover out of it but really liked it and didn’t want to cut it up! I think time has made it a little easier though 🙂

The texture is really nice:

I had a few ideas for making things with some of the natural white felt pieces I have spare. I started to cut them up, but you’ll have to wait and see what I make from these 🙂

Have you had time for making anything lately or is everyone battling the weather, it seems like half of us are under feet of snow. I’m glad it’s cooled off a bit down under though, only about 32C now in Victoria, Kaz has probably got her woolly jumpers out and the fire on 😉