nuno samples – Felting and Fiber Studio

Nuno Felting

April 5, 2018 Karen Lane Comments 13 comments

When I read this week that the second quarter challenge is to be Nuno Felting I thought I would share the first of the few Nuno projects I have done so far. I say “few” because although I trawl the charity shops for silk and chiffon scarves on a regular basis most of them still reside in the plastic box under my table! I’ve actually done very little with them so this next challenge should see some of these lovely fabrics being put to good use!

My introduction to Nuno Felting was in 2016 when I attended a workshop at Artvango with a lovely feltmaker called Clare Bullock. Rather than taking the easy route (silk, muslin etc) we had been encouraged to try a wide variety of fabrics, some of which were going to need a lot of coaxing to get the fibres to migrate through. Clare kept a watchful eye on us to ensure we weren’t taking any shortcuts which meant everyone’s samples were successful. By the end of the workshop I took home five pieces of work incorporating a variety of fabrics including fine cottons, viscose, silks, wool and polyester.

It seemed a lot of work at the time but there was something magical about seeing the textures emerging as the wool shrinks and I just loved the texture from the green woollen shawl…pity I didn’t get a “before” picture of the green/blue fabrics.

I came across the orange and the green/blue samples again when I was having a tidy up last year and decided, rather than putting them back in the drawer, to add some very simple stitching and frame them as landscapes.

Since then I’ve made several Nuno scarves but not really taken the time to be experimental with Nuno……this next challenge should provide the inspiration I need to have a play!

Felt for a Spindle

January 8, 2016 shepherdessann Comments 28 comments

You may remember that I am getting a new drop spindle http://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2015/12/23/i-am-getting-a-new-drop-spindle/ I couldn’t decided on what colours I wanted so I decided to make several pieces of nuno felt with silk throwsters waist on the felt side. If you don’t know, throwsters waste is a waste by-product of reeling silk. It is all sorts of very short silk fibers and threads. It dyes up lovely.

I picked out some small scraps of silk I had and then some wool and throwsters waste. As usual when I start felting I forget to take pictures. This one is laying out the wool on top of the silk.

Here they are finished. Both sides of each. Forgive the quality of the photos. The only camera I have is my iPhone.

This is nice but it really isn’t very interesting to me.

I normally like purple and orange together but this one ins not doing anything for me.

I go back and forth on this one. I am not sure I like the bright colours on the wool side.

This is a much thicker silk and it gave a different texture not so tight. I really like it.

This is a close up of the throwsters waste side it is the biggest piece and I couldn’t get as close and see it all. I really like it.

What’s your favourite?

Nuno and Stone Sheep

May 15, 2015 zedster66 Comments 27 comments

I can’t remember the last time I got a chance to do some felting, but I got chance again the Sunday before last, and I’d had the pieces laid out for at least a week and half. Two of the pieces were nuno samples. I’d bought some scarves and wanted to see how the fabric felted. For both samples, I laid out two layers of Merino tops and laid the fabric on top. The first scarf I tried didn’t have a label on it, it felt like a synthetic chiffon, slightly ‘rough’. It felted quite nicely, though there were a couple of places along the edges where it didn’t attach securely.

The nuno texture was really nice:

The next piece I tried was viscose, it was really soft. It looked like crepe after felting:

A close up:

A supermacro close up, I think I got the colours matched pretty well 🙂

Another piece I made was with Stone Sheep wool. I first tried this last month, probably the previous time I did some felting. I liked the way it felted and how fast it felted so thought it’d be really good for something I wanted to try out. I laid out a couple of layers of some carded Stone sheep wool, then added a big pile of fake Angora fibre in the centre. I covered it with a circular resist, covered the resist with some ‘Silk Schappe’ that I got from wollknoll (it seems like carded silk noil), then added another couple of layers of Stone sheep wool. I finished it off with some kapok fibre. When it was felted, I snipped a little hole to take the resist out and worked it until I got it how I wanted.