I mentioned in my last post that I’d played around with the hair extension fibre a bit more. This is the finished piece:
I twisted some of it around some wool twists I’d previously made, spun some with some white pencil roving, fluffed some up and made a kind of ‘ball’ out of it, blended some with Merino, and used a couple of pieces which were still partly plaited/braided. The two biggest patches on the bottom of this angled photo are, on the left, the loose ball, and in the centre, the blend with wool:
This is a closer angled pic:
This is one of the partly plaited pieces:
I undid the ends of this one, sorry, not the best photo:
This last pic is a small amount spun with pencil roving on a drop spindle. I just twisted it, then used it so it’s loose:
I’ve been trying out more unusual embellishments, so I’ll show that next time!
I finally got photos of the piece I showed being laid out a couple of weeks ago. It was dark purple in the middle with black at each end, and I used lots of different natural fibres on it:
I like these photos on an angle:
I think this was tussah silk:
And this is soy fibre:
My friend had some hair ‘decoration’ things that she was throwing away after using, so I thought I would see how they felted 🙂 She had plaited (braided) them into her hair, I forgot to ask if they came wavy or not. I used some wool tops I got in a bag of Botany Lap waste. It’s a natural grey colour, but has the odd bit of Angelina fibre blended in. I couldn’t see any, though:
You can see better from this angle how they attached:
Where it was thinner/spread out it really blended in:
I liked how it looked where it was thicker:
I don’t know what the wool is, it’s really soft, and the colours look like a blend of grey and oatmeal Bluefaced Leicester. This is the back:
But the edges are like a breed with curlier locks:
Have you tried any new or unusual fibres or embellishments lately?
We were talking about doing some ‘throwback’ posts this year, and while I was giving the site a bit of a tidy-up and adding a new 3D page over the New Year, I came across this one of mine from September 2014, and thought it’d be a good one to start with. Do you ever revisit your old work and get inspired with new ideas?
A while ago I bought a weird fluffy, knitted, tubular scarf from Poundland to try felting with. If you ever buy one, make sure you cut it over a bucket or newspaper or something to catch all the bits! I laid out a couple of layers of very wispy pink Merino tops left over from a book cover I made last year, then I added the piece of scarf, and 2 more wispy layers of wool tops. It didn’t take long to felt. This is one side of it:
This is the other side:
And this is what it looked like holding it up to the sky:
I don’t remember how long after, but I decided the scarf sampler might make a nice sculptural piece similar to one I’d made before. I didn’t make it in exactly the same way, I concertina’d it and stitched in place, then twisted and felted and fulled more. This is the top:
Close up of the ridges:
Super close up of the texture:
This is the back:
A close up of the back:
And a super close up of the texture:
Now, what do I do with the other 8 square feet of fluffy knitted stuff? 🙂
A while ago I bought a weird fluffy, knitted, tubular scarf from Poundland to try felting with. If you ever buy one, make sure you cut it over a bucket or newspaper or something to catch all the bits! I laid out a couple of layers of very wispy pink Merino tops left over from a book cover I made last year, then I added the piece of scarf, and 2 more wispy layers of wool tops. It didn’t take long to felt. This is one side of it:
This is the other side:
And this is what it looked like holding it up to the sky:
I don’t remember how long after, but I decided the scarf sampler might make a nice sculptural piece similar to one I’d made before. I didn’t make it in exactly the same way, I concertina’d it and stitched in place, then twisted and felted and fulled more. This is the top:
Close up of the ridges:
Super close up of the texture:
This is the back:
A close up of the back:
And a super close up of the texture:
Now, what do I do with the other 8 square feet of fluffy knitted stuff? 🙂
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 🙂
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!
I twisted some of it around some wool twists I’d previously made, spun some with some white pencil roving, fluffed some up and made a kind of ‘ball’ out of it, blended some with Merino, and used a couple of pieces which were still partly plaited/braided. The two biggest patches on the bottom of this angled photo are, on the left, the loose ball, and in the centre, the blend with wool:
This is a closer angled pic:
This is one of the partly plaited pieces:
I undid the ends of this one, sorry, not the best photo:
This last pic is a small amount spun with pencil roving on a drop spindle. I just twisted it, then used it so it’s loose:
I’ve been trying out more unusual embellishments, so I’ll show that next time!
