Browsed by
Tag: trilobal nylon

Fine Layers and Shrinkage

Fine Layers and Shrinkage

Comments 10 comments

I took some photos while I was laying out my first Trilobal Nylon sample last week. They aren’t the best – fine layers of Merino and sparkly fibre aren’t the easiest to photograph – so I don’t have photos of every layer. This is the start of the first layer of Trilobal Nylon:

I didn’t overlap the Trilobal nylon partly because the length of the fibre meant 3 columns fit in the template, and trying to take into account the effect of shrinkage. This is the first layer finished:

This is how it looked with the 2nd layer of nylon on top, you can see I used quite a lot:

This is after two fine layers of Merino were added:

And this is when the four fine layers were added, just before I felted it:

It’d be good if there were some large, waterproof scales to use durinng felting, so the weight of layers could be worked out easily!

This is a piece I made last month. I got some fabric from a charity shop a while ago, it has some embroidery paisleys and little ‘gems’ on it. The way they are spaced out meant that I could either cut/tear quite narrow strips between the paisley or wider strips to include them for trying a sample piece. I hate waste, so I had a think what I would use the sample for, I thought it’d make a nice coin purse, but even after shrinkage would be too wide. Oddly for me, I actually came up with a solution before making the sample instead of 6 weeks later! If I used an odd number of layers, with 3 across the width, and two along the length, then I’d get more shrinkage! It worked too! This is the whole piece:

It is a chiffon type fabric, it feels synthetic, but I might have to do a burn test. This is one end closer up:

The paisleys are really shiny so not easy to photograph, they rose up and became even more 3d with shrinkage:

You can see the texture and migration more here:

Have you had any brainwaves and found solutions for problems lately?

Dyed Wool and Fibres

Dyed Wool and Fibres

Comments 34 comments

Last week I decided to dye some wool and fibres. I used up quite a lot of my dyed texturey wools when making batts recently, so I wanted to to restock those and thought I’d do a few fibres while i was making a mess. I ended up having to do it over three days, and it made a right mess, but it was worth it in the end 🙂 I bought some white Kent Romney lambswool to try for adding texture, I had a little bit of scoured Falkland fleece left over too so added that:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI’ve bought commercially dyed silk noil before, but it really isn’t good compared to the small amount I dyed once, so I thought I’d give that another go:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI also dyed some Tussah Silk tops – a good tip for anyone wanting to dye small amounts of fibre tops is to separate the amount you want to dye while the tops are dry, and soak them separately, it isn’t easy when they’re wet!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI used the same shades to dye some Soy top as I had on the Silk, and though they look similar, they soy definitely looks a lot shinier:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERANeither of them come close to the colours and shine of the Milk though, but I did do these on a separate day and they weren’t the same lot of dyes:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAt the last minute I decided I wanted to dye some Gotland, Teeswater and Wensleydale locks. These were all raw, unwashed, so the night before my last lot of dyeing I gave some locks a shampoo and rinse. From top to bottom: Gotland, Teeswater and Wensleydale.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Teeswater locks
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI do have some more stuff waiting to be photographed, some Bluefaced Leicester wool and locks, soy staple fibre and carded lambswool, I’ll add those to my ‘supplies’ album on flickr when I get good enough light. The last one I’ve got for now is Trilobal Nylon (sometimes labelled as ‘Firestar’ and sold at exorbitant prices) cheap nylon tops. The photo hasn’t really picked it up, but it has a lot of sparkle and these dyed really well:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIf anyone is interested in dyeing smallish amounts of fibres, I did a small tutorial on it a while ago: http://feltingandfiberstudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/direct-dyeing1.pdf  luckily this time, I had my fold out table for a larger work area! I used acid dyes which are good for protein fibres (animal fibres, soy, milk, silk, and nylon too as it is a synthetic version of silk).  I have tried it on bamboo before too and got some nice, pale results, so it’s worth trying a sample or two 🙂

New Notebook Cover

New Notebook Cover

Comments 10 comments

I thought I’d make myself a felt cover for a ring binder notebook I’ve started using for notes about batts, fibre packs and etsy listings. I made a piece of felt a few weeks ago from merino and embellishment fibre blends. I used lots of different fibres: Milk Protein fibre, Hemp, Flax, Ramie, Banana, Bamboo top and fibre; Viscose top and fibre, Trilobal nylon, Acrylic laps, Plastic fibre and Egyptian cotton. This is the whole piece after felting:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI recently made another notebook and made the straps to go through the Delrin clips from felt, and it looked really nice, so I thought I’d do the same for this one. This is the front:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIt took hours to sew (at least 9 episodes of Hawaii Five – 0!) because I machine stitched the straps into place on the back (with my hand operated Singer), and then hand sewed everything else and finished off the edges with blanket stitch.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI left the natural felt edge for the front inside flap.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI cut the back flap to size and used the offcuts for the straps.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI don’t often spend so much time on something for myself, but I’m glad I did, I really like it 🙂

Synthetic Fibres and Fabrics

Synthetic Fibres and Fabrics

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.

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

notebook coverI decided to use the orangey yellow side as the front cover:

OrangeThe 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:

stripey nylonI 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:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI 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.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd 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!

glasses case

Nylon

Nylon

Comments 6 comments

Part Two: Trilobal Nylon top

Another Nylon fibre I’ve been using recently is Rainbow Trilobal nylon tops. Trilobal nylon is incredibly bright and shiny, sparkly even. Just like other nylon, it can be dyed with acid dyes. The Rainbow top I used was from World of Wool. I’ve used it ‘as it comes’ for surface design on a few felt pieces, but for this piece, I separated the individual colours and blended the nylon with merino of similar shades.

It felts really nicely, and gives an interesting texture to the felt, aswell as a shiny, sparkly look. Like other nylon fibres it is really inexpensive and a great way for adding interest to felt.

%d bloggers like this: