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Workshop with Vilte Kazlauskaite in Slovenia

Workshop with Vilte Kazlauskaite in Slovenia

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Our guest artist/author today is Nada Vukadinovic also know as Halay on the Felting and Fiber Forum.  She has generously offered to share her workshop experience learning a Fiber Inlay Technique.

A few weeks ago I attended a workshop in Maribor, Slovenia, given by internationally renowned textile artist and felter, Vilte Kazlauskaite from Lithuania. Her work is fabulous. You can see her creations here: http://vilte.tumblr.com/

She held three workshops, but I was able to attend only one. It was called Fiber Inlay Technique. Quite intriguing, I had no clue what this could mean and I was very excited to learn about it.  I attended only one afternoon workshop. On  the previous day attendants learned something about  fabric manipulation in nuno felt, and the last day was devoted to the creation of a vest.

We were working with two types of silk: ponge and chiffon and were expected to create a piece of work, either a shawl or something similar, a flat piece anyway. I decided to make a square piece which I will probably use for a cushion.

First we were asked to draw a pattern on a piece of paper in the form of a mosaic that we would like to appear on the finished work, e.g. a bird, or something abstract.

I decided to draw something simple.

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We used different sorts of fiber (mulberry silk, viscose, bamboo, and flax.)

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When we were finished laying out fabric and fibers we began rolling and rolling. When we noticed that the wool has penetrated through all the layers of silk, we started kneading the piece and then rolled the project without the rod. The shrinkage percent was from 40-50%.

This is what we got in the end:

 

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Unfortunately, we were working only with white silk and some blue and white fibers, but I imagine it would be interesting to play with different colours, especially different colour fibers.  The fiber I personally used for the first time was flax and  fell in love with it.   I am already planning  to buy some and dye it.

 

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To put fiber inlay technique in a nutshell, it means lots of silk and different fibers. Here are some more photos showing Vilte’s work: beautiful textures.

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And here is some yummy hand dyed silk.

 

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Vilte uses natural dyes only.

It was nice to learn something new. Here in Slovenia we don’t have many opportunities for learning new felting techniques, but the situation seems to be improving. We are planning to invite another master from Ukraine and are getting quite excited about it.

Thank you Nada for sharing this exciting technique with us!

Third Quarter Challenge 2015 by Carole Gascoigne

Third Quarter Challenge 2015 by Carole Gascoigne

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Today our guest artist/writer is Carole Gascoigne aka Craftywoman.  She also maintains a Facebook page just for fun — Bagsalicious.  Here is Carole’s contribution for the Third Quarter Challenge.

I have to say this is a first all round – first time attempting nuno felting and first time writing a blog for this felting site.

It was a treat to be asked, then came the big challenge: what to write about.

We have a quarterly challenge and this one is to take a photo, take it into a colour palette site and find the colours for a project.

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I half completed this challenge, in that I found myself trying to capture the image into a nuno scarf or shawl, rather than, as I had originally envisaged, creating something more abstract.

Armed with my 3mm silk chiffon and pre-dyed coloured fibres, I started to develop my scarf.

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Top and bottom I used merino and silk in greens and blues. To the blue part I added white viscose fibres for sheen, and turquoise locks. The poppies (sorry about the blurred pic) were first a layer of raw silk fabric cut up into random poppy shapes in salmony pinks, with pink locks and fine red merino over laid.

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All of this, the silk fabric and the fibre design was laid out on bubble wrap – bubble side up.

Then came the hard work. I hadn’t appreciated how difficult nuno was going to be. Initially, I covered my design with net and wet felted the design into place. I then rolled it all up onto a foam roller, tied it together and started rolling. I think I rolled about 400 times, 200 each way – then I removed the net.

I re-rolled about another 600 times, changing the end I started with to ensure all the fibres had a chance to be on the inside and the outside of the rolling.

When I was happy that the fibres had migrated through the silk chiffon I added more hot water and threw the piece on to a towel. I continued doing this until I felt it had been felted enough.

Here is my ‘Poppies by the Sea’ inspired nuno felted scarf.

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Carole, thanks for completing the Third Quarter Challenge and sharing your first nuno felting journey with us!  It was worth the effort the scarf is beautiful!

 

Karakul

Karakul

Comments 16 comments

I was hoping to get some time for felting yesterday, but I had vertigo and felt rotten so I’m posting some pieces I made a few weeks ago. I got two different Karakul batts from wollknoll, one is just Karakul and the other is a Karakul and Merino blend. Just be warned if you google Karakul, you’ll probably get some pretty awful photos of dead lambs because their skin is used to make hats and coats because their wool is black and silky soft when they are born, and they don’t often make it that far so there’s quite a few photos of dead sheep too. This wool is sheared the usual way though. It is double coated and very wiry, it reminds me a lot of a Cairn Terrier my friend had when we were kids:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI used some dyed silvery flax with the Karakul, spreading it thinly across the top and bottom, and laid it  vertically in the centre:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIt looked like it was just sitting on the surface:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe contrast of the ‘dry’ looking Karakul and shiny flax, made the flax look like it was still wet:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe Karakul and Merino looked and felted  similarly, though less ‘openly’ or loosely and was a lighter shade:

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Both of the batts had bits of VM in which looked like porridge oats or tiny cornflakes. A few of the batts I got had similar VM:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI used some crimped Viscose fibre with this:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is some Viscose which wasn’t teased apart much:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is a patch where the Viscose was teased apart a lot and laid on quite thickly:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd this is where the teased out Viscose was laid quite sparsely:

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More New Wool

More New Wool

Comments 19 comments

I got some wool tops listed as ‘Arctic Fox’, no other info about what the wool breed might be, just that it is 25 micron. It feels really soft, a lot like Bluefaced Leicester, and it felted really nicely too:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThough it’s soft and felts like a fine wool, it does have some wiry bits:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI tried a variety of fibres it, along the top is Soy top, below that is black Bamboo top (L) and Milk Protein (R), then some Hemp fibre, and at the bottom is Viscose top:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAInterestingly it made the soy look like hemp or flax, which it only usually does with a coarser or curlier wool:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is a closer picture of the Bamboo and Milk:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAHemp and Viscose:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnother wool I tried was Skudden or Skudde. I couldn’t find any info on it in English, but there’s a Facebook group with cute lambs: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Skudden It isn’t in the Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, but apparently it is in the Northern European short-tailed family. I used this straight off the batt without carding it first, so it’s a bit uneven:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIt felted immediately, it was like it was felted as soon as it was all wet and soapy. It is weirdly hairy though. I was using new netting and thought frayed fibres had come off and got all over the felt. This photo is actually in focus, but the hairiness makes it look like it isn’t. I used black nylon tops, which are actually very black:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is a close up of the hairy corner:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAClose up of the left side:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAFurther up, it looks like diagrams of cell walls:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIt’s different to any other wool  I have, it’s unusual, but I like it.

Batts, Bamboo and more…

Batts, Bamboo and more…

Comments 14 comments

Our Guest Artist/Author today is Cathy Wycliff aka Luvswool

Recently, I received some nifty embellishment fibers from Zed (thanks again!) around the same time my Opulent order of batts was delivered, so I decided to combine two experiments.
One experiment idea was offered by Fiona Duthie on her blog and involved combining batts for color overlap or shadowing. I chose moss, chlorophyll, teal and sand. All were Opulent coopsworth batts except for the teal, which was handmade and provided by Marilyn (Pandagirl). As I recall, the teal was a combo of hand dyed Cheviot, Domestic 56s, merino and mulberry silk. I lifted the edges of each batt and overlapped the next color of batt, then wet-felted to the pre-felt stage.

 

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Next, I added the first set of embellishment fibers, shown up-close in the photo below: bamboo staple, banana, milk fiber and crimped viscose.

 

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I wanted to see which fiber proved to be the shiniest. As I worked the fiber in, I was not paying much attention to the coopsworth batts, which did not provide as much shadowing as I had expected. Could be the unevenness of the batts or unequal distribution of the overlapped batts, or perhaps not enough fulling. All of the embellishments added shine, but I think maybe the crimped viscose turned out best, closely followed by the banana and milk. Although the bamboo staple did not provide much shine, it sparked an idea for a future experiment as an inclusion in nuno-felting.

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I grabbed my next set of Zed’s embellishment fibers, this time using (top to bottom) black bamboo, pale blue acrylic (looks white in photo), black nylon tops and green nylon.

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I placed all of the fibers on Domestic 56’s roving, which I lightly pre-felted. I was pleased with the sample results, especially the grey/black bamboo (top) and the crazy/wild green nylon (bottom).

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I’ll definitely want to use these fibers as embellishments in my upcoming projects!

Thanks Cathy! You had some great discoveries with new fibers!

Natural Wools and Embellishment Fibre Panels

Natural Wools and Embellishment Fibre Panels

Comments 21 comments

I was thinking recently that I might have to change my plans a little bit, and make some different sized templates for my felt panels. Quite a few of the wools I’ve got have a very long staple length, much bigger than my current template. And the varying shrinkage rates makes a lot of the panels similar but not quite the same; so I think a variety of squares and rectangles might work out better to piece together in the end. I haven’t really thought too much about how I would actually ‘construct’ the hanging, one idea was the sew the edges of the panels together, kind of like seams on clothes, but visible so they formed little ridges, but I don’t want to lose the cool wavy edges some of the wool breeds like Lincoln create.
This is Brown Finnish wool with a covering of flax:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is a close up:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is another Finn piece, with a diagonal band of hemp, which is quite similar to flax.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAClose up:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is a felt panel made with  ‘Humbug’ (stripes of black and white) Jacob, I used black and white viscose tops for this:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is more of a straight on shot:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAClose up:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis last panel is Black Jacob wool tops and Soy bean staple fibre.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI love the effects you can get with the staple fibres.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERADo you like to try different breeds of wool for felting? Do you have a favourite or ones you think are better suited to particular projects? How about embellishment fibres, do you have any favourites?

Giveaway-Bits and Pieces

Giveaway-Bits and Pieces

Comments 41 comments

I thought it was time I did another Giveaway 🙂  I’ve gone through my stash of embellishment fabrics, fibres and scraps and put together a package that should give you plenty of choices for adding extras to your felt creations. These are some gorgeous metallic novelty yarns/fancy fibres. There are 5 different ones each about 3 metres long.

There are also some shorter lengths of novelty yarns in all different colours and types.

These gorgeous crinkly fibres are from another novelty yarn that I unravelled. I used a lot of them in this piece here.


There are some pieces and scraps of silk:

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Gratuitous supermacro of organza 🙂

and synthetic fabrics

There is also some Cotton Noil

And some natural fibres and top, Top L-R Egyptian Cotton fibre, Crimped Viscose fibre, Bamboo Fibre. Bottom L-R: Flax, Ramie, Banana top.


If you’d like to win this fabric and fibre giveaway, simply comment on this post. I’ll announce the winner Next Sunday, 21st October. Please can the winner comment on the announcement post within 2 days so I can contact you for your postal address, thanks a lot 🙂

FORUM
Most of our readers know about our Forum, but if you don’t, it’s a community of felting and fibre artists from around the world who get together to chat and ask each other questions about anything felt, fabric or fibre related…or chat about the usual things like the weather 🙂  We love reading the comments here on the blog and visiting the blogs of anyone who posts and has a link to theirs, and it’d be nice to be able to keep in touch more and build more community links. We’re all interested in the fibre arts, so if your interests are felting, mixed media, spinning, weaving, freeform crochet or something else we need to know about, come and join us, share photos of what you’re working on, ask for advice, give help to fellow fibre artists, meet friends and have fun!

Online Suppliers

Online Suppliers

Comments 36 comments

Do you buy fibres, wool or other felting supplies online? Could you spare a minute or two to tell me your favourite places to buy supplies online and what your most commonly bought items are? I’d also like to know what fibres you would like to try that you haven’t yet. For a long time, I’ve been planning to do a blog post comparing the prices of online suppliers. I’d like to choose one main supplier each from Australia, Canada, UK and USA, then compare the prices for a few commonly bought felting supplies and the shipping costs to each of the same countries.

I know everyone would like to support their local communities and small businesses, but with the current economic situation, we also like to save as much money as we can wherever possible. I know too, that for a lot of us, we just don’t have local shops that sell fibre supplies or nearby farmer’s markets, or there are other reasons which make buying online a necessity.

I’m hoping that by being more informed about the costs of supplies online, we can find the best places to buy from. Hopefully, it will make a wider variety of fibres more affordable and accessible.

I think it will really help new felters too, it can be overwhelming searching for online suppliers and trying to compare prices in different currencies and a variety of weights.

I’d also like to post about any bargains or exceptional quality wools or fibres, so if you have a favourite seller/supplier who you think deserves being more widely known, I’d love to know about these too. They don’t have to have a huge range of items, just something of great quality and great value for money.

Thanks a lot for your help and input 🙂

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