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Silk Cocoon

Silk Cocoon

I’ve been re-organising my supplies lately, and one of the things I did was put my dyed silk products into one box, and my natural undyed silk supplies in another. While I was doing this I had an idea to make a silky cocoon type pod. I had a look on google images and liked the look of ones which were more fibrey, ‘scruffy’ looking. So I started by really piling the silk on to my resist. I added a couple of bunched up silk hankies, a silk hankie I’d drafted into roving, silk throwster’s waste, schappe silk from wollknoll, different types of silk noil, some coccon strippings. I can’t find my undyed silk carrier rods, but I did find a little bag of ‘fluff’ I’d carded from silk carrier rod scraps a few years ago, so I put that on too. I did a layer of 18.5 Mic  Merino on top of the silk, then on one side I lay lengths of white pencil roving. I used 23 Mic Merino for the second layer, and then 2 layers of English 56s. I do like the way it turned out, but I didn’t expect it to be so ‘neat’!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI thought with all the silk I’d piled on it’d be a lot more fibrey, but it does have nice texture and structure and there’s a lot of different shades.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is a closer look at some texture:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd this is some of the throwster’s waste:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI wondered if some of the texture and features would show up more with a light inside, so I used a bit of sewing thread to attach it to a ceiling light to see:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAYou can definitely see more, and here you can see the ridges from the pencil roving better:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIt looks quite creepy with the light in, I think 🙂

Cheesecloth Meets Merino Wool

Cheesecloth Meets Merino Wool

Today we have a guest post from Lyn.

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I was lucky to win some of Ruth’s hand-dyed cheesecloth in a recent giveaway post – scrummy isn’t it?

hand dyed cheesecloth - Ruth Lane - small image

I really liked the pattern in the dark green piece, top left, so I cut a 27cm circle from it, then placed it on top of 2 layers of white merino wool fibres that had been laid out to form a rough, slightly larger circle.

I used white merino so that after the nuno process the colours of the cheesecloth would remain the same, although they would be slightly muted because of the migration of the white fibres.
To reduce the dulling effect of the white fibres,  I very carefully shaved the superfluous fibres from the top of the dry nuno felt. Shaving is a tricky process as the ruched fabric can easily be damaged.

shaving the felt - small image
I then messy-stitched the piece of flat felt into a rustic bowl.  I love this kind of stitching and it’s best described as stitching done with your eyes shut – different coloured threads, short stitches, long stitches and rows of stitches that meander wherever they choose.

rustic stitching - small image
I thought the centre of the bowl looked pretty without stitches, but it wanted to buckle a bit, so I cut a circle of stiff, iron-on interfacing – the exact same size as the centre of the bowl – then ironed it to the underneath of the bowl.  I used the base of an upturned tall glass tumbler as an ironing board.

The finished rustic bowl:

rustic nuno and stitch bowl - small image

Nuno felting is an easy way to add interest to a plain item.  This pod was made with a 20cm circular resist.

pod with cheesecloth - small image
I used four layers of merino wool on each side of the resist, then placed a circle of cheesecloth on the top of the side that would have the hole cut into it.

cheesecloth on last layer of pod - small image
The cheesecloth added colour and texture to the top of the pod.

pod with cheesecloth close-up - small image
Thank you Ruth.  I’ve now got two lovely items and plenty of cheesecloth leftover for my stash.

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