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Finished Texture Piece

Finished Texture Piece

I mentioned in my last post that I’d finished my white texture piece that I’ve talked about recentlyHere is the photo from the last post of it all sewn up.  I finally managed to get a bright enough day to take a photograph.  With all of the locks it’s really quite big, so I had to take it outside and photograph it on a large piece of cardboard.  It’s roughly 16 inches x 11 inches, but the locks at the bottom are almost 11 inches long.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI wanted to try something different, so when I laid it out I left a space in the centre without any wool then added a piece of cotton gauze after the second layer of wool.  It was here that I added the wool locks around the edges as well.  I then added another two layers of wool. The surface texture around the edge of the gauze is soybean top, a piece of cotton gauze and silk noil.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIn this close-up, you can see a few wisps of wool have crept behind the gauze.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe wool locks all kept their shape really well and none of them tangled together.  The Angora, Wensleydale and Teeswater locks in this next photo show how nicely they turned out.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI kept the whole texture piece soft and spongey by using wools like English 56s, Swaledale, Texel and Cheviot.  For surface texture I used cotton gauze, scoured Bluefaced Leicester and Wensleydale as seen in this photo.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI also used Mohair, wool nepps, raw Gotland, Teeswater and Wensleydale locks, and embellishment fibres soybean top and silk noil.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI’m really pleased with the way it turned out, especially the gauze panel in the centre.  Doing this piece has given me some good ideas for future projects.

Surface Texture Challenge – Mouldy Cheese

Surface Texture Challenge – Mouldy Cheese

A couple of weeks ago I joked that I’d found inspiration for Ruth’s Texture Challenge in my fridge. I wasn’t really joking 🙂 I’ve always liked the look of mould, but there was a really nice looking piece of mouldy cheese that I thought would be perfect for the Challenge. I didn’t get to photograph it straight away, and the mould had grown a little more than I liked by the time I did, but it still looked good. I discovered that photographing mould is as ‘easy’ as photographing felt, so it’s not a great photo, sorry.

Mouldy Cheese

 I started with a couple of layers of merino to get the shape, then I blended different amounts of greens and mustardy merino shades with some plastic fibre for the main mouldy parts and used white prefelt and wool nepps for the white parts, then I wet felted it. I didn’t get the colours quite right, but I like the way it looks and it was fun to do. Now I’m wondering where I should look next for inspiration? 🙂

Felt