wool twists – Felting and Fiber Studio

4th Quarter Challenge Sample

October 12, 2018 zedster66 Comments 10 comments

I thought I’d try an idea out for the 4th Quarter Challenge. The basic idea was to use wool tubes with fabric, some under, and some over. Because they are quite thin and hollow, I thought they probably wouldn’t have much effect on the fabric, other than visual. I did use a couple of wool twists too. This is the finished piece:

When I’d rinsed it and squeezed the water out, I didn’t roll it in a towel or try to flatten/smooth it, like I usually do, I wanted to keep the texture. You can see it from this angle:

And this one:

This is a strip of cotton gauze:

This is some synthetic chiffon. I’m guessing I used twists under this piece because there seems to be more of an effect:

The close up photos of the silk strip didn’t turn out, but here’s where silk, cotton gauze and silk taffeta all meet:

This is a close up of the Silk Taffeta, I used twists over and under this:

I used some heavier synthetic chiffon. I know this fabric doesn’t attach very firmly, but I like to use it because it does ripple nicely and looks good:

I love my camera! I can see inside the ripple here:

It’s given me a better idea of what I might do on a bigger piece. How are your ideas coming?

4th Quarter Challenge 2018

October 4, 2018 zedster66 Comments 10 comments

The theme of this year’s challenge has been Surface Design. So far, we’ve had Mixed Media, Nuno Felting, and Beneath the Surface. I was torn between a couple of ideas, but went with the one I had when the 4 of us discussed the theme for this year: something about rolling and twisting fibres. So my challenge is: Twists, Tubes and Yarns. I made a post not too long ago with some pieces I made with wool twists and tubes, and there is a video at the bottom which shows how to make the tubes using a kebab skewer. This is a pile of softly twisted wool I made:

To make the twists, I take small amounts of wool and fibres and while holding one end, roll the fibres across a surface, a piece of bubble-wrap is good. I then hold the other end, and twist again. You can ‘set’ the twist by spraying with a little water too. I made this piece about 10 years ago, it’s still one of my favourites:

You can make blends of wool in different colours, or blend fibres in. This piece is made with twists of wool and plastic fibre:

And, this piece is made with twists made with wool and commercial novelty yarns:

The wool tubes, or ‘kebabs’ are something I love to make, just making a pile of them feels creative and is really relaxing. I first made them accidentally when I realised a kebab skewer was great for poking into my little hand carders to pick up trapped fibres, and they’d come out easily if I rolled it around. I ended up with some funky/random tubes.

Like the wool twists, the wool tubes can be made of just wool, or wool blended with fibres, threads etc. Have a look at this post for some ideas: https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2017/08/14/felted-wool-kebabs/
This is one of my fave pieces, probably because it had very little planning/thinking involved, I just grabbed a couple of colours of Merino and a handful of already made tubes:

Handmade yarns can be made from anything you can twist (try organza or plastic bags if you haven’t already!) and can be used in many ways. This piece is made with wool and some old threads and unravellings from fabric, from a previous challenge:

This is a wet felted piece I made using some of my earliest attempts at making hand made yarn on a drop spindle:

I tried out some other early yarn that I made on two pieces, one was wet felted:

And the other was needle felted:

It’s great for weaving with:

Or, if you want something a bit more adventurous, how about needling it onto a vessel (scroll down) https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2012/12/12/yarny-vessel/

So, there’s just a few ideas, if you’ve tried some or all of these before, step out of your comfort zone, try something new, and maybe even use some of this years previous challenges for inspiration or in combination!

Present For My Mum

July 23, 2014 zedster66 Comments 36 comments

A few weeks ago, my mum was talking about getting her bedroom redecorated. I’d been struggling to think of what to get her for her birthday, so this gave me an opportunity. I casually asked about the colours and she said she wasn’t sure because she wanted to match the paint to the wallpaper she was having on one wall, luckily, she knew what the wallpaper was called, so after she left, I looked it up:

My first thought was to try to convince her to have the nice blue and brown version! But, I resisted and downloaded the picture. Then I opened it in Photoshop and tried to pick out all the colours and made an image with a few stripes in the various shades.

Then I printed out the sample and stripes and started to plan a wall hanging for her new room. I wanted something soft, texturey, not too neat. ‘Raggy’ is the best word to describe what I was after, I think. I spent a couple of days making blended batts in the shades I wanted. Then I spent a few days making twists of wool and fibres and also spun some ‘arty’ yarns for the piece. Unfortunately none of the photos I took came out 🙁 but when I’d finished making them there were at least 150 lengths of wool, commercial art yarns and fibres twisted or spun together. I laid out a couple of layers of wool tops, then carefully added all the twists where I wanted them. I had to take my table outside to felt it because it was so big and I knew I’d make a mess.

This is a close up of it with the netting on:

And a peek under the netting

It didn’t take as long as I thought it might for it to felt, probably because it took so long to make sure it was all thoroughly wetted! This is when it was all wet down and starting to felt.

And this is the finished piece:

I knew as soon as it was dried that my mum would want it as some kind of rug/mat and the first thing she said was ‘Oh, this is going on top of my drawers, it’ll be perfect.’ Some of the yarns I made were by plying handspun merino with commercial yarns, but mostly I just plied half thick, half thin merino together. Closer view of the middle:

Here are some commercial boucle yarns, one twisted in on the left and the one I laid on top is mohair from Marilyn, I think. There are a couple of my yarns in there too: