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Year End Round Up

Year End Round Up

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Every year I think I never had much time to do everything I wanted, but at least I did get to do some things which I enjoyed. I always enjoy the challenges we do on the Studio site and seeing everyone’s entries. I think this was my favourite piece from all the challenges, from Ann’s Stewart Stephenson challenge:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI tried a few new things this year, one of them was making a hat for the first time:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI also tried commercial prefelt pieces kindly donated by Heidi Feathers.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI also tried a new embellishment fibre, Kapok:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd some new animal fibres. This is yak, it was the softest fibre I’d ever felt (or felted!):

??????????????????????Until I got some camel fibre, even softer!:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI know a lot of people prefer to make felt with a ‘purpose’, but I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of experimenting and trying combinations of different wool breeds or animal fibres with various embellishment fibres, just for the fun of it. A few of my favourite pieces: Dark Brown Corriedale with Ingeo:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAngora goat with black and white viscose:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnother things I love is texture, surface design and sculptural felt, I did a bit of that this year too:

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI do like colour too, so had fun dyeing a lot of wools and embellishment fibres recently. The milk protein was especially gorgeous:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThanks a lot for all the support this past year and all the nice comments an helpful advice, I hope you’ve enjoyed your past year too 🙂

Giveaway Winner 3 and New Things

Giveaway Winner 3 and New Things

Comments 29 comments

The winner for giveaway number 3 is Donna (comment at 1.33am, November 22, 2014) Congratulations Donna, I’ll email you to find out which set of books you’d like 🙂

Last week I tried a plaid design on a piece of felt. I thought I’d laid the wool out thinly enough to work how I wanted, but it’s not as see through as I’d imagined. It still turned out alright though.

??????????????????????I’ve been wanting a large fold-away felting table for years. Every now and again I start looking again, but I never see one I want which is affordable. Last time I mentioned it, Marilyn said something about a board on a table. I started wondering where I’d get a good one, then realised I was staring at an old door I’d removed years ago. It’s an inside one so it’s flat, and cheap so it’s light. I tried it out on top of a table and it worked! This is it set up for felting in the hall, I’m looking down on it from the stairs:

??????????????????????And this is what I made: A yak scarf just for me, it is so soft and warm, I wore it when I went to the Post Office the other day.

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Yak and Bamboo Staple Fibre

Yak and Bamboo Staple Fibre

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I retook the photos of my Yak and Bluefaced Leicester pieces last week, but I’m only going to post about the Yak today. If I get chance I’ll post the BFL on my feltbyzed blog later in the week. I used Bamboo staple fibre with the Yak fibre, it is creamy white, soft and shiny just like bamboo top, but not being combed, it has more ‘character’. I added the fibre in different ways, some places more dense than others, and tried to keep some of the bamboo’s character.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe bamboo fibre is really shiny and the crimp catches the light.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is the part in the middle at the top, I separated and fluffed up the bamboo fibre, but laid it on quite thickly:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is the area just to the right and a bit further down. The fibres were teased a part a little, so are quite dense here too:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThese next two pictures are were I added  parts of bamboo fibre which had more curl or were crimped:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is the patch mid to lower right where the bamboo fibres were fluffed up and less dense than in other areas:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI like the way bamboo fibre can be used so densely it almost appears like a layer of fabric, or sparsely so it isn’t quite so obvious until the light catches it. I thought it really ‘matched’ well with the Yak because they both felt soft and smooth.