Natural wools and fibres

I've been trying out different natural coloured wools with different natural fibres over the past few months. By 'natural' fibres, I mean plant based like bamboo, corn, soybean, hemp etc, though there have also been a few trials with leaves and stuff from the garden :)
Flax looks and feels just like dried plant material before felting, but after felting is a lot softer and shiny. This is a before and after felting picture of flax wet felted with natural brown merino tops:

Another combination I tried was Black Jacob tops and natural Soybean tops. As the felt was drying the soybean looked a gorgeous shiny golden colour:

One of my favourites lately was Oatmeal Bluefaced Leicester with Ingeo top, I covered the whole piece with Ingeo tops. This was another piece that really shined in the dim light as it was drying. Here's a half and half picture of drying and dry:

Humbug Jacob Tops is a blend of black and white Jacob fleece that gives a subtle stripey effect, I used strips of black and white bamboo with this. Black bamboo is very matt, and white bamboo is very shiny.

                                    

Do you have any favourite combinations of natural wools and natural fibres? It's really interesting seeing how a fibre can look very different depending on which wool it's used with.
If you'd like to see more/bigger versions of the photos, have a look on the Felting and Fiber Studio site.
This post features the Flax and Soybean pieces, and this post features the Ingeo and Bamboo. If you click 'permalink' under the photos in the gallery, you get proper sized photos.

Even more sewing!

I've been busy tidying up/clearing out recently, but I've managed to get some sewing done when I've had some sit down with a cup of tea time. The first thing I did was some sewing on a very hairy hand felted alpaca bag. I used some poor quality alpaca tops that I got a few years ago and made a little bag with a flap. You can see pictures of it here. I thought I'd use it to try out some TAST stitches. The first thing I did was add some little shapes to the flap. I made a pattern in Photoshop, stitched an outline, then filled the shapes in with really close blanket/buttonhole stitch.

I've started on the front of the bag, but I've only done a border so far. I used shisha mirrors bought from ebay in the centre of my shapes and a few people were interested in them. While I was searching for pictures of the mirrors, I came across this great tutorial from Emily at joyfulabode.com about how to sew your own shisha mirrors. I gave it a go and was surprised at how well it worked out. I'm not sure I do it exactly the same as her on the back stitch, but it works and looks good! :)

I added chain stitch around the edge:

I've already started working on using different things to attach with the same technique.

The latest thing I finished was my chain stitch piece from last week's TAST. I'm running really low on my natural yarn now, so I'll have to get the spindle out and make more! It'd be nice to have a supply of bought natural wool threads, so if you know anywhere that sells them...something around the thickness of cotton perle 5...I'd be grateful to know :)

More Stitching

I've been learning some new stitches with Take a Stitch Tuesday. I found it quite hard at first, but then I bought some aida fabric with holes which helped me learn the stitches neatly (there's a lot of counting in sewing!). I wanted to try actually using the stitches though, so made some felt to practise, but then I worried about messing up and ruining it :) So I hunted through my scrap box (I never throw any felt away) and found some offcuts from when I made a set of placemats and coasters. I had some handspun thread that I also made at the same time, but spun some more just in case.
I then edged some offcuts with blanket stitch and practised my new sewing skills :)

                                                                      Buttonhole:

                                                                       Fly Stitch:

                                                                   Cretan Stitch:

Feather Stitch:

Herringbone:

Chevron Stitch:

I love using natural wools, and I'm really enjoying learning new stitches :)
I do have one problem though, I only have 1 good needle. I bought some embroidery needles, but they're not sharp and I need sharp to poke through thick wool, if anyone has any advice, I'd be really grateful :)

Surface Texture

At the beginning of the year, Ruth posted a Surface Texture Challenge for the First Quarter Studio Challenge on the Felting and Fiber Studio site..

I love taking photos of anything interesting, so I really liked the idea of this challenge. Not long after Ruth announced it, we had a really frosty day here. I was inspired by a patch of frosty moss in the back garden and made my first wet felted piece for the challenge. I used a blend of green merino shades and carded plastic fibre made from recycled plastic bottles. You can read more here.

My second wet felted piece was a bit more of a challenge... mouldy cheese :)
Here's the source of inspiration:

                                     

and the felted piece:

Ruth was inspired by bark and made a really nice wet felted Kindle cover using water soluble fabric, machine stitching and viscose fibre, it turned out really well. You should also check out these amazing felt sculptures by LizB. If you'd like to join in, come over to the Felting and Fiber Studio, click 'Challenges' in the categories on the right, and you'll see all the related posts.

Nylon

Nylon is a great versatile fibre for using with felt. It is soft, shiny and can be dyed with acid dyes just like wool or silk. It is also really inexpensive and a small amount goes a long way. I made this first piece using just 3 colours of merino and 3 shades of dyed crimped nylon fibre: red, yellow and blue. I blended them togther to make more shades. It was really fluffy when I layed it out, but felted really nicely and flat, and had a soft, warm feel.

After Felting:

For this second piece I used trilobal nylon. This is sometimes given fancy names like 'Firestar' and a price tag to match, but it's just super-bright, shiny, inexpensive nylon. I used a rainbow blend from World of Wool, but separated the colours and blended them with similar shades of merino. The nylon created a really interesting texture, it gave the felt a kind of open look, even though it was well felted.

Close up of a corner:

I'd love to see what you make with nylon, whether it's felting, spinning, weaving or anything else :)

If you're interested in trying out different fibres, have a look at the Felting and Fiber Studio site, we have a section for other fibres, and have photos of man made and plant based fibres and photos of them used in felting. We also have an 'other fibres' category for all posts related to that.

Gorgeous fibre samples

A few weeks ago, Karen sent me some gorgeous fibres. A few days ago I found time to make a few samples trying some of them out.

This is a sample using the sari silk ribbon, I untied a couple of pieces from the ends to test how it felted.

When I was looking at the sari silk ribbon, I noticed there were lots of stray threads tangled round the ribbons, so I pulled them off. I never throw any fibres away, even threads from the edges of frayed silk, because you can use them to make something like this:

The photos don't do it justice, the threads are shiny like tiny strips of coloured foil

Another gorgeous fibre that Karen sent me was dyed mulberry silks in really lovely colours. I made a sample of these in simple rows:

Aren't they gorgeous fibres? :)

Giveaway and New Studio Challenge

In case you haven't seen it yet, Karen is offering over 100 grams of gorgeous fibres for our first Studio site giveaway. For a chance to win, all you have to do is visit the site and comment on the post.

There are some gorgeous handmade batts, Romney, merino wool, merino and silk, silk noil and sari silk ribbon.

Studio Challenge

For this first quarter, it was Ruth's turn to come up with the theme for the Studio Challenge. If you want to join in all the details are here. The challenge runs for 3 months, it's just for fun, but if you do join in, comment and link us to photos of your work, or join our flickr group and add your photos there.