Sunday 11 March 2012

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.

6 comments:

  1. Hey Zed
    They all look Fantastic and i cant believe the color change with the oatmeal once it was dry, its gone really creamy :)

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  2. these are beautiful samples!! i never tried this myself but maybe someday :)) hugzz...peebee

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  3. Love all the samples and I love how flax felts too.

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  4. Thanks, Kaz, Patty and Ruth :)

    The BFL, like the Jacob piece, was in quite a dark room, I was surprised both pics came out :)

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  5. Thank you! It is very interesting!!

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  6. Thanks :)
    You're welcome.

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