Dutch and Russian Wool

I got some 'Yellowish Dutch Wool' from wollknoll, 34 mic 'not suitable for felting', it said. It seemed to felt fine for me:

I don't know what breed it is, I'd guess Texel, maybe someone who's bought it knows? Here's a close up of a corner:

I thought I'd try a variety of fibres again, so the top row is a blend of black Viscose tops and Ingeo, the narrow band in the middle is Fake Angora, and the bottom is black Bamboo and White Bamboo blended.

Different angle:

This is a close up of the Viscose and Ingeo:

And close up of the fake Angora (it has a strange feel to it, and looks kind of waxy):

Another vaguely listed wool I bought was 'Russian-Camelhair'. I'm guessing from the way they describe things on wollknoll, that 'Camelhair' is the colour, it's more reddish though. And this is also 34 mic but 'This wool is especially suitable for felting'. Another guess is that this is Romanov wool. It seems to be double coated like a lot of the ones I ordered. I used Ramie fibre with this:

The circular parts are Ramie that I fluffed up then patted down into little discs:

This is a close up of Ramie just fluffed up and added:

The sun came out as I was taking this, I usually try not to take photos in the sun, but I liked this one:

Over on The Felting and Fiber Studio site, our challenges this year are all going to be based around colour. The first quarter challenge had us looking at the colour wheel, tints and shades and blending. I had some 'Hot Pink' Merino wool tops, quite a lot actually, so I used them with white Merino and black Merino to see what blends I would get. You can read the whole post here and see the batt I made.

More New Wool

I got some wool tops listed as 'Arctic Fox', no other info about what the wool breed might be, just that it is 25 micron. It feels really soft, a lot like Bluefaced Leicester, and it felted really nicely too:

Though it's soft and felts like a fine wool, it does have some wiry bits:

I tried a variety of fibres it, along the top is Soy top, below that is black Bamboo top (L) and Milk Protein (R), then some Hemp fibre, and at the bottom is Viscose top:

Interestingly it made the soy look like hemp or flax, which it only usually does with a coarser or curlier wool:

This is a closer picture of the Bamboo and Milk:

Hemp and Viscose:

Another wool I tried was Skudden or Skudde. Zara found some info on it in English, and there's a Facebook group with cute lambs: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Skudden It isn't in the Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, but apparently it is in the Northern European short-tailed family. I used this straight off the batt without carding it first, so it's a bit uneven:

It felted immediately, it was like it was felted as soon as it was all wet and soapy. It is weirdly hairy though. I was using new netting and thought frayed fibres had come off and got all over the felt. This photo is actually in focus, but the hairiness makes it look like it isn't. I used black nylon tops, which are actually very black:

This is a close up of the hairy corner:

Close up of the left side:

Further up, it looks like diagrams of cell walls:

It's different to any other wool  I have, it's unusual, but I like it.

Bluefaced Leicester and Crimped Viscose Fibre

A couple of weeks ago, I made some felt panels using Yake fibre with Bamboo Staple Fibre, and Bluefaced Leicester with crimped Viscose fibre. This is the Yak piece with Bamboo:

I posted about it on the Felting and Fiber Studio site a few days ago if you want to read more, and I've been uploading my photos to Ipernity if you want to see better photos in more detail. Although Viscose top is very similar to Bamboo top, crimped Viscose fibre isn't quite so similar to Bamboo fibre. There are some similarities, for example the way the strands of fibre curl. Viscose is whiter in appearance than the creaminess of Bamboo, and bamboo appears shiner, catching the light on its crimp. I teased the viscose apart and laid it on top of the Bluefaced Leicester:

This is a close up of the area in the top left corner. I teased the fibres apart and 'fluffed' them up:

This is the area just to the right, I separated the fibres but tried not to lose the curly charecteristics of the strands too much:

This is the area just below, it is a bit denser, but you can still see the characteristics of the fibre:

Just below that is an area where the fibre is sparser, I separated the fibre, fluffed it up and laid it on quite thinly.

This is the area in the bottom right corner, I added some interesting, longer strands of the viscose fibre:

I took a couple of photos of the two pieces side by side for comparison. The Yak and Bamboo is on the left and the BFL and Viscose is on the right. You can see the differences from this one, the bamboo is 'fluffier',  and shinier, and the viscose is whiter and less 'compact'.

From this photo close up, you can see some of the similarities in the fibres' characteristics:

My new favourite fibre, Kapok:

It is so soft, you can barely feel it. I thought yak felt like a kitten's belly, this is twice as soft as that :)

Natural Wools and Fibres

You might have seen my post on the Felting and Fiber Forum last week about a wall hanging I made using natural coloured wool tops from many different wool breeds and some different embellishment fibres. Someone usually asks, so this time I've measured :) It's 30 inches long and 10 inches wide.

This is the bottom end, some of the wools and fibres are: Bluefaced Leicester tops and noil, Humbug Jacob, Black Jacob tops and noil, Lincoln, Gotland, flax, hemp, soy top, milk top and viscose.

This is a close up of the Soy top and Lincoln tops.

And this is Viscose tops on Zwartble with some Ingeo to the side.

As much as I love colours of dyed Merino or the textures of a nuno felted silk or shiny organza, I really love the variation of colours and textures you get with different combinations of natural wools and embellishment fibres. For as long as I've had natural wool tops and embellishment fibres I've been making various experimental pieces of felt with them, some just flat wet-felted, some combined with other techniques for a variety of surface designs or sculptural effects. When I got my recent World of Wool order and a few more breeds to try, I thought I'd also start to make a variety of small panels with the intention of maybe combining them into one large wall hanging some day. This is a panel I made using Manx Loaghtan wool tops and Bamboo staple fibre:

This is an angled photo of the panel I made with Grey Herdick wool tops and Hemp fibre:

I'll post more photos of other panels that I make with different wools and fibres. This last piece is something I made alongside the top stripey piece:

The Winner of the Heidi Feathers giveaway has been announced on the Felting and Fiber Studio site today, so if you entered, go and check if you won!

More Sculptural Felt, a Craft Fair and Some Diary Covers

I've been working on some sculptural felt and bamboo pieces lately. I've used different shades/breeds of natural wool tops and both black and white bamboo tops. This first piece has a base made with a variety of brown and grey scoured wools and natural wool tops that I carded into a batt. On top of that are twists of grey merino with white bamboo top. When it was almost felted, I cut and rolled and folded, then fulled to get the texture and effect I wanted.

This next piece was made with brown Finnish wool for the base, twists of dark brown Corriedale and black bamboo were positioned on top. This was also folded and fulled to get the shape I wanted.

This piece was made mostly from English 56's, the base was two layers, then I added some thick twists to the top to help define the ridges I wanted. I added 2 very fine layers of 18.5 mic merino over the top, then positioned some black bamboo over the raised parts where the twists were. When it was almost felted, I folded it concertina style, secured with sewing thread and finished felting by rubbing, and rolling one end at a time to get a twist in it. It's about 8 inches long. This is the back:

This is the front:

Close up of the texture on the inside of the back:

And a close up of the bamboo:

I've mostly spent the past week getting ready for a Craft Fair this coming Saturday, it's at the LGBT Centre on Sidney Street, Manchester if you're in the area! There's Christmas Carols around 12 noon and a Christmas Dinner around 2pm as well as the craft fair.  I've printed tags and business cards and have made and cut out felt for 5 Diary covers. I've only got 2 finished so far, but it takes about 8 hours just to position/reposition/double check the closure straps, and then blanket stitch around them and all the edges (I'm up to episode 24 of Prisoner Cell Block H!) This is an orange one that I finished first:

And this is a green one I finished yesterday:

Keep an eye on my etsy for loads of cheap 2014 diaries in case none of them sell :)

Completed Projects

The two main projects I was working on recently were my white textured felt piece and my stitched felt piece. I was working on them a little at a time when I got the chance, inspired by Ruth's Daily Dose of Fiber Challenge on the Felting and Fiber Studio Site. It took a while, but I finally finished the stitched felt piece, and I really like the way it turned out.

I thought I would never get a clear, bright enough day to photograph my finished white texture piece, but I finally did last week. I had to take it outside and use a large piece of cardboard because the locks make it about 27 inches from top to bottom. I used lots of different white wools on this piece, mostly to keep it soft and 'spongey'. English 56s, Swaledale, Texel and Cheviot were used for the main body texture. I used wool saved from my hand carders, scraps of cotton gauze and cheesecloth and carded lambswool between the layers to increase texture.

I tried something a little different with this piece, I left the centre without any wool when I laid out the first two layers, then added a piece of cotton gauze before the last two layers.

It worked out really well, you can see from this close up how a few wool wisps crept behind the gauze.

I added the locks around the sides at the same time I added the gauze. They kept their shape really well during felting and none of them tangled together.  The Angora, Wensleydale and Teeswater locks in this next photo show how nicely they turned out.

For surface texture I used cotton gauze, scoured Bluefaced Leicester and Wensleydale, raw Mohair, wool nepps, raw Gotland, Teeswater and Wensleydale locks, and embellishment fibres soybean top and silk noil.

I haven't had chance to work on anything for a few weeks, but I'm going to continue with Ruth's challenge as much as possible for the whole year, not just the first quarter, I think it has really helped for organising and to keep projects fresh in my mind, even if it just from relisting them each day in my diary :)