Suffolk, Banana, Masham and Bamboo

I've used banana fibre tops with suffolk wool tops before, so I know they look really interesting together. I fluffed up some of the banana fibre, and added it to the top of the Suffolk. Though I used less of the banana fibre than I have previously, I wasn't disappointed by the results.

This angled picture shows the texture more:

This is a close up of the centre part:

And this is a supermacro of the wool and fibre texture:

In the middle along the right edge is an area where the fibres are a little thicker. In the top photos it looks quite dense, but a supermacro close up shows the tangle of wool and banana fibres.

And from this angle you can see the pattern even better:

 Another combination of wool and fibres I found really interesting is Grey Masham and Bamboo top. I'm not sure if Masham is classed as a coarse breed, I think its Micron count is between 29 and 34. It's certainly more 'wiry' than fine wools, but is still quite soft to the touch. The contrast of the wool and sheen of the bamboo was quite striking, yet at the same time, the wool seemed to 'absorb' the fibre. This is the whole piece from an angle:

This is slightly closer and from above, there's an area in the centre with barely any fibre on it:

This is a close up of the dense patch just to the right, it's interesting to see how the fibres are still affected by the characteristics of the wool even when they are thicker.

This is a close up of the area just left of centre at the top of the piece, showing dense and sparse patches:

I hope you're not getting bored of these because I have about 30 other breeds of wool and about 15 natural fibres, I'm not going to do the maths, but that's quite a variety of combinations I can come up with!

Very Pink!

My sister got me some wool tops for Christmas. Even before I'd seen the colours, I'd decided I'd make her a book cover from whatever she chose, thinking she'd probably choose her favourites. She chose a selection of pinks, not the colours I would have chosen for her, but pinks it is :)  I Picked out some shades I already had that I thought would work with them, I already had a salmon pink, some cerisey purple, reds, maroons and a nice lemon. Then I started to make some batts with my drum carder.

At first I made up some batts without any other fibres blended in, I'll use these for the bottom layer which will be inside the book cover. I split them in half lengthways after I'd made them, then rolled them up.

This is one of the lighter batts before I split it and rolled it:

I used some soy top, viscose, a small amount of banana fibre, black bamboo and dyed silk tops to blend in to make the batts for the top.

I rolled these ones a bit differently:

I picked some fabrics to embellish the surface with, some silk strips, organza, dyed cotton gauze and some synthetic lacey stuff I bought years ago which looks like it might be meant for tying back net curtains. In the 70's :)

I picked a few more embellishments too. Some silk throwster's waste, dyed bamboo fibre, commercial art yarns and fibres taken from unpicked yarns.

I'll show you more pictures when I've started to make it :)

Giveaway

We're having a Giveaway over on the Felting and Fiber Studio site. I have raided my fabric and fibre stash and put together lots of goodies perfect for embellishing felt. There is lots of shiny things, including some crinkly synthetic fibres.

There is also some novelty yarns/fancy fibres: some long pieces and some shorter lengths

There are lots of different types of fabric pieces and 'scraps', silk, synthetic fabrics and organza

Some natural fibres and top, Top L-R Egyptian Cotton fibre, Crimped Viscose fibre, Bamboo Fibre. Bottom L-R: Flax, Ramie, Banana top.

Plus lots of other little things I keep adding as I think of them :)
For all the details head over to the Studio site, all you have to do to win is leave a comment on the post
Good Luck! :)

Catch Up

Sorry for not posting anything for a while. I think I've just had too many things going on at once, and I don't know about you, but when I've got so many things I need to do that I don't know where to start, I usually end up putting them off longer! One of the main things I've been working on is getting through my huge pile of WIPs.

As part of my other fabrics and fibres project, I had lots of unfinished pieces waiting to be made into things...unfinished camera pouches, pencil cases, iPod cases, mirror cases, purses, glasses cases... not to mention lots of pieces of felt waiting to be cut and pinned and sewn to add to the pile :)

They are mostly finished now, and one of the biggest tasks was photographing them all. For a while I just had 2 cloths for photographing-a black piece and some natural calico, but after struggling to get a few photos right, my girlfriend suggested using neutral colours like a brown or grey, so it ended up being a mammoth task taking photographs of about 30 felt pieces on 4 different backgrounds, not to mention the fun of going through and deleting all but the best. At least now that Summer is over, the light is better and getting good shots is far easier :)

I even had time to make some felt just for fun recently, which was really nice. I probably went a bit over the top with all the different fibres I blended with the wool and all the different fabric and fibre embellishments I piled on the top, but it was nice to make something that wasn't controlled or being made with anything in mind for a change :)

Have you been working on anything just for fun lately?

Natural Wools and Fibres (3)

I recently got some gorgeous brown Finnish wool tops and some dark brown Corriedale tops from World of Wool, so thought I'd try them out with some 'other' fibres. Usually, I'll just try one fibre with a particular wool first, but I couldn't decide which fibre to try with the Finnish first, so thought I'd try a few. I really liked how this turned out. From Top to Bottom, the fibres are: Banana Fibre; Soybean fibre; Ingeo; Flax; Milk protein fibre; Hemp and Ramie. They were all in the form of tops.

With the dark brown Corriedale, I used some white cotton gauze

It was only meant as a test sample, but I really liked the way it looked in a frame:

And just for a change, I tried some felted soap. I've never been much good at this, the soap shrinks faster than the wool and it always seems loose. Lyn from Rosiepink, helped me out with instructions and this turned out quite well.

I've noticed that since Blogger has that Carousel/slide show thing when pictures are clicked on, you don't get a large picture anymore. If you right click on the photo in the carousel, choose 'properties' you can get the URL for the full sized photo. Copy and paste in a new tab for a big photo.

Natural Wools and Fibres (2)

A couple of other Natural wool and fibre combinations I've tried recently are grey Suffolk and Banana fibre, and grey Norwegian and Milk protein fibre. Grey Suffolk is a coarse wool and the felt it makes is kind of loose or spongey. Although the banana did felt onto the Suffolk somewhat, it wasn’t firmly attached and gave interesting cobweb like results. It reminded me of the photos of fields and trees that are covered in webs after flooding.

The grey Norwegian felted really nicely, the wave and crimp of the wool re-appeared after felting and it pulled on the milk protein fibre, which was already waving from being pulled by the shrinking felt. It gave that an interesting texture too, and made it more rippley.