Nuno Felting

After I made my sample/reference nuno pieces recently, I thought I'd make some larger nuno project pieces. I've got quite a few pieces cut or torn, in various sizes and made a start with a piece of a woven pink scarf I got from a charity shop. I always put far too much effort into choosing the colours to go with the fabrics, you can't tell, but the felt under the scarf actually has 3 different shades of pink, plus a few wisps of turquoisey blue:

I thought the pink scarf and this next piece would make nice coin purses, though I'll probably use just a plain piece of felt for the inside section of the coin purse. This is a piece from a spearminty peacock scarf:

It has great ripples, this is a closer view:

I've also made a couple of camouflage inspired pieces lately. I think it must be one of my favourite 'themes', I know I've made a camouflage hat and drawstring bag, a shoulder bag, a notebook cover or two, and a felt cuff and coin pouches (I still use that one in the photo, 4 years on). Maybe it's because I really enjoy doing  felt layouts, choosing all the colours of wool and embellishment pieces. This first one uses some strips from a camouflage patterned silk scarf:

Here's a close up of one half:

This next piece took a lot longer to lay out, it has patches of cotton gauze, the camo silk, cotton scrim, cheesecloth and some muslin my friend Ruth dyed and sent to me:

Close up of the centre:

I got a small kids' weaving loom not so long ago, and finally had a go recently. One of the things I tried was pencil roving waste from World of Wool. I've tried weaving and felting with it before, but had to do it 'freestyle', this was the post about it: https://feltbyzed.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/pencil-roving-mats.html I think it was a bit 'closer' using the loom, and I left the edges longer, but it looked pretty much the same really:

Looking at it on an angle:

And close up:

 If you've always wanted to try nuno, but feel a bit daunted and don't know where to start, I have an e-book called 'Beyond Nuno'. Nuno is more than a bit of Merino on a silk scarf and doesn't have to look a certain way to 'work', all the info is on this page here: https://feltbyzed.blogspot.co.uk/p/e-books.html

Batts and Roving

The last time I did a World of Wool order, I got some Botany Lap Waste. If you've not heard of this it's basically a huge bin they have at WoW, where they put the left over tops from the ends of carding runs, and when you order some they grab 500g out of the bin and you get what you're given, but it is cheaper than Merino or blends and sometimes you get a lot of the luxury fibre like yak, alpaca etc. This time it seemed I got the ends of someone's bizarre order of various greys, including what looked like natural grey Merino blended with trilobal nylon (why?!) I don't know why they can't have a 'neutrals' choice for browns, greys etc. The rest of my bag was a kind of dyed steel grey Merino,  some green Merino which looked like it was their Gooseberry shade, and some pinky pale lilac I didn't recognise. I carded them all up into batts then put them through again with other Merino to make some blends. I put the lilac through with various shades of purple and a few blues. Then I used a diz (a brass picture hook with 3 holes) to make roving:

I made another batt with the same colours, but added some orange, pinks, yellow, red, and some brighter blues:

This is what the roving looks like unwound:

I put the gooseberry batt through the carder with some green shades and light/bright blues. I meant to make roving, but forgot, so I might put it through again. One side:

The other side:

I put half and half gooseberry and grey through the carder, and made roving:

When I was putting the batts and blends away, I discovered some other odds and ends from when I did MakeFest last year. I might blend some of these greens with half the gooseberry batt I forgot to card:

I found some gorgeous (even if I do say so myself!) texturey batts I'd forgoten I'd made too. I might have to save these for when I get a spinning wheel to make some texturey yarn!: