More Textured Felt

One thing I didn't like about the burgundy textured nuno felt piece I showed last time, was the effect of the wool migration. Completely unavoidable obviously, but I thought I'd try white fabrics with white wool to mimimise the visual impact of the migration. I started with a small sample, I used various cotton fabrics, like gauze, scrim and muslin; some silk crepe, and some synthetic chiffon:

Looking at it on an angle, you can see even more texture:

This is some folded cotton gauze:

This is one of the pieces of silk crepe:

I liked all the textures, but the synthetic chiffon really ruffled up:

The ruffles it created could be used to recreate effects for lots of different projects, here's a close up:

I used most of the same fabrics on a larger piece:

Here's a close up off the left side:

And a close up of the right side:

I thought this was the kind of technique which would work really well with synthetic organza, it comes in different weights and finishes, so even though it has similarities, there are differences too. I used dyed Merino for this:

Looking at an angle shows the many different textures:

 This was a soft yellow organza, it 'folded' in columns:

You can see these organzas had a more crumpled texture. You can see the migration too, and though it affected the look of the finished piece and 'changed' the colours of the organza pieces, it was more subtle than with the large piece I made last time:

Textured Nuno Felt

This first piece uses a variety of fabric strips, roughly the same size. I laid out the fabric strips first, then added 4 very fine layers of Merino, which probably added up to being finer than 1 'standard' layer of Merino (the average amount that gets pulled off from standard commercial wool tops, laid out you can't see through it), and not as even. This is the whole piece after felting:

This is the back, you can see that in some places there is hardly any wool at all:

I really liked the texture that was created on the crepey silk fabric strip at the top:

I liked the results of that piece, so I made a much larger one. The finished fulled piece was probably a quarter of the size it was when it was felted, I fulled it on bubblewrap first then on my bead board:

I tried fabric pieces I'd used before, both which I knew felted well, and some which I knew didn't attach well or stayed loose on the edges (a lot of synthetics tend to roll at the edges when torn). I also used pieces I hadn't tried before. I'm not completely sure what some of them are after felting! This is a closer look at the left side, on an angle:

And the right side:

I think this was a piece from a charity shop dress, it was really softly rippled and pillowy:

This is a scarf from a charity shop scarf I love using. You've seen it lots of times, it was goldeny pink open weave, some parts were doubled and some had starnds of golden fibre loose between the layers:

This is one of the synthetics which rolls on the edges (I probaly should have put it in the middle). The outside edge is very loose, but the inside edge was firmly attached:

Looking along the surface, you can see better how high some of the ruffles are:

That photo also shows how much migration there was. It's more apparent depending on the angle you look at it. This shows really clearly just how much there was:

Looking slightly higher you can see more texture on the fabric:

Overall, I liked the piece, especially the texture, though I did think using just one colour of wool  along with the migration dulled it quite a lot, and looking at it on an angle, it does look like it's been under a dusty bed for a few years!