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!

New Felting Supplies

After finally finishing my inventory the other week, I made a list of all the colours and breeds of wool I was low on and ordered some new supplies from World of Wool. As usual, I added a few things to my order which weren't on the list, but the more you order each time, the more you save on postage, right? :)  I ordered a few natural white wool tops which I haven't tried before, left to right: Whiteface Woodland, Dorset Horn and German Eider.

I've had a dark Brown Corriedale and a few different types of Jacob before, so I added some (Top to Bottom) Grey Corriedale, Grey Jacob and because I couldn't resist, brown baby Alpaca Tops.

I also bought a few things I thought a lot of people might be interested in. I've seen Broken Merino Tops listed before, and thought they were probably what they sounded like, and they are. They look like what I'd imagine is left at the bottom of the bags or boxes when the nice part of the top has been sold: short pieces a few inches long, a bit crumpled and a bit messed up and separated. But not felted or matted at all. I ran some through my drum carder then used it in some blends for felted soap.

There were a couple of wool noils listed, which I've never seen before. There was Bluefaced Leicester Noil, and Black Finnish Noil. They both looked like they are probably what is left over after the wool has been carded into tops. Because they are both quite fine soft wools, even these noils feel soft, although there is a bit of vegetable matter in there too. This is the Bluefaced Leicester one:

And this is the Black Finnish noil:

I thought they'd be good for some extra texture and perfect for using in natural wool texture felt, so the better quality/more expensive wool isn't wasted. I think these were both around £1 for 100g. And since I was going a bit mad with the order, I thought I'd get some Merino Burrs. They looked softer than nepps which I never have much luck with, and they do feel a lot softer, and flatter and not as tight/hard as nepps.

Hopefully, I'll get a chance to try these out soon. I've added these to the Wool and Animal Fibres Gallery on The Felting and Fiber Studio, along with a few other new photos. If you have any photos of wool, fleece, animal fibres you'd like to submit to the gallery, please contact us there :)