Nuno Samples and Stone Sheep

I can't remember the last time I got a chance to do some felting, but I got chance again the Sunday before last, and I'd had the pieces laid out for at least a week and half. Two of the pieces were nuno samples. I'd bought some scarves and wanted to see how the fabric felted. For both samples, I laid out two layers of Merino tops and laid the fabric on top. The first scarf I tried didn't have a label on it, it felt like a synthetic chiffon, slightly 'rough'. It felted quite nicely, though there were a couple of places along the edges where it didn't attach securely.

The nuno texture was really nice:

The next piece I tried was viscose, it was really soft. It looked like crepe after felting:

A close up:

A supermacro close up, I think I got the colours matched pretty well :)

Another piece I made was with Stone Sheep wool. I first tried this last month, probably the previous time I did some felting. I liked the way it felted and how fast it felted so thought it'd be really good for something I wanted to try out. I laid out a couple of layers of some carded Stone sheep wool, then added a big pile of fake Angora fibre in the centre. I covered it with a circular resist, covered the resist with some 'Silk Schappe' that I got from wollknoll (it seems like carded silk noil), then added another couple of layers of Stone sheep wool. I finished it off with some kapok fibre. When it was felted, I snipped a little hole to take the resist out and worked it until I got it how I wanted.

I thought the fake Angora might be a bit fluffier and looser than this, I mustn't have piled quite enough in!

You can see the Silk schappe from this angle:

Kapok Fibre

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I'd bought a new fibre to try out, Kapok fibre. Like cotton, it grows around the seed of the plant, but is much lighter and softer. As much as I like fibre tops, I do like the shorter staple fibres, especially with coarser wools for the way they interact with the wool and produce more 'natural' looking effects. They often seem to mimic things you find in nature such as cobwebs, fungus or mould, which look solid but are really soft or fluffy when you look closer. This first panel is natural white 23 Micron Merino. I took a 'piece' of the kapok fibres and teased it apart, sames as you would silk noil, and laid it across the wool. It's hard to see the Kapok at all.

I know a lot of people don't like curly or coarser wools for felting, especially if they mainly make felt paintings or want a brightly coloured, smooth, firm felt. But I'm the type of person who loves textures and shades and tones as much as colour, and love rocks and tree barks just as much as flowers or minerals.  So, if you're like me, you might like these next couple of pieces which I made using Shetland and Finnish wools. For this first one, I used grey Shetland tops and added fluffed up, teased apart Kapok fibre:

I like the effect the thinner parts of fibre produces:

One of the areas where the fibre was denser:

I made the Finnish piece double sided. I first put some teased apart Kapok fibre on my template, then added the brown Finnish tops. I added a layer of black Finnish tops, then blended some Kapok fibre with black Finnish noil and added that. I added some Kapok fibre on its own in a few spaces and blended a small amount of Kapok With black Finnish top and added that too. This is the brown side:

Close up 1:

One of the denser areas:

This is the black Finnish side:

A close up of a dense fibre part:

This is a close up of the Fibre blended with the wool:

Do you have a favourite coarse of curly wool? What do you use it for? Do you have a favourite embellishment fibre? You're welcome to link me to any pics or come and post about it on the Felting and Fiber forum.

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 :)