Ethical Wool and Animal Fibre

If you're interested in knowing exactly where your wool and animal fibres come from and that they have been treated well, have a look at The Felting and Fiber Studio site today. We meet Amanda from Newmoor Barn in Devon who has a herd of Angora goats and sources different breeds of locally reared wool and animal fibres.

If you have a business which keeps the felting, fabric and fibre community in supplies and would like to tell us all about it, come over to the Studio site, we have a Contact Us page now. If you'd like to contribute articles too, we'd love to hear from you, you can read all about it here.

Completed Projects

The two main projects I was working on recently were my white textured felt piece and my stitched felt piece. I was working on them a little at a time when I got the chance, inspired by Ruth's Daily Dose of Fiber Challenge on the Felting and Fiber Studio Site. It took a while, but I finally finished the stitched felt piece, and I really like the way it turned out.

I thought I would never get a clear, bright enough day to photograph my finished white texture piece, but I finally did last week. I had to take it outside and use a large piece of cardboard because the locks make it about 27 inches from top to bottom. I used lots of different white wools on this piece, mostly to keep it soft and 'spongey'. English 56s, Swaledale, Texel and Cheviot were used for the main body texture. I used wool saved from my hand carders, scraps of cotton gauze and cheesecloth and carded lambswool between the layers to increase texture.

I tried something a little different with this piece, I left the centre without any wool when I laid out the first two layers, then added a piece of cotton gauze before the last two layers.

It worked out really well, you can see from this close up how a few wool wisps crept behind the gauze.

I added the locks around the sides at the same time I added the gauze. They kept their shape really well during felting and none of them tangled together.  The Angora, Wensleydale and Teeswater locks in this next photo show how nicely they turned out.

For surface texture I used cotton gauze, scoured Bluefaced Leicester and Wensleydale, raw Mohair, wool nepps, raw Gotland, Teeswater and Wensleydale locks, and embellishment fibres soybean top and silk noil.

I haven't had chance to work on anything for a few weeks, but I'm going to continue with Ruth's challenge as much as possible for the whole year, not just the first quarter, I think it has really helped for organising and to keep projects fresh in my mind, even if it just from relisting them each day in my diary :)

January Projects

I've been trying to find ways of having a few projects on the go so I can work on them for a few minutes at a time where possible. A few months ago, I posted on the Felting and Fiber Studio site about a couple of felt pieces I'd made with the intention of practising stitches for the Take A Stitch Tuesday challenge. I didn't keep up with the challenge, so had the pieces spare. I decided to add some stitching to the first piece. This is how it looked originally. I started by machine stitching around the patches of colour.

Over the next couple of days, I added some hand stitched straight stitches, first in in yellow and then added some in orange.

Another project I got started on this week is a white texture felt piece. Liz from That Fuzzy Feeling blog, recently made a gorgeous piece of texture felt and it inspired me to make one. I decided to make a natural white one, so I got to play with (and smell!) my collection of wool, alpaca and mohair locks. They are mostly unwashed so my hands felt really nice afterwards.

The first day I managed to get as far as laying it out and sewing up around the edges. So far, I've managed to add the stitches from the top to the bottom.

Thanks to Ruth for encouraging us to find ways to fit in a few minutes of fibre time each day, I've managed to get a lot more done this week than I otherwise would have. It might not be much each day, but before long, it all adds up to finished projects I wouldn't have had without the challenge :)  Ruth's been blogging about her Daily Dose of Fibre, check out her blog for her gorgeous bead books, stitched fused fabric, and more.

Felting the Weather

On the Felting and Fiber Studio Site a few months ago, Karen Challenged us to make something depicting our weather. I didn't have chance to felt mine until New Year's day, but I took lots of photos and started looking at them and thinking how I could try to capture them in felt. I also started to make up some blends of wool and fibres to capture the colours and tones.

I didn't want to try to recreate any of the photos, just try to capture the feeling of the ever changing sky and clouds. This first piece is based on some of the sunsets here recently, they haven't been as deep or spectacular as usual, probably because it's been wet, dark and warm instead of bright and cold, but sometimes there's a little hint of peachey copper.

This is a close up of the coppery silk throwster's waste:

This next piece is based on the thick white and grey cloudy days; billowing, rolling clouds, subtley changing as they grow and float past. It is made from lots of different natural white and light grey wools blended with flax, soy fibre and bamboo for soft golden highlights. The locks are Gotland and Mohair and Bluefaced Leicester.

I love days when we get huge swirling black and grey clouds, constantly changing as they storm through the sky. These next two pieces are part of a larger one inspired by dark, cloudy days. I used carded Gotland wool for the background and laid raw Gotland locks in shades from light grey to black on top for the rolling clouds.

This last piece wasn't based on a photo I took or anything I saw out of the window, but it was inspired by many photos of the effects of the torrential rain we've had in the UK over the past 3 months (or last 9 really). A lot of the photos haven't been pretty; muddy brown water waist deep, roads and pavements broken, whole rows of houses collapsed...but there have beeen some spectacular ones of stormy, cloudy skies and stormy seas, raging rivers, and some great ones of large stormy clouds in bright blue skies reflected on miles of  flooded fields. I wish I'd downloaded the photos, but I'm not sure I could post them without infringeing copyright. This last piece is probably my favourite.

If you'd like to see some of my sky photos, they're in a set on flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zedster01/sets/72157632441877866/

Bird Pods

A few weeks ago I decided to have a go at felting a bird pod. Ann from The Felting and Fiber Studio had recommended using balloons as a form to keep their shape while drying, and I'd finally got round to ordering some from ebay. The first one I made had 2 layers of natural Grey Merino to start, then I added lots of raw Gotland locks around the edges and added two layers of Gotland roving that Karen had sent me. I added some carded Gotland fleece, banana fibre and a few more locks to the top before felting.

The second bird pod I made had 2 base layers of natural brown Merino, then again some raw Gotland locks, though I used some darker grey and black ones this time. The top 2 layers are dark brown Corriedale wool, with some washed Gotland fleece and bamboo fibre on top for extra interest.

The last bird pod I made was for my girlfriend who really likes natural white wools and fibres. I started this one with two layers of English 56s. The locks I used were Teeswater, Mohair and older Angora goat locks. The Teeswater locks are really long, some of the ones I had were 15 or 16 inches, so I used those across the top to come out at both sides. The top two layers were merino 64s, then for extra texture I added some combed teeswater tops, Angora and Mohair locks, some very crimpy Bluefaced Leicester, and some carded bamboo fibre.

White felt lampshade cover

I've been promising Heather for ages that I'd get round to making a white felt lampshade cover after she shared hers, and I did make the felt about a week ago, but I only got around to sewing it the other day. I handspun some thin white yarn to hem the top and sew the seam, but I left the natural edge along the bottom.

I'm wishing I placed some locks over the edge now.

The bottom is a thin layer of 18.5 mic natural white merino, then there's a thin layer of 23 mic natural white merino. The 3rd layer is lots of different natural coloured locks and curls-Mohair, Wensleydale, Angora, Teeswater, Bluefaced Leicester, and some wool nepps too. The top thin layer has natural Merino, Devon, Romney and Texel tops, topped with silk, ramie, bamboo, Teeswater, Mohair, soya bean fibre and silk noil. There's a few bits of vegetable matter in there too :)