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!

Catching Up

I've been trying to some of the projects I started before I began working on my polymer clay e-book. I had a few purses and glasses cases cut out or part sewn up. The first one I finished was a ruffle camera case. It hadn't even been cut out, so I did some measuring and cutting then discovered my electric machine won't work :( I cleaned out the bobbin case and took the parts off and wiped them and put them back, but the needle won't pick up the bobbin thread. From what I can tell it is timing or something and I don't think it's something I can fix. So, out came my ancient electric Singer without the electrical parts. It's slow going but it works, for straight stitching anyway :)  This is the front of the case:

And this is the back:

This was one of the purses I hadn't even blanket stitched, it's made from the same piece of felt as one I made earlier. It's a slubbed wool which I added some cotton and silk threads to and some strips of rolled edges from silk scarves. Front:

Inside:

The felt this wool makes has a really nice texture. Back:

A piece of coppery bronze felt that I made a while ago was just big enough to make a purse and matching glasses case:

I have to edit a few more photos then I'll be able to add the pink ruffley camera case and the bronze purse and glasses case to etsy later today.

Do you have piles of WIPs at different stages?

Pink!

 I did try to post this yesterday, but Blogger won't let me upload pics from my computer to add to the post, I hade to use Flickr URLs and Picassa. Is anyone else having problems?

On my last post I showed you a sneaky peek of the ripples and ruffles of the nuno felted piece I made for Ann's challenge on The Felting and Fiber Studio site. Well, here's the finished piece in full:

Here it is from another angle:

It's kind of double-nuno because I started with some pieces of cotton gauze that I'd dyed a while ago. I wanted it to be extra sturdy to make a camera case out of it:

I really liked how it turned out, so I thought I'd make a similar piece. I measured this one carefully to make a book cover out of it. I also added some wisps of orange, beige and white to the merino at each end to match the patterns and colours of the fabric.

You can see the texture more from this angle:

And of course, a supermacro close up :)

I have just one more piece I made from this fabric, but it is still drying. If you're interested in learning more about felting with synthetic fabrics, nuno felting in general or the techniques I used, please have a look at the info about my e-book, Beyond Nuno here, thanks :)