January Review

January was all about vessels and Textured Felt. At the Well Being centre a few weeks ago, we made coiled pots. Somehow I managed to delete the photos of the process, but you can see it in this blog post. This is how it looked after I finished felting/fulling at home:

You can see from the gap in the pencil roving where the edge of the circular resist was. There's a similar gap on the other side:

Fulling the pot caused migration/fuzziness. It's dulled the silk threads quite a bit, so I'll probably shave it when it's fully dry.

I was looking through my flickr photostream and came across some photos of Textured Felt I made ages ago. I wrote a blog post with some pics on The Felting and Fiber Studio site. And like I say at the end of that post, I also wrote a quick guide on how to make it and listed it on etsy. It's an updated/expanded version of the free tute on flickr, but in a handy PDF. I was inspired by the Textured Felt pics to try the technique for making a vessel.
I used all natural wools, animal fibres and embellishments. For the texture scraps between layers, I used some unravelled wool knitting. I don't know if it's 100% wool. I did two 'regular' thickness layers on each side and two 'half layers', basically 3 layers but split one into 2 for even shrinkage. I didn't put texture between the two 'half' layers. This is the top with a hole cut and the resist taken out:

This is what it looks like when I separate the layers to make it more 3D:

This is how the bottom looks 'flat':

And separated/3D:

I put lots of locks around the edges:

Here are some Bluefaced Leicester locks:

I finished the vessel off on my bead board, fulling it to firm it up. It still isn't quite dry in these photos, it took quite a few days until it was. Here's a photo of it with the balloon still in it:

I couldn't get really good photos of it, it was too bright near the window and the back was in lots of shadow, but here it is without the balloon:

Here's the bottom:

Here are a couple of photos of the side of it.

Fulling the vessel meant that some of the looser locks felted in more, there was also more fuzziness/migration like on the coiled vessel:

I put the vessel around a lightbulb, I like how this one looks

So far, February has been all about trying unusual embellishments, so I'll be blogging about that next time!

Texture

A while ago I bought a weird fluffy, knitted, tubular scarf from Poundland to try felting with. If you ever buy one, make sure you cut it over a bucket or newspaper or something to catch all the bits! I laid out a couple of layers of very wispy pink Merino tops left over from a book cover I made last year, then I added the piece of scarf, and 2 more wispy layers of wool tops. It didn't take long to felt. This is one side of it:

This is the other side of it:

And this is what it looked like holding it up to the sky:

I don't remember how long after, but I decided the scarf sampler might make a nice sculptural piece similar to one I'd made before. I didn't make it in exactly the same way, I concertina'd it and stitched in place, then twisted and felted and fulled more. This is the top:

Close up of the ridges:

Super Close up of the texture:

This is the back:

Close up of the back:

Super close up of the texture:

I have a lot of this scarf left over, I don't know what I'll do with it, maybe a few more sculptural pieces, maybe one big one. What would you do with 8 square feet of purple fluffy knitted stuff?

Texture

A while ago Marilyn, from the Felting and Fibre Studio sent me some fibres, one of them being some Domestic 56s wool tops, I tried them out on a texturey piece I made, mostly for the base, but also to add some texture between the base and top layer of 18.5 mic Merino. I liked the way it felted, similar to our English 56s.

I also used some Bluefaced Leicester Noil between the 2 layers. This is lower across the surface:

Some of the embellishment fibres I used were soy staple fibre, viscose and flax:

I also used milk and bamboo.

This photo taken from above looks strange, whichever way I rotate it, it always looks upside down!

Don't forget if you're around Manchester next Sunday, Victoria Baths on Hathersage road has a craft fair, with 50 stalls. I'll be there as long as a wheel doesn't fall off my trolley between now and then :)

Texture

I've been working on a project about using 'other' fibres in felting and noticed that 'texture' has been a common theme lately. I thought I'd post a collection of photos showing different textures from wet felted pieces I've made.

This is a green organza used as a base:

This is the top, strips of organza over blocks of coloured Merino:

This is another organza base, a slightly stiffer gold:

This is a piece of cerise organza:

This is a close up of silk in textured nuno felting:

This is a blue-green piece of textured felt, made with lots of layers and inclusions and felted mostly in the washing machine:

And lastly, this is a piece of texture felt using reds, pinks, oranges and yellow shades:

Do you have any photos of textural felt? How do you like to create it? Do you like to add to your felt to create texture with stitch or other fabrics and fibres? I'd love to see photos of your work :)