Nuno Felt

I spent today in a nuno felting workshop taught by Lisa Minter. She was smitten by the bug a number of years ago, flew to a workshop in the south, I want to say Tennessee?, taught by a Scandinavian woman.
Before lunch we felted three 10 x 10 inch squares of different weights of silk. She is explaining with her sample how thin we must make our bits of wool and how the direction we lay our wisps will affect how the felt shrinks: sideways will make it more narrow, lengthwise will reduce the length. I love the felted bits of her hair ornament.
There are 14 of us and at this point we're trying to get familiar with the technique. After three samples, it begins to feel not so alien. We measure our finished sizes so we can know the shrinkage rate with each type of silk. Lisa brought and modeled several garments that she has made - jaw droppingly awesome. Knowing the rate of shrinkage is mandatory for a project like that.
After lunch we moved on to our silk hanky sample and then our scarves. This is Jen's and you can see that how you lay the wool on the back will affect how the silk is drawn in. The silk doesn't felt - the wool does. The wool is drawn into the silk through the process and creates the puckering. You must felt with cold soapy water or the meshing won't occur.
This is the right side of the sample. Jen was pleased enough that she continued this layout for her scarf. I wish I would have taken detailed photos of each project because each one was different. The combination of colors and texture are spectacular here.
This is the size of a scarf at birth - 12 x 60 inches. Lisa dyed these Habotai scarves and rovings in advance so you can see that part of the result comes from the dye pot. I didn't experiment with layout on my first scarf. I'm of the opinion that first you have to cook the recipe before you know how to alter it.








This is my scarf after all the steps we took to get the wool to adhere to the silk and then to abuse the wool into shrinkage.






I don't know if you can see the difference here, but Lisa came by my table and said that we needed to pull out the ruffles. We tugged all the edges until the silk was freed with the wool, which creates this lacy effect and kind of gives it a finished look.





I didn't get a very good representation of my finished scarf but I'm too tired to get up and take another one. The scarf weighs next to nothing and is going to be a pleasure to wear. I can't say that about all my scarves. I'm taken by the possibilities of nuno felt and want to try more of it.

I Felted!

Mim came over today to show me how to make felt. The plan was that I'd make a felted bag for the guild bag project but with only two weeks left, I realized that I cannot have one completed, even if wet felting is quicker than knitting. I decided instead to sew one from some felted weaving that I did a while ago. I think it'll be pretty cool and that freed me up to enjoy the felting today. Mim was working on a couple of samples she'll use next week for her nuno felting demonstration at the guild meeting, which is right here at my house! I cannot believe how much wool goes into wet felting and it really was fun. I made a multicolored square, then cut into a square spiral, then felted it onto some moorit Bond fleece. The practical side of me demands to know what it's for, and the artsy side of me says - whoa, that's cool.


This is the sum total of equipment required: a towel, bubble wrap, a piece of window screen and a length of PVC pipe. Whispy, whispy, whispy, Mim kept saying to me as we made our squares. I layered whisps of wool one direction until I had a square, then another layer going the opposite direction, and repeated. I did this on the bubble wrap, then we laid the screen on top, saturated the wool with soapy water, rolled it up on the PVC, and rocked it back and forth. I removed the screen as soon as the wool began to hold together. After that I would unroll it, rotate the square a quarter turn and repeat. I was really surprised how quickly it because a cloth and solid the union of the fibers was.

Mim showed me the multicolored silk gauze that she dyed in the crockpot, but that process is a whole post in itself. But this led to my dyeing 3 ounces of silk black in my old Rival crockpot while we were felting. I used 100 grams of 2% stock solution of Procion black to one ounce of silk and it exhausted completely. I'll ply it with some colored silk I have been spinning.

And I'm happy to say that I finished plying the last of the weft this morning and hope to finish up the weaving tomorrow morning. Tomorrow afternoon is taken with my DIL's surprise birthday party, for which I made potato and macaroni salads today. No wonder I'm tired tonight!