Fibre Swop

In a fibre swop with Teri of Teriberrycreations I received some Polwarth fibre along with lots of other goodies. This was the fibre that Teri found was the best fibre for making three dimensional sculptures. Polwarth sheep were bred in Australia in the late19th century and are a merino Lincoln cross.
First a made a small test piece to add to my test sample collection. Look how the collection has grown.

Then I decided I would make a test 3 dimensional piece with this special fibre.

Here is my resist Its going to make a kind of 6 winged hollow form.

Part way through felting with the resist still inside.

Final piece basking in the sun. Well I was pleased with this , the shape was exactly as I had planned. So I thought let's dye it , let's shibori dye it. I wanted the inside to be dyed and the outer edges of each wing.

Tied up and dyed ready for steaming.
This worked and didn't work. You could see the shibori effect , but the middle pipe was hardly dyed and the shibori edges although shibori , were rather even .n

I think some kind of dye resist was needed on the outer edges and maybe a little less string so some dye could penetrate into the middle , or maybe a syringe of dye into the middle.
Overall I enjoyed by Polwarth / shibori experiment and my piece has a beautiful texture. many thanks Teri. More news about my tests with the other goodies I received from Teri , in later blogs. .

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