A Facebook story

This week I have told a story installments on Facebook about a shetland vessel that I dyed. For those of you who don't do Facebook I am going to repeat it here.

I made a shetland vessel from white and moorit coloured fibres with the aim of stitching it and then dyeing it. I am actually still exploring the best way to felt with shetland and it seems onto devour soap and need loads of water.

Here it is before stitching.

I stitched it with linen and silk threads and thought it looked more stylish with a cuff.

Now to dye. My first thoughts was to use some of the onion skins I have been saving but I decided to save them for a less prototype project and use the dried up skins of two pomegranate that I have also been storing . I deviated from my usual practise of keeping kitchen and dyeing equipment completely separate and first blitzed the pomegranate skins with water in my food processor.

The vessel was then heated at simmering point with the extracted colour from the pomegranate and left to soak over night.

After dyeing it looks paler than I would have ideally like , with not much variation of colour between the wool , silk and linen,

But with the threads sorted and a slate plinth I am quite pleased with the final effect. Thanks to Dave Mercer for thIs photograph .

 

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

City and guilds

The City and Guilds course I am doing , is called Level 3 Certificate in Design and Craft 7716-23 Feltmaking. Design for craft , I quote " provides the means to develop a design reference for craft , through a series of outcomes demonstrated by a body of practical work. For me it is sometimes difficult to document this process and present this body of work ! I have a tendency to just do the design work in my head, or maybe I am kidding myself. This attitude is not acceptable understandably to the C&G . I need a little more discipline. One of the good things is that although the design process can take many directions , in the course , you get asked to try things. Which is good because I have found something's I really like doing , that I have never tried before.

Do to a lack of design documentation I have been rethinking and redoing my documentation for a piece of bark I picked up last summer. The bark is quite big , well about 25 cm long , so first I zoomed in to a small area.

I then attempted to draw the keg elements of this with wax , ink and bleach. I found this collection of media rather difficult. Not least because you cannot see what you have drawn with the wax until you add the ink and then it's too late to go back. Consquently I am not too pleased with my final result.

After this I had to develop the same concept into colours. This required my active imagination and a play with Photoshop as the colours in the bark are pretty muted. I drew with pastels which I do like using.

I had to use some own printed materials for my felted piece and I decided to try for a texture and a smooth effect trying to mirror my drawing above. After adding my texture effects and slashing the printed scrim I started with no longer resemble a rectangle , it was more like a fish. Never mind . After a bit more slashingof my Shetland fibres here is the finished piece.

Except I think it needs some stitching , but that will have to wait for another time.

Posted with Blogsy

A tale of two bags

I have been trying out felting the same bag design in Shetland fibre and merino fibre.

From these photographs can you tell which is which?

I expected a difference but was surprised at quite how marked it is.

Shetland fibre, is about 30 microns with a staple of 50- 120mm

Merino about 23 microns and has a 30-90mm staple.

Both the fibres I used had been bought from World of Wool. The Shetland was natural grey and the merino I carded white and black to make grey as it did not have enough predyed grey.

I used exactly the same resist and the only modification I made for the merino was to shorten the cord which i used in the design to strengthen the handle.

In terms of weight they weigh.

Shetland 100g. Merino 75g.

The Shetland was really hard to felt even with loads of water and soap, I never got It to shrink as much as I wanted, The decorations disappeared into the bag itself which is very soft and springy to the feel and visually I think quite flat. The merino was a lot easier to felt , has shrunk more and was more easy to shrink and because of the carder fibres I think looks more interesting. The declaration is more obvious as well.

A good bag experiment. Maybe I'll try it again. What shall I try it with?

 

 

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Finished....... Almost

Well amazingly I have actually finished my panel. Well almost. I haven't framed it , yet but part from that it is finished. I haven't framed it because my tutor , Kate, wants to see it. It is 84 cm x 34 cm so once framed it s a bit tricky to post . It will therefore be posted for assessement unframed then returned to be framed.

I have gone on quite a lot about the preparation process , so here is the details of the felting process.

 

What a mess! All my materials aid out ready.

I first made some Shetland fibre prefelt. The tree had green dyed throwers waste incorporated to be like the moss on the bark . I then stitched bark using green silk on my sewing machine. Trying the follow the lines of the branches and be both regular but random like bark. The reflection was the same prefelt but without the stitching or the moss , as neither of them appeared in the reflection.

The background was different colours of BFL covered in lovely springy Norwegian fibre.

I laid my prefelt on top and then used more wool fibres and lots of silks to give the textures of the grasses , the reflections of the sky in the water and the leaves on the ground.

 

Just the reflection. This piece was so long it was almost I possible to photograph the whole thing on the table and I had to pull my table out from the wall , so I could actually felt it.

This is the best I could manage

Here it is finished.. Almost. Hanging precariously from a door.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Dying again

Well here I go dying again , and this time I can't be banished to the garden as I need to heat everything up to boiling point. I have a brand new, to me, pan to use bought for euro 2.50 from the local charity shop. 

So collect my BFL fleece, Shetland white snd grey fibre and merino fibre , merino half felt, silks, an alpaca yarn , some yarn of unknown origin or fibre , but wool I think and extra special lace weight Jamiesons shetland yarn .



Trial weight 80 g. Near enough to 100g for an engineer to be perfectly satisfied.

What colours to dye. Well I was very uncertain , especially when I thought how the planed second and maybe third dying would turn out. But in the end I I decided on scarlet ,yellow and green, 

Wet out fibre.

Place it in the pan. 

Bring to the boil, slowly , how slow is slow. 

I have no idea, but I think on my lowest setting it would never boil. 

So I turned it up to middling. 

After boiling turn off and sprinkle the dyes. 

Quite simple really!

All without dying the kitchen .

The first batch

LOVELY

The second batch is more muted

but still interesting.


The third is is all too muted for me and its  time to stop , before I dye any more of my precious fibres mouldy looking pinky grey.

Lot of felting opportunities ahead!.

Felting Fantasies

Have I broken free from the constraints of deluges and sunsets ? 

 I have and I spent a happy day , with a good friend,  just making the felt that I felt like making. Freedom ?  It was not completely spontaneous as I had done a little planning  even making a drawing from my inspiration.

I wanted to incorporate beads in the work through the technique of knitting , so they would nestle in the felt , not sit on the top. I used my wonderful Shetland Tweed yarn from Harris for this. Knitting thin yarn on big needles with random beads  - yes I can do this and talk and watch the TV , as is really does not matter what it looks like.

 I wanted to try combining Shetland fibres with Norwegian fibres. Sherland for the backgound hill and Norwegian for the textures and colours of the hillside. I wanted to use prefelts for the structure and deliberately make a very uneven edge. So I spent a few hours preparing , prefelts and knitting fine Shetland . Not to mention the time dying scrim cotton yarns and silk and stiching textures into them.

Well I really got carried away it must have been the wonderful spring weather.  

Shetland base, knitting with beads , lots of Norwegian wool , and silks on the top.  Heres my inspiration.

And the final felted effect

I am pleased . what do you think.?

More than Merino

To date most of my felting has been with the widely available merino fibre. It's very dependable easily available and comes in a wide range of colours. My current challenge is felting with different fibes in natural colours. What a range there is. I have barely touched the surface with my exploration into Shetland , Blue Faced Leicester and Herdwick. So I decided to do a little bit of research into the fibres, more to help me tell then apart than anything else. 

Shetland has a slightly bigger diameter fibres ,than merino but slightly shorter fibres. In my limited experience they are both equally easy to felt, but Shetland is maybe a bit bouncier when it is felted. It comes in shades of brown , through to cream along with grey.

Blue faced Leicester  a cross between a hexham and a swaledale sheep is lovely . Northumbria and Yorkshire mixed. It has a far wide fibre length but it's fibre diameter is similar to Shetland. Colours range from mid brown through to cream. It has a luster and a wave that the other fibres don't have. When felted it retains the waves in the felted item and it is lovely both as felt and as fibre.

Herd wick, although it has a place in my heart , due to my love of the English lake district, has what can only be described as bristles , not fibres., in mixed grey colours. . Good for keeping the sheep warm on the damp fells, but not so nice for felting. I have tried but I am yet to have a success. More suitable for carpets and insulation rather than felting I think.

So there is a new world for me to explore of textures and colours and I am only at the beginning. There is Mute, Suffolk, Norwegian, Romney , Jacobs , Gotland and much much more.

Here is arrange of half felts and fibres from Shetland , Blue faced Leicester and merino, soon to be converted in a big deluge felted project.