Author Archives: Teri Berry

Woolly Shipment

My wool order finally arrived today, it should have been here on Wednesday but it appears the Interlink drivers aren’t capable of following their sat navs. Interlink have a really nice system where you can watch your driver going from drop to drop as it counts down to your delivery. For 2 days running I watched the driver come within 50 yards of my address only to click “cannot deliver / cannot locate address”. Utterly exasperating!!! I can’t help but wonder if he was behind schedule so couldn’t be bothered to stop?

Anyway, here is my bag of woolly goodness ๐Ÿ™‚

The large white bags are merino and corriedale top, most of which I plan to dye, above them are some commercial merino and silk blends, a bit of a novelty for me as I normally blend my own. The dark grey in the centre is Gotland, it always amazes me how heavy and dense Gotland is, this parcel is 500g, most of the others are only 200g but are a similar volume. 
I have already started to play with some of the merino/silk blends, I chose the purple-blue mix for starters:
And have been laying out over some cotton scrim I dyed yesterday:
I am trying out a new design for the sleeve attachments after making a jacket last week. If it doesn’t work this top will go from being long-sleeved to a vest ๐Ÿ™‚
This is the jacket, I love it and have worn it every day this week but feel there is a bit too much fabric in the armpits, while this allows great freedom of movement I think it looks a bit bulky when my arms are down, hence the experiment to find alternative designs.

Here are some more shots of the blue-green top this time on the mannequin so you can see the shape.

This fuzzy effect was created by needle-felting green merino through from the reverse side. I rather like it, it reminds me of lichen.
Linking up to nina-marieoff the wall Friday

A new Nuno-Felted Top

Last Sunday was our monthly get together for the Sonning Common Felters. After the success (and aching muscles) of my nuno dress I really wanted to try a nuno-felted top using different decorative techniques.

I started with some rainbow dyed silk chiffon (I’m afraid I forgot to take photos but it was a mottled green, yellow and blue). I folded the chiffon over the same resist I used for the dress and laid a very fine layer of green and blue merino over the top. Over one should I laid a diamond pattern resist with more wool over the top of that.

I have added a couple of darts and some top stitching around the neckline with the sewing machine but that was all that was necessary to get the shape and fit I wanted.

I’m really pleased with how the resist has worked and am totally besotted with this electric blue wool (it is a new colour World of Wool have just started to stock). You can expect to see this making more appearances in my felt… ๐Ÿ™‚

Some close-ups of the diamond pattern:

And close-ups of the chiffon peeking through the wool, it’s lovely how it has puckered up as the wool shrank.

Linking up to nina-marieoff the wall Friday