felt dress | Teri Berry Textiles

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… 🙂

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-marie, off the wall Friday

The last few weeks have seen quite a run of achievements for me, this blog reached its first birthday at the end of October, last weekend my City and Guilds certificates arrived, and today this blog has reached its 100th post.

It seems quite fitting that this post should be about another milestone; my first felted dress. Being a nuno felt dress the template was HUGE, 1 m wide by 2 m long, forcing me to work on the floor. Not something I like to do as I ache for days after spending all day crawling around on all fours.

The dress didn’t quite go to plan, no matter how much I rolled and worked them the shoulder straps were still far too long so I resorted to cutting them down and sewing seams across the shoulders. Here it is drying on the mannequin.