Category Archives: wall hanging

A couple more hats…

I finished a couple more hats today, I think these will be the last for Weyfest as I am out “third manning” with the ambulance service tomorrow as part of community first responder CPD. I plan to do some more felting on Friday but doubt it will be dry in time to take to Weyfest on Saturday.

A bit more conventional than the last batch aren’t they?

Thank you all for your suggestions of what animal this hat might be:

Believe it or not I had a fox in mind when I started it, just goes to show I should always refer to photos ;o)

It was interesting that your opinions closely followed the split in my household – I thought it looked like a donkey while Mr TB thought it was a deer. Some of the suggestions for the monster/frog hat were a bit off the wall though – green squirrels?!! :o)

I finally got around to framing a couple of pieces today as well, I’m pleased with how these turned out and I still have another piece of dyed felt so will probably make a third hanging… something else to add to the ever growing to-do list!

Linking up to nina-marieoff the wall Friday

Translucent felt

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been doing almost obscene amounts of dyeing this week, one batch was for my C&G course and was predominantly focussed on dyeing different animal fibres in the same dye vat (bag in my case) so you end up with a harmonious blend of colours in a range of materials. I chose to use each pair of primary colours so had 3 “vats” and the these are the results.

Each vat contained, Corriedale top, some alpaca top, silk hankies, ponge 5 silk, a piece of commercial prefelt, some merino pencil roving and a piece of hand spun White Faced Woodland.

For good measure I threw in some of my scoured Jacobs fleece too…

The colours are so lovely I kept finding myself standing in the bathroom literally watching them all dry 🙂 Needless to say I couldn’t wait to use them…
Our brief from the course was to create a piece of textured felt using the design work form previous weeks (in my case I had been working with bone micrographs).
I cut out some silk shapes that resembled the holes you see in bone when under the microscope.

And laid resists over the top that were just slightly smaller than the silk.

Then added 2 layers of the corriedale roving, pulling the tufts was lovely as I had different colours with each pull.

I even spun some of the orange/red pencil roving, my spinning is definitely improving but I’m not about to win any prizes for producing beautifully even yarn.

After felting and cutting out the resists.

I’m really pleased with how this piece turned out but it really comes to life when you hold it up to the light:

The corriedale has produced a beautiful crimp and the silks look like stained glass windows. I think this technique would make a stunning lampshade or even curtains.
Here is a closer look at the curly corriedale, this is fast becoming one of my favourite wools to work with:
Now I just need to figure out a way to hang it so it can be hung in front of a window and the frame / hanger does not cast a shadow that would detract from the design….
I also repeated the dyeing a variety of different fibres exercise. Following advice from Ruth I tried some grey and brown too (thanks Ruth). It’s still a bit monochromatic but an improvement on the last version 🙂
Linking up to nina-marieoff the wall Friday