Friday, December 5, 2008

Nuno Felting Experiments

Tor came and checked out the (Reverse) Badger doe's horn. He is coming back tomorrow to help me fix it. I let Agave's mother out of the "sick bay", so I will have somewhere to put Badger Doe. Agave and her mother raced around while I raked and fed. I can't wait until I can let more of them out. Of course, there will be more raking to do, so maybe not!
I experimented with nuno felting yesterday and today. This is a piece that I did in the workshop under dim lights. It was really dark outside, when I took this photo. The portion on the right is one side and the photo below shows the other side. I did not want to do the style that I see other people doing. I just wanted to see how much work it would take to get the fiber to stick to the silk. I was pleasantly surprised. It is a whole lot easier than wet felting a purse or a bowl. I don't like having to cut the silk - it seemed to stick to the scissors and I had a hard time getting a straight line. On the piece today, I decided not to worry about the edges and I layered both sides of the silk with fiber. My batts were a combination of kid mohair, Shetland, merino, and angelina.
All of the fiber stuck and the thin edges look really cool. I like the abstract look and think that I will end up using the silk as a base to give strength to shawls that I want to make, rather than have the silk be the focal point. I will next play around with dyeing the silk.

Above is one of the batts that I used to make the shawl above. This is the dark side. My thought is to add this embellished piece by Pat Hansen (Pat, let me know, if I messed up your last hname, so I can fix it.)


Above is the piece that I felted yesterday. Pat brought a batch of pieces that she had been sewing together to show me today. As soon as I saw this piece, I saw a match. Pat and I are going to collaborate on a few more pieces and see what happens. She took this one home to attach the embellishment.



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