Saturday, March 26, 2011

Nuno Felting!

Quite a few years ago--maybe 10?--I took a weekend nuno felting course with Polly Sterling and her amazingly talented daughter Mwfanwy (now in NYC). It was a weekend full of creative women, hard work, good food, wine, and fabulous felt! With Polly's help we all made quite a few yards--maybe 9 yds--of felted material on silk which we then turned into jackets. Honestly, though, I have forgotten quite a bit of how I actually did this...sooooo off to the Internet and I found a tutorial and I had Gary pick up some bubble wrap and a pool noodle and today is the day. What I'm trying to do is use some silk scarves I have. I originally bought these blanks to dye but have become tired of doing that and I have some already dyed which are, frankly, ugly. The first piece is just on an undyed piece of silk and the second one is a scarf which my friend dyed but the colors and design are wild and not that appealing so I thought that would be a good one to play with. I still have some beautiful Australian merino wool I bought at Polly's so here we go!
Supplies

Laying out the bits of wool on a piece of silk
Covering the piece with plastic after laying it on bubble wrap

Rolling everything up to start the felting onto the silk



After the wool has migrated into the silk I start to throw it down, over and over to actually felt the wool and pucker the silk




This one is on that ugly scarf--should have done both sides because the back is STILL UGLY!!

After wetting it down with soapy water and rolling it up


Ready to be thrown around


OK now I'm off to take photos of the actual finished pieces...I don't really like them as much as I had hoped but I'm still new at this...
Here they are...


And the ugly backside!!! Yikes!
The front but now that it's nighttime my lighting is off...
Anyway, I'm going back to my weaving...
xo

5 comments:

  1. I've heard this process is very labor intensive and difficult to accomplish!..

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  2. Great to see the process. Beautiful colors. Will be fun to see what you do with it.

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  3. what i like about nuno felting is the hand of the textile. i think it's too easy to be weirdly wild, but once you conquer the color/pattern thing you'll be ok. at least, i know that would be my problem with it. india flint makes exquisite pieces.

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  4. Boy, I don't know if this is for me...might give it another shot but I don't think the second scarf bonded well to the silk...need more lessons!!! Thanks, guys, for the encouragement! xo

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  5. Your story is heart breaking. Truly. But your work is stupendous. Just beautiful.

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