a life of felt - Angela Barrow

Nuno bag – part one

angela — Thu, 17 May 2012 06:28:29 +0000

Nuno felting is the technique of combining wool fibres and fabrics through the wet felting process. Most commonly used in clothing it can also be adapted for other uses like bags. I began with one of the fun parts – choosing fabrics.

The chosen fabrics are silk, silk chiffon, crystal organza and cotton muslin.I laid out the printed silk as an internal pocket then covered it with he crystal organza to form an inner lining. After this I added wool fibres and further strips of fabric, silk fibres and pencil roving.

Less fibres find their way through synthetic fabrics and so you achieve greater texture. The photo above shows the crystal organza lining and the one below shows the silk pocket.

Below shows the outside of the bag with three different fabrics felted in. As soon as I make a handle and catch ‘ll show you more.

I’m running a nuno bag workshop on Saturday 1st December so you can expect to see one or two more samples between now and then.

Low relief and texture workhop

angela — Wed, 16 May 2012 06:02:11 +0000

This workshop was nearly a week ago, how time files. We began the day by producing pieces in white Merino using low relief techniques. The day was a little dark and overcast so the photos aren’t great but the felt is rather good and I’ve chosen the best photos for you.

This piece is by Mich and the centre ridge was created by cutting off a section of the felt at pre-felt stage and stitching it back on.

There’s a lot going on with Lesley’s including some unfelted fleece. After this we focused on texture in the felt by adding, fabrics,yarns, threads, plant fibres, recycled items and cut back techniques.

Various fabrics on here including cotton scrim, polyester, muslin, silk, crystal organza, wired ribbon and recycled nets. Mich did very well with the colours, it’s such a vibrant piece.

Jo added knitting and crochet to her felt and you can see where she’s started cutting back to reveal other coloured layers underneath. There are eight egg shaped low relief areas which Jo will reveal but she wanted to take her time on this so hopefully we’ll see a picture of he finished item later.

Storage solution

angela — Sun, 13 May 2012 11:32:19 +0000

Down at the mill Adelaide Walker sells sample packs of various plant and silk fibres. It takes up quite a lot of room and after cogitating we came up with the idea of new storage. Not wanting to spend money on this it had to be something we had, or could make from what we had. We began by collecting some of these from an obliging supermarket and yes they were free and already empty, that particular pleasure was denied us.

We tried a sample design and then modified it to make these.

We needed a full twelve compartments. I thought the wine box didn’t look great so covered them with scrap paper and PVA glue.

The white is better than wine box colour but I do think it looked better before this stage. Here’ how the boxes looked on the table, they really did take up a lot of room didn’t they?

The new solution is so much neater and has definitely freed up extra space.

Two years on

angela — Thu, 10 May 2012 06:21:36 +0000

Two years ago I made a spiral in felt with beach glass inclusions and blogged about it here. Picture reminder below.

Lovely rich blue colours. The intention was to place this outside, which I duly did and now it’s time to show you how it’s aged.

So much of the colour has been lost.

It gets a lot of rain and wind but has survived remarkably well and there’s no attack by moths or any other insects. I was never in love with this and perhaps it’s time for me to take it down but I have to confess I’m curious to see how long it will survive and what other changes it will go through. Perhaps I’ll just move it to somewhere less visible.

Carded

angela — Tue, 08 May 2012 07:33:31 +0000

What a brilliant weekend we’ve had, so much sun I managed to spend two and a half days in the garden! I’ve not been entirely idle on the fibre front. There was rather a lot of pale purple in my stash some of which was past it’s best so I’ve done a little carding.

From left to right – blended with navy, koala and dark brown. Of the three, the centre is my favourite, it’s a very delicately coloured mix. Having completed these I thought a Jubilee mix would be a good idea.

Sadly it’s a disappointment to me, I just don’t like it. Oh well, you can’t win them all.

First bobbin

angela — Thu, 03 May 2012 09:04:22 +0000

Well here it is folks, the first bobbin full of yarn form my spinning wheel. It;s lumpy, bumpy, under and in some cases over twisted but it’s all mine. This is Blue Faced Leicester wool which I found relatively easy to spin (not that the results bear me out).

I’m now playing with some Masham which is a longer fibre and has taken me a little time to adjust to. Earlier this morning I had visions of spinning my own wool so I could crochet a blanket but I’m realising that I’m a little way away from that yet. Onwards and upwards.

Wonderwool Wales

angela — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:49:19 +0000

It was the Wonderwool Wales show this weekend just gone and what a time we had. Preparation began a month ago and the mill became more and more crowded with boxes waiting for the big day. Just as we couldn’t find any more space we decided that it was time to call it a day and if we didn’t have it we didn’t have it. I’d estimated we’d have about 40 boxes and booked a transit van.

In the end we had just over 40 boxes and the van doors did close, but only just. Five minutes after setting off we went back to drop stuff which should have been left behind. Thirty minutes after setting off we realised we’d forgotten the trolley for moving all those boxes when we arrived! Five hours after we set off (for the third time) we arrived at our destination.

It took a further 3 hours to unload and set up the stall but we were pleased with how it looked and did receive lots of compliments on the layout and quality of our fibres, very gratifying.

It was cold in Wales (actually from what people have said it was cold in Yorkshire too) and I was cold all day Saturday. The natives were friendly, the other stallholders were friendly, we met lots of new people, put faces to names and generally had a very good busy Saturday. Learning from the previous days experience I put on an extra layer and was even colder on the Sunday! People came in with tales of floods, trees down, roads blocked and snow on the hills. Worst of all, they kept telling me how nice and warm it had been last year.

This morning we took the van to the mill and unloaded, sorted out orders from the weekend and then I was out teaching all afternoon. Since returning, I’ve dashed around like a mad woman so that when my daughter came home from piano I can give her my undivided attention. To make up for not seeing her this weekend we have a girls day out planned for this coming Saturday and I’m so looking forward to it.

Despite the cold, wind and rain I can imagine we’ll be making the journey again next year.

Name it!

angela — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 11:46:38 +0000

I snook in a second nuno scarf! Mind you, I have made an error on it thanks to trying to do too much multitasking, forgetting where I’d got up to and finishing felting before I’d finished laying out!

I’d already wet it before I remembered to take a photo. Same process as the last scarf using Merino wool and recycled sari silk fibres and rovings onto hand dyed silk chiffon.

This ended up brighter than I’d originally intended but pale colours just didn’t make it sing in the same way as brights do.

I love the ends. Again, I didn’t want a straight edge and the flowers both break the straight line and add some weight to the scarf.

Problem is, I don’t have a name for this one. Suggestions anyone?

Sea Foam

angela — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 05:31:46 +0000

I’ve managed to squeeze in a quick nuno felted scarf this week. It’s hand dyed silk chiffon in turquoise and I decided on a circle theme.

I laid Merino/Silk blend fibres along the edge and along the length of the scarf in collections of circles, some within others.

I wanted to continue off the end of the fabric so that it didn’t finish with a straight edge. Continuing with the circle theme I laid it out then put a second layer of bubble wrap over the top then flipped it over so I could add more circles on the reverse. Once the fibres were through the fabric I heated it all up and began throwing until I achieved this.

It’s very summery. The original idea was to do this in red, white and blue so it’d be ‘Jubilee’ colours without being a flag. This didn’t work for me and I have to say I’m very pleased with the colours used.

My daughter thinks it looks like sea foam especially along the edge. Do you agree? What would you name it?

New Autumn Workshops

angela — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 06:35:27 +0000

I now have a full list of workshops for the Autumn which includes a couple of new ones. I hope you’ll like what I’ve planned, here’s the list in brief.

Sat 15th September – felt pictures
Sat 6th October- flowers
Sat 3rd November – nuno wraps
Sat 1st December – nuno handbags – New

Fri 7th September – introduction to needle felting
Thurs 4th October – 3D vases and boxes
Fri 9th November – dyeing wool and silk fibres – New
Thurs 6th December – hand and neck warmers

If the dyeing workshop is successful I will try to turn this into a Saturday workshop for more people.

Don’t forget, it’s the WonderWool Wales show this coming weekend, and it’ll be Woolfest in Cumbria on 22/3 June perhaps I’ll bump into you at one of them!