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Saturday February 21, 2009
Nuno Felt
Today, Janice ran a Nuno felting workshop. It was a very energetic day. The idea was to felt 2 pieces that could be made into a simple bag. In fact, I made 2 differently patterned pieces, which shrank to very different shapes. Unfortunately none of my photos properly show the texture of the felt, which is an important part of the result.
If you want to understand the technique it is explained very nicely here. Basically, you start by welding the wool to the base fabric, which may be either a loose weave cotton muslin or silk, by friction through rolling layers together. You then knead the fabric with soap, and and "shock" it, so that it felts and shrinks. The watery nature of this experience is much more limited than with conventional felting. As the wool layers shrink they crinkle the base fabric to form a seersucker-like finish.
We used merino wool layers on both sides of our fabric base, and I think the pattern and direction in which I laid the wool pattern caused the relative shape differences in my two pieces. You can put the wool on only one side of the base. The photo below shows some work of Janice's where she has used the same patterned silk Georgette as the base with different coloured wool layers on the back, and created all these different effects:
It would have been nice to have more photos of other people's pieces - however, not only did most of us not finish off the final process while we were there, but my camera ended up in a puddle of water so no more pictures were possible. [Dried out nicely, though, I'm pleased to say.]
Posted by Christina at 7:40 PM. Category: Crafts
Comments
Your pieces came out really nice. Look forward to seeing some close-ups.
Posted by: Alison on February 23, 2009 11:22 PM
