In the Black

I spent today making this nuno scarf: It is a gift.

I am still amazed at how much these shrink in the making - this one started out as nearly 70 inches long and shrunk 20, in addition to 6 inches of shrinkage on the sides.

Making one of these is really a work out. I think I'll need to let my shoulders recoup before my next one!

Water Shawl

Ten years ago when I was giving a presentation in Sante Fe that was the personal culmination of a year's worth of creative expresssion, a stranger asked if she could sit in and I agreed. She later gave me a framed drawing she had gotten from a trunk in a Taos art shop, of 'Deer Woman' - who is wearing a shawl with a stag, stars, land forms, feathers, leaves and birds woven into it - and has what appears to be weaving, on her lap. It is a fabulous image with a story written on the back and I have it hanging in a significant location. At the time I was not stitching or involved in fibre art. It seems like the seed of that gift is now growing, as I made a second shawl. I love how life spirals round like that. I have put some different materials in - one that works but I will avoid in future is silk rods because they stick to my iron.

I also put in silk paper 'stones' because I was thinking of water when I made this.

I like how the back ripples. I made this on my counter, which is really too small a space, and consequently, the shawl is shorter than what I'd prefer.

Here is the length of it when it was still wet.

Rolling Right Along

The name on this old gas pump confirmed that I was in the right location for a felting workshop! The first day of Ulrieke Benner's workshop I woke to this promising sky:

And here is the view we had from the Artspring Centre, where I spent the day laying out my design, wetting it out, massaging it, checking it and rolling. Ulrieke had brought a huge variety of supplies for us to play with, including bags of roving she gathered according to the colours we wanted to work with. She asked us what we wanted to make and demonstrated ways fabrics and roving could be joined. She had also brought handouts and samples to view -and - a glorious rainbow coloured shawl she had spent several days making.

I decided to take advantage of the large work area, which I do not have at home, to make a shawl. I had brought fabrics, laces and yarns - some of which I found out were not suitable for a nuno shawl, as they were too heavy. I was able to use some bits of my natural dyed fabric, a snow dyed velvet, a doily, pieces of an old silk shirt and yarns. My design covered the surface of this long table prior to rolling it up, and I still had plenty of rolling left to do by the end of the day, so I covered the roll with plastic to keep it wet overnight.

Then we invited for wine and cheese at Ulreike's studio!

New Dimension

The textured and raised surface of these layered shingles and the 3D nature of this seaweed on the sand

is what I'm trying to create in felt.

I had pleated the nuno prefelt below using my embellisher machine and then tried unsuccessfully to wet felt additional roving to the undersides of the pleats. So I removed the roving and just completed felting it and ended up with a bit of a ripple effect - and alot smaller piece!

So much to learn and I'm glad I will have the workshop with felt artist Ulrieke Benner to help me out, soon.

New to Nuno

Today I tried nuno felting again. Two hours into working to get the fibres to unify with the habotai, I decided to cover the back with wool roving and see if that worked better - a little bit like sandwiching - and it has come together nicely, although after doing some reading, I moved on to using more nuno friendly fabrics. Here is a close up and I do love the texture, which will be a pleasure to stitch.

I decided a tiny experiment was in order - so as to reduce the amount of rolling!

But when the cheesecloth worked well and was far quicker, I had to try silk organza - which really worked well.

As with any new medium and technique, there is a learning curve and I'm glad I kept working at it to see some results. I also am enjoying how I can use old fabrics from experiments that didn't turn out well and they look great with some wool added. I have thought of an exciting idea to try next... And here is a very interesting video with food - or rather fibre - for thought: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEJmXmTFpMg&feature=email

Silk and Wool Blends

I started yesterday attempting to nuno felt, but the fibres mostly stuck to each other more than to the silk ground. So I needle punched them later when they had dried, which really took away from their dimension, and I think I would hand stitch things down, next time. Then I began knitting a silk/merino blend - my first time using circular needles and nearly my first time knitting - as I've tried it once as a girl and a few years ago when I began this blog. I only know the basic knitting stitch but I intend to learn more and want to experiment with less traditional knitting and try felting some of it.

And I enjoyed seeing fall's changes at Elk lake.

My made over sweatshirt provided just the right amount of warmth.

I've been continuing to experiment with nuno felting and I will do another post to show my results.