Last Saturday’s S.E.A.T.A. workshop was a felting day with Karen Lane; her blog is well worth a good look. I had a fantastic day. I have done some felting over the years (bag and scarves) with various felt / textile artists, and a few bigger projects myself at home (slippers and sunflower-hanging, 1m by 2m).
But as with most things there is always more to learn, and everybody’s approach is slightly different. Tempting as it was, I didn’t order a kit from Karen, since I had most if not all of the requirements list. Still, it was the usual mad panic on Saturday morning of gathering together the last few things. I couldn’t make up my mind what colour palette of fleece, so took along three bags, greens (predictably), blues and a more mixed bag that included some rusts and browns. It was far more than I could possibly use in the day, but I was keeping my options open.
A demonstration from Karen gave me several new things to try before we started ourselves. The most exciting was using two little dog brushes as carders. I have used traditional carders in the past, with not a great deal of success, as they are heavy and unwieldy. The dog carders were ideal for the small amount of fleece we were using, and very quickly I’d got some lovely blends. The other thing that made the difference was when you’re carding to spin, you need to keep the fleece staple going in the same direction to prevent felting. Now I wanted them to felt, so the direction of the fibres was unimportant, to the point of them being all over the place was beneficial.
The little balls of blended carded fleece were put close together to give soft edges on a piece of bubbles-up bubble-wrap. My colour choices were very autumnal.
Karen had demonstrated using just two fine layers of fleece, one going left to right and one going top to bottom. The blending shows up more on this one.
Then it was pre-felting to the point of being handlable, and cutting the piece into squares, re-arranging and laying it out again, then flipping it over before putting a backing layer of fleece over the squares and re-felting.
In this one I used the wispy edges on the inside of my square.
While this one had the more solid squares butting up or slightly overlapping.
The more organic one I didn’t want to cut up, I liked it as it was and wanted to see what it would do left in one piece when it was fully felted.
I used an olive green on the back.
After this I was also rather wet and soapy and forgot to take any more photos. On the two square pieces I used rusted coloured fleece, and on the one a piece of rusty coloured scrim.
We’d also had bits of silk and other threads on the requirements list. I’d brought along this very old test piece of silk painting, and used the top two pieces on my round piece, as well as some bits of scrim and other threads.
We were then ready actually to felt and full the pieces. A new (to me) term of “fulling” was used; I had heard it before, but now have a better understanding of the word. It is when the felt shrinks in size as you roll and bash it about, changing the direction of the piece in the roll every couple of minutes so that it shrinks evenly.
The silk paints had obviously not been fixed, as the colours are now more muted, but I’m very pleased with the result, it’s now ready to be stitched.
Detail of above, the colours are pretty true on the whole piece.
The scrim has given a wavy edge which I like, but also almost looks like French knots in places.
I didn’t put fleece all over the back, the bottom third or so was just scrim.
I love the subtle colour changes on this piece, and it will be good to stitch into.
We were also shown a couple more techniques in the afternoon, but they are not quite finished yet.
It was really interesting to see the variety of work that was produced by the group when we all had the same starting point.
Thank you, Karen, for sharing your skills and techniques. I had a great day.
debbidipity 