Sunday, May 20, 2007

A great weekend

I have been away for a few days on another coach trip which was very enjoyable.
But I have just had the best weekend that I have spent in a long time.
I have been at a 2 day workshop doing Nuno felting with Fiona Wright an Australian felter who does the most amazing work. If you ever get the opportunity to do a workshop with this lady then go for it.I am showing a few of the samples that I made but they will have stitching on them later.
I first laid out a piece of black cotton Voile fabric and then placed the white wool fibre in a fine layer at right angles on top -then I placed pieces of silk fabric -either Paj-Chiffon or Organza on top .
I had placed a fine layer of georgette on top but I removed it before I started the felting process.
When I finished this I didn't like it because it was a bit disjointed.


This is the back and you can see how the white wool fibres have migrated through.

This is the piece after I had done running stitch on it-now I am happy with it. It is so soft and drapes beautifully.


This is my second sample using the same technique but I have used a different backing fabric.
I will stitch on this later in the week.

Here is the backing fabric which is a piece of cotton Sari fabric.

This is the back of my 3rd sample and I used blue cotton voile fabric this time.


The front of this sample is a piece of black silk organza that I had discharged in a workshop about 8 years ago and the discharged colour is a cream/soft green.The backing fabric was covered with raspberry coloured wool fibres plus lime green and then I added a small amount of teal wool scattered in a few places.
When this had felted up the fibres had migrated both to the back and front which is what it is suppose to do.

I am going to stitch this with perle 8 cotton and I will post it on the blog later-but first I have to do last weeks TAST sample.
As I said before I thoroughly enjoyed this class-I had done a class before in Nuno felting but I have learned so much from these 2 days and can't wait to do some more.
A point to note also is if you are doing Nuno felting you need a natural fabric for the backing and you need to test it because sometimes the tag says 100% cotton but in fact it could have polyester in it and also the cheapest crappy cotton fabric which has a loose weave is usually the best and should felt up perfectly.


9 comments:

Purple Missus said...

Doreen, these pieces are absolutely wonderful. I love the way you pulled that first piece together with the stitching, and the last piece with the black organza is beautiful.

Annica said...

Doreen, I can imagine how much fun you must have had. All your samples looks gorgeous!

Sandy said...

Wonderful samples. I'll bet you had fun. Sandy

Micki said...

These look wonderful, Doreen. Thanks for sharing.

Digitalgran said...

These samples are lovely. I look forward to seeing them deveop.

Dianne said...

There is nothing like a good weekend workshop, and this one looked like it was a lot of fun. Your felting samples are gorgeous. Love the black organza one.

Terri Stegmiller said...

Those are fantastic samples and I so envy you getting the chance to take a class like that.

Dot said...

Sounds like you had a great time at the class Doreen.

Love the samples you have shown here. Don't know which one I like best!

Julie H said...

These are fabulous - a class I would love to do!