I made three felted fleece samples yesterday – from Hebridean, alpaca and merino roving.
hebridean fleece felt sample
alpaca fleece felt sample
merino fleece felt sample
The Hebridean fleece is quite hairy, just a little rough and yet soft as well, while the alpaca looks hairy but feels fluffy and silky. However, I think I did something wrong felting the alpaca, maybe rubbed it too hard too soon, it’s not very well felted after a lot of work, and doesn’t look anything like other alpaca felt I’ve seen on the web. More experiments obviously needed.
I think it would be interesting to dye the Hebridean fleece, could it give a rich deep colour with a hint of brightness wherever the white fibres take up the dye?
And the merino – I didn’t really need to make a sample of that, just an excuse to play with the colours!
The merino sample looks lovely.
It might be your alpaca which gave you the hairy result. While we were on the IFA stand at Woolfest an alpaca owner asked us to do a sample piece of felt with her alpaca. The alpaca felted well but was quite hairy.