Fiona Dix, Author at loveFibre :: colour to touch

felted fabric and Mr Bear

When I was playing with nuno felting using sari ribbon (see the previous post), I thought about doing some similar things with different types of fabrics. This is a bigger piece of felt using some strips of tray-dyed muslin (blogged here).

When I started this piece my plan was to make a piece of fabric and use part of it to cover a dining chair seat but I’m not sure now, I quite like it as a whole. Though I would have paid a bit more attention to the edges if I hadn’t been intending to cut them off! Perhaps I’ll hang it up for a while and then cut it up. It’s 53 x 73 cm (shrunk from 75 x 95cm).

If you hang felt, how do you hang it? if you don’t want to frame it? I don’t think I’ve come across anything written down about that and would be interested to know what methods people use.

On another note, I was thrilled to learn a week or two back that I’d won a giveaway on Caroline Inckle’s blog The house of secret superheroes and could choose any print from her Etsy shop – a difficult decision as they are all so lovely, but in the end this is the one I chose…

It’s ‘Meeting Mr Bear’, which is one of a set I’ve loved since I first saw them on Caroline’s old blog. The image says something very special and magical to me about God, about love and prayer and discovery and trust. I know that’s a very idiosyncratic interpretation of the work, but this image touches my spirit and it’s such a joy to me to have the print. Thank you, Caroline.

the latest felting adventures

A series of before and after pics from a felting session last week…

The first two pieces, focusing on working with colour, are flat felt in merino with a little silk floss on the surface. The first is more about the colours outside my window; the second, the colours inside my head.

The next sample is nuno felt using sari ribbon with a cobwebby layer of fleece, in this one the top layer is the ‘back’.

I really like the scribbly texture where the frayed edges of the ribbon are felted in, it looks almost like machine embroidery.

The next experiment was to follow up a thought I’d had when making this scarf, ‘what if I felt a cord tied with sari ribbon?’

Finally, I made a nuno felt ‘sandwich’ of two layers of thinly laid fleece trapping a layer of fabric scraps between. Sorry about the blurry ‘before’ image!

The next colour pieces I do are going to be bigger! I want to make some seat covers for a set of dining chairs we have that are in rags. I’m going to try the felted cord again, with a variety of ribbons and yarns; and the nuno pieces are quite soft and stretchy and would need to be stronger for actual use – more experiments definitely needed there!

I’ve applied to end the deferment of my OCA Textiles 1 course at the beginning of March – exciting and a bit daunting as I’ve got so out of the habit. I’ve already ascertained that I can focus on nuno felt and shibori for the fabric manipulation module I’ll be going back to, so I can continue to build on what I’ve been doing recently.

I had some other bits of news but I think I’ll save them for another post as this one seems to have grown very long already. 🙂

fun with Flock and Flickr

Styling itself the “social web browser”, Flock (based on Firefox), has a host of built-in features for social networking, but I’m writing about the one I like best – the Media Bar. This can be opened from the View menu or by clicking an icon in the Flock toolbar:

The Media Bar can be used with several different media services including Facebook and YouTube, but I only use it with Flickr. When the bar is open (at the top of the screen by default though you can move it to the bottom) it displays photo feeds laid out as a single-row grid of square tiles. (I have a thing for grid layouts so this is great for a start!)

There are a couple of built-in streams, which update regularly to show the latest images that have been added to Flickr, for example photos from your Flickr contacts:

But you can have your own custom streams too, and this is where the fun really starts. You can add your favourite Flickr searches – mine include “stitch textile”:

shibori:

and “nuno felt”:

It’s visually exciting to see the thumbnails together, and if something particularly catches your eye, you can hover over the thumbnail and expand the image to see it better and find out who it belongs to – this one is by felt4uart:

Or you can click through direct to the image on Flickr (this is by KatharinaBe):

You can tell someone else about an image:

And save your favourite searches to revisit:

Sometimes I play with keyword searches for inspiration – this was “orange spiral”:

The default media stream is “Preview New” which displays the newest images from all your saved searches, including your Flickr contacts.

I spend much of my working day using a browser, so I really like this colourful little changing show of textiles and design inspiration quietly feeding itself onto my screen. Something will often catch my eye and give me a moment of pleasure. When I stop for a break I sometimes scroll back through recent images and maybe follow through one or two that stand out. And if it all gets too distracting, I can just close up the Media Bar, knowing next time I open it up there’ll be new goodies to enjoy.

the story of a scarf

I set out to make a scarf. An easy one – big needles, a ball of fancy fluffy yarn and a simple triangular scarf pattern from the web, where you just increase one stitch at the beginning of each row.

As it grew, I realised I hadn’t paid enough attention to the shape – with only a single ball of wool I should have been increasing at a much faster rate to end up with a shallow isosceles triangle that would be wide enough to go round my neck, instead of one like this…

I looked at the ball band and the yarn was 30% wool – I can felt into this, I thought.

So, I cut it up …

… chose some fleece …

… laid it out …

… wetted and soaped and rubbed it for a while. It looked promising …

… but what I actually ended up with was a ribbon of prefelt and a bit of felted knitting, loosely attached to each other in about three places. I think I was too lavish with the soap.

With nothing to lose I decided to sling the whole lot in the washing machine. I tied strips of calico round it at intervals to hold the felt and the knitting together, and put it in on a 60 degree quick wash with a pair of jeans.

The result was a nice uneven felted rope, joined firmly to the knitting wherever there was a calico strip. I snipped off the calico, added some wrapping highlights along the length with just a little lovely shiny embroidery thread, and here it is… a scarf, tousled rather than fluffy, and surprisingly warm.

The calico was quite well entangled and would happily have stayed where it was – another time I’d use a nice space dyed piece instead of white, or maybe sari ribbon or a yarn wrapping, and make it an integral part.

On another note, I’ve just joined an exciting new challenge – Today’s Title Is… – set up by Helen Suzanne of Heb-Art Journal. The challenge is to start from a given title and capture the first image it sparks off in the mind’s eye, in any visual medium. This week’s title is Blue Chair. Do visit to see all the wonderfully varied interpretations and maybe you’ll be tempted to join in too 🙂

time to do the ironing

About 20 years ago I bought a big bag of silk cocoon strippings from a lovely fibrecraft shop in a barn in Elterwater in the Lake District, sadly long closed, and for a while played happily with this magical stuff that needs only an iron and water to turn it into a papery textile. I used to add scraps of fabric and paper, silk fibres and sequin waste and embedded lace, bits torn out of magazines and coloured tissue – the sericin left in the cocoon strippings is strong enough to hold all kinds of things, though it works best if they’re light and flat. Mostly I used this for cards and made a couple of wall pieces and then I ran out of steam and other things took over, but the silk stayed in a box on the shelf.

I hadn’t thought about it for ages till Alan reminded me how much I used to enjoy it, so last weekend I got out the ironing board and spent a couple of hours ironing away – I have to admit that creative ironing is almost the only kind I ever do.

I tried incorporating a few different materials and some were more successful than others. These samples include bits of felt, merino fibres, thowsters’ waste, bamboo fibres, sari yarn and a lacy fabric.

I like the way the sari yarn bleeds dye into the surface (at the bottom of the biggest piece, and the little piece on the left in the middle). The felt and merino fibres were the only things I tried that didn’t bond so well; at least, they need a high ratio of cocoon strippings to stick to, and you get loose bits and ‘floating’ layers. That could be a feature, but it makes the textile more fragile.

In the next sample I carded about equal quantities of silk and merino for a while to mix them. I like this effect.

Bamboo fibre and synthetic lace fabric both bond very well.

I like the fact that you can do a lot of experiments in a relatively short time, which is good when you’re not feeling very creative, and a little silk goes a long way. There are lots of lovely possibilities.

I unwrapped my rusty calico soon after the new year, not a finished piece of fabric really – I don’t think it stayed wet enough, but a start for some overdyeing, anyway. I like the marks on the left. I’m ordering some silk so I can try pole-wrapping that now I’m here to keep an eye on it.