Day 8 – Natural Rhythms 30-Day Library Challenge

Having fun applying Fibonacci’s principles to designing my stripes and colours.

I used a needle-felted batt on the back and what I love is the bleed through of colours from the front creating a plaid-like effect on the back. Pretty nice happy accident!

Materials: Nuance Superfine Merino tops in Turkish Red, Terracotta, Blimey LImey, Black Pearl. Hand dyed Sari Pink. Needle-felted batt in a beige (sorry can’t remember where I got it from).

Day 7 – Natural Rhythms 30-Day Library Challenge

Working with stripe blocks of colour again. I was hoping to have graduation from one colour into the next, so in-between colours could be read as stripes (but this didn’t happen). Think I need to make a sample much longer than 50cm x 50cm to get the effect I was trying to create. I also experimented with using multi-layers of the Silk Mesh to obtain colour movement, and test its possibilities. There are between 2-4 layers of mesh in any one stripe, the fabric created is more a jacket weight cloth.

 

Materials: Silk Mesh in Regrowth. Superfine Merino tops Colour Harmony Regrowth

Day 6 – Natural Rhythms 30-Day Library Challenge

Today’s challenge was more of a technical challenge. I want to see if I could translate into felting the stripes from a favorite print from artist Michele Drew. I should have used a darker grey in hind-sight, and I will be working on resolving the construction of the lines, not quite happy yet…

Materials: Colour Nuance: Cumin. Hand dyed superfine Merino tops in Riverstone and Pebble.

My Natural Rhythms 30-Day Library Challenge

I here by declare that for the next 30 days I am setting myself the goal of designing a 50cm x 50cm felted Natural Rhythms sampler. My aim is to create a Library of Linear (structured or organic) designs which explores the language of how lines and colour interact in felt (plus I would love the bliss of being creative everyday!) If anyone would like to join me, you are most welcome! I’ll cheat today and post the first  piece I ever made. I use to hate lines….Nancy Ballesteros

Have You Fulled Your Felt Enough?

Have you FULLED your felt enough?? One of the most common mistakes is to not fully felt your felt (Figure 8). These samples are from the same piece of Nuno felted Silk Mesh (Snowy Owl colourway) and superfine Merino tops (Black Pearl). Sample on the left has NOT been fulled enough – it will eventually pill and loose shape. Sample on the right has been fulled twice to reach the best results. Shrinkage was almost 50% , 10 -15 grams (.35 -.53 ounce) of wool was used per 1 metre square (40 inches square) of Silk Mesh fabric to created a lightweight nuno felted cloth. click here for more information (go to our article on Felting Instructions – Fully Felted Felt – Final Considerations).