Nuno Felting

Ok, I told you that one of the reasons for setting up this new blog was to share my passion for fiber with you. My latest joy in the fiber world is Nuno Felting. Nuno Felting is combining fiber with fabric - usually silk - by a felting process that uses soap, water, and agitation. There are a couple of ways that you can cause the agitation: Rolling the fiber/fabric sandwich in bubble warp and then rolling like mad or patting it and rubbing it with your hands. Since, I'm a touchy-feely kind of person when it comes to fiber, I like the patting, rubbing technique. The pictures below are of a few of my recent Nuno Felting projects

This scarf has merino wool, an alpaca/silk blend, and some silk sari waste felted to a piece of silk gauze. The dark brown is the alpaca/silk blend. The darker gold is the merino and the sari waste, and the lighter gold is the silk. For this scarf, I put the fiber on both sides of the scarf.

This piece uses a sandwich technique. There is a layer of silk. On top of that I placed some pieces of lace, some handspun yarn, and some metallic threads. On top of those, I placed a solid layer of merino wool all across the piece. Then a second layer of silk was placed on top. All of it was felted together to make a piece of fabric that could be used for clothing, household items or any other sewing project that you chose. The lighter color in the picture is the lace; the wiggly pieces are yarn, and the small shiny spots are the metallic threads.

This scarf has merino wool placed on just one side of the scarf. It is hard to see in the picture, but the merino is placed in a cross hatch pattern across the silk.

This scarf again has the merino patches on just one side of the scarf. The lovely variation in the colors was obtained by mixing dye colors and because the wool and silk react to the dye differently.