Felting the original shibori piece
I laid a very fine layer of merino all over the silk and lightly sprayed it with soapy water. Then folded the fabric concertina style from one end, trapping the wool between the layers of fabric.
This was the result once the bands had been removed and the piece stretched at little. It is a similar width to the original silk but the length is much shorter, it was 50 cm long and is now just 8 cm. I think it will make a nice cuff / bracelet with some beads nestling in the folds.
Creating a laminate for shibori
It was dyed with Procion MX midnight blue - as you can see the silk has accepted the dye much better than the wool.
It was allowed to dry before removing the stitches and stretching out. It has a springy nature; it can be pulled almost flat but always springs back to this position.
On a third sample, I stitched the silk as normal but while I was drawing the threads tight I poked wisps of merino into the folds and felted the piece before dyeing with the piece above. This is what it looked like after it had dried and the stitches were removed. It looks remarkably similar to the first piece with very sharp folds in the silk.
I'm enjoying your shibori/felting experiments. I love shibori, but I have never tried felting. Perhaps I should! The results are very interesting.
ReplyDeleteThank you Heather. Please do try felting, there are tons of tutorials on the web and it is very easy to do but I'm afraid it should come with a health warning though... it is more addictive than heroin. I have never tried but I imagine you could make a quilt from it too only you wouldn't need to stitch the fragments together, they could be felted together....
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