Felt making

I told you this was a busy few days didn't I? I've had a really lovely day today and it's cheered me up no end. A friend of mine invited me along to a felt making day which had been arranged locally. The tutor was Jane Marrows who is based in Sneinton Nottingham and is a member of Sneinton Artists .
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The workshop was held at the Scout Hall in Bottesford village and we had a leisurely start with a cuppa. Jane then took us through a short demonstration of how to make a fairly soft felt. I had been worried that the procedure might involve hours of rolling and pummelling but far from it.
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We laid out 3 layers of our base wool (white to begin with), each layer at right angles to the previous one and the fibres overlapping each other by roughly a third so that there are no gaps.

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The fibres were then covered with a layer of net (nylon fabric), wet with hot soapy water and rubbed over with the back of the hand (in my case). It didn't take very long at all for the fibres to start felting and after about 10 minutes of rubbing and manipulating we were able to rinse the felt and set it on a windowsill to dry.

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As you can see we set up the base layers and then made a bit of a design with coloured wools and other fibres including angelina.

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For my second piece I layered coloured wool fibres and then used snippets of silk, yarn, angelina and silk mawatta cap.

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This piece felted up even quicker than the first piece! You can manipulate it further to firm the felt up but I quite like this soft finish.