Making Felt Samples

 

Lyn

Never underestimate the power of experimentation and the making of samples.  It can lead to new ideas - maybe not straight away but perhaps later, when you're rummaging through your samples box for inspiration!

Yesterday I was cutting some shapes from yellow, blue and pink tutu net and the little pile of net scraps were beautiful.  As the scraps layered up the colours changed - for example the pink overlapping the blue made a pretty purple.

I know that a single piece of net will get trapped by wool fibres, but I wondered if the net scraps would get trapped by wool fibres if there were several pieces one on top of the other.  It's at that point that the wondering becomes experimentation.  

I made up four layers of white merino wool and scattered the net scraps on it, but there was a bit of space left so I decided to snip up a scrap of fulled felt and lay the tiny pieces alongside - I wondered if the pieces of felt would sink into the white merino and become flat or if they would stay 'lumpy'.

Here's the experimental layout...

...and in close-up.

Here it is after felting.

I was delighted to see that the white wool fibres did migrate right up through all the layers of net as you can see in the photo below..

...and the resulting 'net-felt' was very pretty.  Below is an angled shot showing the texture.

And the fulled felt scraps didn't sink into the white merino, but made a beautiful texture.

I don't have any immediate plans for using the results of this experiment but I have some pretty felt to look at in my sample box and one day I may get a lightbulb moment from it.