Remember my needle felting tutorial from last week? Here’s another technique I’ve been experimenting with.
Recently I was asked if I could create a window covering that would have the beautiful textual look of felted wool yet be something that would let light come through. I wondered if I could use the same needle felting technique I used with the Clover tools, but apply the felt shape to a sheer fabric. My first concern was that the felting needles would damage the fabric. I knew I needed to do some test swatches.
Being a little rusty on the topic of fabric types and weights, I visited the Dharma Trading website to order some swatches. They have a wide fabric selection and sample swatches available for 25 cents each. I got cotton lawn and voile, and silk gauze, chiffon and organza. I needle felted a little wool onto each swatch to see how the fabric reacted. Afterward I steamed them using an iron and press cloth.
The cotton lawn stood up to the test but isn’t as sheer as I’d like. The silk organza is a little stiff but has a nice transparency. Since Dharma Trading only offers white fabrics for dyeing, I opted for a cranberry colored poly organza that I purchased at my local Joann Fabrics. (It’s a little shiny and it’s not silk, but I’m just not ready to dye my own fabrics!)
Success! This shot shows my felty-yet-sheer test swatch hanging in front of my window providing an unobstructed view of my tree. Now I can’t wait to aply this technique to an actual curtain.
For details about creating the leaf I applied to the background, please refer to my needle felting tutorial from August 11th. By the way, there is a felting technique called nuno felting(link no longer active) . It is a wet felting technique that produces a light weight drapey fabric when wool is laminated to silk. I’d love to hear if anyone out there has tried it!
WOW! I so want to try needle felting; I want to make beads, for jewelry, but WOW is this AWESOME looking! I’d be afraid that whatever I made would like kindergartenish, though.
Betz, I love it….the felt on that layer of flowy sheerness is sooo pretty! suzan
This is beautiful, love the experiments 🙂 The felting definitely look good on the sheer fabric well done.
Nuno Felting is great fun, but very labor intensive. There’s a great article on K C Lowe in the current issue of Belle Armoire which talks some about her technique. My introduction to the Nuno technique was a workshop with Tammy Deck which was very informative and a lot of fun.
I’ve been talking to another felt artist (I’m afraid I don’t know her name, she’s from out of state but regularly visits my local fiber store) who uses a combination of needle and wet felting techniques for large scale projects, tacking the fibers with felting needles before wetting them and starting the wet felting process by hand. The part that I think is interesting and want to try is that she finishes the whole process by agitating and fulling in her washing machine and dryer.
Sorry, my English is not very correct
Your blog is very interesting, in him I am learning many things, me I will read it little by little to find out to me well everything
Recently I discovered “nuno felt” seems to me very interesting, to you has had left perfect
A greeting