NUNO FELT WORKSHOP

On Saturday 31st March 2007 we had a day's workshop on Nuno Felt lead by one of our members Pauline Coddington. Pauline is a felt maker and textile artist based in Hawk Green, Marple, Cheshire. Her company Hawk Green Felts offers a range of distinctively styled bags and greeting cards and she will undertake commissioned pieces as requested, including hangings, furnishings and designer fabrics.
'Nuno' is the Japanese word for woven cloth and therefore 'Nuno Felt' is a combination of felt with woven cloth. It is mainly used for producing lightweight fabrics with good draping quality, suitable for clothing.


The workshop was preceeded by a demonstration on the Friday evening when Pauline (above picture) explained the principles behind nuno felting and we were able to handle numerous samples of her work that utilised this process.
On the Saturday we were ready and set up by 10am and by 11am we were all rolling away. Most of us chose to make a sandwich grid design as our first sample. We sandwiched wool and other fibres such as silk tops, prefelt, lace and Angelina between two pieces of silk chiffon.

Click on picture to see the felt in detail.

The design above is a scarf that is at the rolling stage the ends of the grid pattern are easily seen around the rectangle as strands of wool. The trapped coloured wool and fibres are randomly placed inside the grid of naturally coloured wool which in turn are sandwiched between two layers of silk chiffon. The rolling and soaping of the fabric causes the wool fibres to shrink and push through the chiffon resulting in a dense wrinkled fabric.

Click on picture to see the felt in detail.



These two scarves have as the base a predyed blue silk chiffon scarf with strips of prefelt laid along the edges The random wool and fibres laid in the centre will eventually be felted through the chiffon.
Click on picture to see the felt in detail.

Most of these samples are not yet at the final stage. They still require to be put into hot water and thrown so as to complete the felting process.

Exhausted but happy! Members of Silk-n-Threads at 3.30pm who participated on the workshop. The concensus was that nuno felting was a young persons craft unless you are prepared to suffer aching backs and upper arms. Suppose it is more enjoyable than the gym!

THE FOLLOWING EXAMPLES WERE COMPLETED THE NEXT DAY. The amount of shrinkage can be seen if you compare the size of the pieces as seen on the picture above of the group results. These three pieces are on the floor to the right of the picture.

Dyed silk chiffon was the base for the Fushia and Ocean pieces, on to which wool rovings and silk tops were laid. They both could be the basic for an embroidery. Watch this space.Fushia

Ocean

Two layers of white silk chiffon trapping white and green wool rovings that formed a grid, you can see the ends of the rovings at each side of the square. In between the grid spaces green and pink wool and silk was placed. If you click on the picture you can clearly see the crinkling of the chiffon and the effect achieved when the wool has shrunk and come through the chiffon.