About
My name is Kim Winter and I live in London, UK. I’ve had no formal training in textiles. I learnt to knit when I was at school, and was quite a keen knitter in my teens and twenties, but the pressures of work and travel meant that I didn’t pick up my needles and yarn after that for about 15 years.
Then in September 2010 I signed up for evening classes in creative and experimental textiles at Morley College in London. It refired my enthusiasm for colour and texture, so I thought I’d keep a blog to chart my exploration of this exciting world. I’ve called it Flextiles, because my defiinition of textiles is quite loose, including plastic as well as fabric and yarn.
The three terms at Morley covered a whole range of techniques, from hand and machine embroidery through wet and dry felting, shibori dyeing with indigo and soft basketry to knitting with paper string and wire and heat transfer printing. I loved every minute and am now doing the intermediate textiles workshop at Morley.
You can see some of the items I make on the Gallery page. I usually have a stall at the Brixton Makers’ Market on the second Saturday of every month – you can see the dates in the right-hand column. I also have an online Makerhood stall.
Spectacle case made from fused plastic bags, bubble wrap, felt and hand embroidery
Net shawl with nuno felt flowers in merino wool and shibori pleats
Shibori pencil roll
Hand-made wet-felted pot
I hope you enjoy my blog. Do leave a comment on anything that interests you, or you can email me on flextiles@gmail.com.
Sep 07, 2011 @ 17:19:14
Re. felting on velvet. A friend and I spent this summer doing a lot of dyeing and shibori dyeing of silks in preparation for nuno felting. We also dyed some silk velvet. I decided to experiment with felting on this velvet. I tried two samples, applying merino wool roving to both sides of the velvet. Curiously, the sample with wool applied to the fuzzy side of the velvet is being very difficult. The wool slides off the velvet during rolling. I had expected it to be “grabbed” by the velvet fibers. Instead, the sample where I applied the wool to the back of the velvet is doing much better. Any thoughts on this??
Sep 07, 2011 @ 18:57:11
Hi Josephine,
Thanks for stopping by. I don’t have much experience of nuno felting with velvet, which is why Lisa Hawthorne’s lovely pieces made me want to try.
Like you, I’ve had previous problems of the wool sliding off the fuzzy side of the velvet. It was one of my earliest attempts at nuno felting, and I was trying to felt some velvet circles onto cotton muslin by laying strands of merino across the velvet and the muslin. But the wool slid off, and in the end I had to resort to embroidery to get the circles to stick. (I tried an embellisher too, but I didn’t like the effect if had on the velvet.)
Nicola Brown of Clasheen, one of my favourite felt blogs, also seems to have had a few problems.
The only reason I can think of for the wool not felting on the fuzzy side is that the pile on that side is formed of lots of loose loops, rather than a more ‘solid’ framework of fibres, so it’s not so easy for the wool to work its way through. By contrast, the wool on the non-fuzzy side can work its way through the fibres more easily. I think that if I had put wool underneath the velvet circles on my scarf as well as on top I might have had more success!
If the wool is sticking to the back of the velvet do you still get the ruched effect on the front as it shrinks during felting? I’d be interested in seeing some photos!
Nov 28, 2011 @ 13:26:41
I love your net and nuno shawl Kim, it is beautiful. You have a lovely sense of pattern in your work. Cheers Maggie
Nov 28, 2011 @ 15:56:06
Thanks for your kind comments, Maggie.