As ever, the advice on how to do it was contradictory. Magdalen, who gave me the fleece, wrote on her note that I should soak it in lukewarm water for a couple of hours without soap. Debby, my tutor at Morley College, said that if I wanted to dye it (which I do), I should put it in cold water with a little detergent, as the lanolin in the fleece resists dye because it is too oily.

Online, the consensus among spinners seemed to be that using hot water and dishwashing detergent was best, as long as you don’t agitate the fleece and don’t let the water get cold, as this causes the lanolin to reattach itself to the wool. Eventually I decided to use the method outlined by Fuzzy Galore. But as I can’t do all the fleece in one go anyway, I will probably try different techniques on different batches.

When I laid it out on a plastic sheet in the garden, it became clear that it wasn’t in one piece, like a sheepskin rug, but several large clumps. I picked off some of the grubbiest bits of dung, plus the largest bits of straw, thorny twigs and other vegetation.

Then I picked a clump that didn’t look too grubby, filled the kitchen sink with hot water, added some Fairy Liquid, and gently pressed the wool so that it was submerged in the water.  I left it for 15 minutes, by which time the water was filthy, scooped out the wool into a bowl, drained the water and repeated the process. The water wasn’t so dirty this time.

Then it was two 15-minute rinses, again in hot water but without the detergent. The final rinse water was a little cloudy but not dirty.

I was a bit worried about spinning it in the washing machine, as many people seem to recommend, so I put a few handfuls in the salad spinner and span it by hand! This was actually very effective and didn’t take too long.

Then I laid it out on some net curtain on top of a rack above the bath to dry. I’ve managed to do three batches, which I reckon is about half the fleece.

As you can see, the wool is much whiter than it was, and it’s considerably less smelly! It doesn’t seem to have felted  anywhere, so either I have handled it really well, or it’s going to be difficult to get it to felt!

At the moment I’m making mostly 3D felt, such as pots, Kindle covers and slippers – and it’s not very easy to machine embroider these items once they’re complete. Therefore I was interested in this post by Ruth Lane on The Felting and Fiber Studio blog about stitching on dissolvable fabric and then felting it onto the fibre as part of the felting process.

So yesterday I stitched a pattern like a flower – a circle with radiating narrow petals in black thread on plastic water-soluble film. I made a pot using a flat resist in the usual way, adding the stitching on top of one side as the final layer, and started rubbing.

The film dissolved without any problems, but because the stitching was quite fine (single rows of straight stitch, except the circle), the “petals” soon started moving around. Not a problem – the original petals were of irregular sizes, so there was no beautiful pattern to spoil.

More of a problem was that the single lines of stitching didn’t really want to felt into the wool. I suspect the thread was probably polyester rather than cotton (it didn’t say on the reel), and that there wasn’t enough for the wool fibres to grip onto.  The circle of stitches around the rim of the pot did felt in better.

In the end I laid some fine wisps of wool over the stitching, but at too late a stage for it to felt properly onto the wool beneath. Final result below:

In the afternoon I decided to try again, with another new technique – honeycomb felt. I tried making honeycomb felt once before, not long after I started felting, and it was fairly disastrous: not having any marbles, I used styrofoam pellets, which flattened and stuck to the felt.

This time I used proper marbles, trapped between four layers of wool and overlaid with more stitching (thicker lines this time!). I had to rub very well between the marbles, and did manage to roll it a bit, though it was rather bumpy! The washboard was much easier to use and more effective.

The piece provoked various unflattering comparisons from my tutor and fellow students, mostly centring around boils and pustules! Personally, I prefer to liken it to volcanoes and lava flows.

Finally, after a long day at college, I got home to find an entire sheep’s fleece in my front garden, delivered by a friend from Ireland. As I’m not sure what breed it is, Chrissie has suggested that I make it into a raw sheepskin rug.

However, I would like to have a go at cleaning, carding and even dyeing at least part of it – so expect some future posts on this!

It started a few weeks ago, when the co-founders of Makerhood, Karen and Kristina, and I were asked to do an interview for a documentary about changing work patterns. Giulio Robino, an Italian journalist and photographer, won an award for his last documentary Toxic Europe, on the link between organised crime and the dumping of toxic waste.

Now he is working on a project about how, in an era of high unemployment, people are looking at other ways of working – going part-time or freelance, and doing voluntary work or trying to supplement their income by setting up their own small-scale businesses. Apparently, as a “freelance worker in the hard industry of culture” (as Giulio puts it) and doing voluntary work with Makerhood as well as trying to sell pieces I make, I am an ideal candidate to feature in this documentary!

Setting up the gear

So on Friday morning two guys turned up with all their gear to film me making a felt pot. Davide, on sound, seemed a bit disappointed that felt-making was not a particularly noisy process, the loudest sounds being the occasional squeak from non-soapy bubble wrap! His eyes lit up, however, when I picked up the electric sander. “Fantastico!” he exclaimed, as he adjusted the volume control.

It’s funny how a process that I’m so familiar with suddenly turns into a mass of fingers and thumbs in all the wrong places! I also explained that the rubbing and the rolling is quite a long and laborious process – but at least the repetitive nature will give them lots of footage to choose from when editing.

Saturday was a much longer day. I’d organised some Makerhood pop-up stalls in Brixton Village, so the crew arrived at 8am to film me packing up my suitcase and leaving the house, walking down the hill and through the middle of Brixton. I definitely felt rather embarrassed, as people kept staring and wondering who I was!

They continued filming throughout the day as we set up the stalls and took them down, talked to customers and even sold a few items.  They also did some filming at Cornercopia, a great shop and restaurant in Brixton Village that focuses on locally produced food and drink.

Thanks to the unhelpful and somewhat short-sighted attitude of the market management, most of the filming had to be done from inside the shops looking out. When ESP and I had lunch at Cornercopia after I finished my morning shift on the stalls, he found it very disconcerting to be eating while a camera was trained on him from inside the shop! And of course I was  miked up, so I had to be careful about what I said throughout the day and remember to turn the microphone off when I went to the loo!

All in all, it was quite exhausting, and I’m happy to sink back into anonymous obscurity. I haven’t seen any of the footage, so I’m hoping I don’t look too fat or incompetent in the final edited version!

Because they are slightly too big for me, I put them on my stall at Brixton Makers’ Market on Saturday to see whether someone might buy them. They attracted a surprising amount of interest – and someone very nearly did buy them, but they turned out to be too small.

Several people asked if I made them in different sizes but didn’t want to commit to ordering a bespoke pair – they wanted to see pairs in different sizes and try them on first. So now I’m in a bit of dilemma – is the demand great enough to make it worth buying foot lasts in different sizes? Also, the weather is (hopefully) going to start warming up, so cosy felt slippers may not be so popular.

However, I know that Chrissie Day makes very pretty felt ballet pumps, so this could be an option for lighter spring/summer footwear.

However, their folding skills are far more advanced than mine – I got very confused in discussions about iso, 64-pleat grids and 12.12.3 tessellations!

Then I came across this piece about the Miura Ori map, a type of origami pleating that minimises the stress on paper where folds intersect and is also easier to fold and unfold (anyone who has ever tried to refold a map in a confined space like a car will know what I mean!).

So in class this week I made my own Miura Ori mould from cartridge paper, plus a longer parallel pleat mould, and used them with synthetic fabrics and the heat press.

First, I steamed some sheer polyester organza in the Miura Ori mould and then put it in the heat press, still folded with some disperse dye paper on either side. As you can see, the dye did not penetrate very far through the fabric folds:

I also repeated this with the diamond pleat mould:

Then I dyed the fabric in the heat press before steaming it in the mould:

Similarly, I dyed a piece of shiny polyester in the heat press and steamed it in the longer parallel pleat mould. Unfortunately, I clamped the fabric and moulds between two plastic rulers to keep it straight before putting it in the steamer – mistake!

Finally, I steamed a couple of pieces of cotton muslin coated in PVA in moulds, before clamping them and putting them in the indigo vat. Obviously, dunking the fabric in more liquid means the pleats are lost, leaving just the dye pattern where the indigo penetrated:

Bridget’s work featured on the cover of the first book I ever took out of Morley Library, a volume called The New Textiles (left). I was enthralled by the movement and colour she created in fabric, so the chance to do a course with her was too good to miss.

We started by dyeing a couple of pieces of cotton of different weights, because Bridget hates working with white. It was the first time I’d used Procion dyes on fabric, and it made me realise how quick and easy indigo dyeing is by comparison – no waiting around for an hour for the mordant and fixer to work. Obviously, however, you are not limited to blue with Procion!

After dyeing it, we coated the cloth with diluted PVA and left it to dry.

Then the fun part – making the paper moulds. To save time, Bridget provided a template, which we had to transfer to two pieces of cartridge paper by pushing a pin through both sheets, rather like artists used to do when making a cartoon. We didn’t sprinkle with soot, however – we joined the pinpricks by scoring with a scalpel on both sides, depending on whether the folds were mountain (folding away from us) or valley (folding towards us).

This is a bit tricky to explain if you’re not very familiar with origami, but the photo below shows one of the final bits of scored cartridge paper lying flat. Behind it is the other piece folded along the score marks.

We then put a piece of fabric between the two bits of cartridge paper, folded them up, secured with an elastic band, and steamed for about 5 minutes. After drying, we undid the moulds to reveal a crisply pleated piece of cotton that had taken on the exact shape of the moulds. Magic!

Below is another, simpler mould of diagonal parallel pleats, so they run on the bias. We folded the fabric in half before putting it in the mould, which results in a chevron pattern when it’s unfolded.

Bridget had also brought various pieces for us to see that combined screen printing and discharge dyeing with this technique. Great potential – very exciting!

So it’s not been a very productive week creatively. But I couldn’t keep away from the fibre completely, so I managed to make a felt Kindle cover for a friend who has been carrying her Kindle around in a plastic freezer bag! She loved it – and so did other people, as I instantly received orders for another Kindle case and an iPad case. I think I’ve found a new product line!

Original "honey monster" slippers

In an earlier post I described how my first attempt at making felt slippers wasn’t a huge success. Lo and behold, Chrissie Day, an experienced felter who has written several books, popped up to give advice in the comments. So I bought her book Felt Style, ordered some polystyrene foot lasts, and had another go.

Slippers on forms after initial rubbing

I covered the lasts with clingfilm, slipped them into my “honey monster” slippers, and wet, soaped and rubbed until the slippers fitted the lasts well. I have to say it was so much easier rubbing the slippers with the lasts inside, as it gives something to rub against.

Then I slipped a pop sock over each one, tied a knot at the top, and put them in the washing machine with a bath towel at 60°C.

Slippers after the washing machine

As you can see, the slippers are a much better shape, and the ridges are less  prominent (though I can still feel them). They are still a little big lengthwise (size 5 rather than size 4, I reckon!), so I think I need to make the original template a bit shorter. But with an adornment or two, I think these are now perfectly acceptable footwear!

So huge thanks to Chrissie for her advice and support on this. The kindness of strangers never ceases to amaze.

Before Christmas I made several manly scarves in various colour combinations, and they were very popular.

So I thought it was time to try some variations on the theme – but they haven’t worked out.

The first variation was using a preprinted silk scarf, using undyed merino. I didn’t like the result at all – the shapes and the colours just didn’t work together:

Then I tried using muslin with a more open weave. This was a bit tricky to work with, especially when it was wet, as it kept clinging to itself and  was difficult to keep flat in one layer. Also, I had a problem with the wool, as the colour started leaching out when I wet it. You can see a bluish tinge where the muslin has taken up the colour on the left-hand side of  the photo below:

(When I contacted the supplier about this, they said it was possible that an over dye had been used on it and that a small amount of excess was washing out. Has anyone else experienced this? It’s never happened to me before.)

The much more open weave of this muslin meant that with a bit of careful effort I could squeeze the plastic resists out through the muslin without cutting it (though it did leave a bit of a hole in some cases).  I rather like the more subtle spot effect; up close it looks quite cellular.

However, because the muslin is so loose I think it would catch on things quite easily and become very irritating.

So I decided that maybe it was time to move on and try something else. Instead of changing materials, I changed the shape of the resist. Although I originally intended it to look like tiger stripes, I didn’t allow enough for the muslin to shrink, and the nuno areas are smaller than I planned, relative to the stripes. But in these colours it reminds me of the opening credits of The Simpsons – so welcome to my Clouds range!

When things don’t work out, it can be a chance to review your technique or rethink your design. But sometimes it may just give you a gentle nudge in a completely different direction. Some of my most interesting work has resulted from pieces that didn’t work out as planned – and in textiles that seems to happen more often than not!

I went to a talk by Grayson Perry at the British Museum just before Christmas, where he said it can be heartbreaking to spend a week on a piece that just doesn’t work. So it happens to everyone!

And I suspect in the later stages of the game it’s as much about hand/eye co-ordination as about colour co-ordination – but see how you get on!