Felt ruffle neckpieces

As previously mentioned, I’m not really a ruffle type, but there are ruffles and ruffles. 🙂

When I attended a workshop with Maria Friese in France earlier this year, I got a bit obsessed with making flaps. I thought I would try a variation on this effect by sewing in resists at the prefelt stage and then cutting them out after fulling.

So I made a conventional rectangular scarf from four layers of fibre, then at the prefelt stage sewed in diagonally some plastic strips to act as a resist. In the centre, where the neck goes, I used a strip in the shape of a semi-circle. There was some gathering and bunching at this stage, but during fulling this disappeared.

After fulling I cut out the resists, fulled some more and removed the stitches.

They sit slightly differently, caused by sewing in the resists at slightly different angles.

I’m not sure whether to trim the edges to create a smoother line or to leave them as they are, so I’m going to show them at Lambeth Open this weekend and get some feedback. I’ll also be showing my nuno-felted wall hanging and  some felt cutwork scarves, as well as the ever-popular indigo shibori scarves.