Experiments in Felt

Isn't this a fabulous wood block? I couldn't wait to start playing with it. I really didn't have the time to get the dyes out so I opted for fabric paint this time just to see if my idea would work in the short time that I had to play. I wanted to create a nuno prefelt, cut out some holes and felt it onto a bottom piece of habotai. Habotai takes a little more work to felt since the weave is closer than gauze but I think the crinkly effects are well worth the extra work. I know from previous attempts that holes in wool felt do not get smaller as the felting progresses; however, in this case because the prefelt was silk, the holes got much smaller but you can still see a tiny bit of orange peeking through on piece #2. To begin with I stamped a long piece of hand-dyed silk and cut it in two pieces; one I simply felted to see how the stamp design would hold up - on the other, I cut out some holes around the top design and stopped felting just when the fibers held to the silk before adding it to a piece of orange habotai and really felting it well -- I learned that next time, I'll cut the holes much larger if the prefelt is silk if I want more of the under fabric to show through.

I wanted to try adding a habotai nuno prefelt to a piece of silk gauze - trying to perfect this technique before I do a larger piece - I was really pleased at the "crunchy" texture of the habotai.