Monday 22 April 2013

Raw fleece

My new favourite! Over the last year or so I have been slowly gathering up a wonderful collection of raw fleece - in it's full smelly glory! ( it is a bit like insulin - either a smell you love or hate, but I digress!)
Through Sara and her fleece club I received an amazing selection of fleece from sheep I had never heard of and they are all amazingly unique and such fun to felt with.
I made a variety of seat pads with the fleece, needling them onto a prefelt base to keep them in place and then wet felted them. I had better results keeping the curls and texture if I felted them in their  original state rather than washing them first. The water came out quite brown after the first wetting and rolling!!
Here are some of the results....
Lleyn and Zwartbles in a cowhide pattern!


Manx, Ryeland, Cotswold and Finn
A few varieties of Gotland
A mini fleece created from all sorts of white locks
Massam, BFL, Teesdale amongst others
I have also been playing with some merino tops, carded merino and merino prefelt and made some purses. They have made me brush up on my basic sewing skills, my blanket stitch is almost as good as I used to do at school!!
Reindeer horn buttons just finish them off.

I also did a felted bag course last weekend in Helsinki - it was so good to be amongst fellow felters! A post full of bag making goodness to follow soon!