Learning to Spin

I was given a white alpaca fleece and a brown fleece to learn to spin with. I had borrowed carding combes from the spin group and I set about learning. I loved the alpaca from the start. It was soft and smooth and silky. Then I found the drum carder. I dug into my felting wool and silk and started to play.

Gauze, Silk Chiffon and Felt

Last felted experiment before spinning. I loved the subtle colour changes of the silk and texture of the distressed gauze.

Fairy Costumes Complete Time for Sport Day Costume

On a theme and with materials on hand, the sport day costume had to be another fairy. I found an excellent fairy wing tutorial featuring Emilie Autumn. Unfortunately my blue fairy wings were a bit big behind stage and a lot of the gnarly branches had to be pruned. It's a pity because they made great giant shadows. The guitar strings were perfect, they had little flowers attached to the ends, it looked like the fairies were followed by floating butterflies.

Two Fairy Dresses and Puck's Costume Underway

The dresses were quite straight forward but Puck's costume had to fit one of the tallest and one of the smallest boys in the school. It was also a bit of a muscle workout.

Felted Fairy Dresses for the School Play

Two fairy dresses for A Midsummer Night's Dream and a costume for Puck. I had loads of fun cutting silk decorations and making frills.

Felted Dress

 

Merino, alpaca, silk, velvet ribbons. The velvet ribbons were difficult to felt in and I may have to secure some of them with a few stitches. The merino was originally white but I left it soaking in a bucket and went to the beach then I forgot to take it out. The dye bled from the silk chiffon and velvet ribbons but the colour works well.

Nuno Felted Top

I decided to try making a top, it does have side seams but I was happy with the colours and the way the scarf was incorporated into the  design. It's made of merino, alpaca, silk, banana silk, and other bits and pieces. I had done another workshop with Lyndy Frayne but was so carried away I didn't take any photos.