Wet Felted Vessels Workshop

Today I went to the lovely Needle and Thread near Lincoln run by Sally, to do a wet felted workshop with Robyn. 

Firstly we had to decide on the shape of our vessel. We all (I say all, there were only two of us) chose to keep it simple and do a bowl shape, so we started off with a circle. Covered both sides in two layers of merino and put it to one side.

Next Robyn showed us how to make various things including canes, balls, spikes and prefelt.

This is my cane in the making. Once you get it started you can roll it in bamboo and it really helps to stiffen it up.

I decided at the eleventh hour to change my shape to an eye sort of shape. just so I could get all the elements on that I'd made.

Anchored the pieces down, but looking back I think I used too much, especially around the top of the larger cane circle.

Robyn had brought her drum carder and kindly let us have a go with it, so we were able to make our own batts for the top coat and blend loads of different colours together. Nepps and silk waste was also added. Eveything was then wetted down and we worked around each element for which seemed like ages to make them all 'stick' together.

Robyn laying her top layer down.

Wendy working her individual elements into the main piece over a piece of thin plastic.

In the room next door they were using free machine embroidering to create pictures.

After working around all the individual pieces to make sure they are all linked with the wool.

This one is Robyn's.

This one is Wendy's.

We then rolled about 40 times, turned 90 degrees and turned it over to until all 4 ways had been done and the resist started to buckle. 

Once this happened we took the resist out by making a cut through all the layers and pulling it out through the hole. Did the hot and cold shrink thing, threw it on the floor a few times to shock the fibres. Soaped it again in hot and cold, worked the edges so we didn't end up with a seam and basically worked it until we were happy with the look and feel of it.

Once happy with the way it had felted, inside and out, we cut the small resists out that we put in to make the craters.

Once worked and shaped, we stuffed them with carrier bags to help them keep their shape.

And a view from the top.

I will be back tomorrow once it's dried to show you close ups of the different elements.