Monday, April 09, 2007

Dyed batting and little felted gemstones (sort of)


Here's some wool batting that I've dyed using the hands-on process that I use for my "Blended" fabric. It's very labour intensive, messy and time-consuming, and uses a lot of dye. Did I mention messy?

I have most of a roll of this batting which is no longer produced in NZ, unfortunately. I loved it in my quilts, and now see it as a perfect backing for using with my new toy, the embellisher (needle-felting machine). Another example of how having 40 million sheep but only a small market means we are not well served for wool and wool products.

I played with the embellisher this morning for the first time, and made these little tags (front and back views) out of the aforementioned batting that I'd used several weeks ago as colour swatches for my latest wool dyes. This didn't give a really good indication of the colour however, so I then redid them all with pieces of wool. I kept them all, plus the ties I used on the skeins of wool I've been dyeing, and I hit on the idea of felting them all together. I'm going to put eyelets in these and make them into keyrings.

7 comments:

Deb Hardman said...

ISN'T THE FELTER FUN!? GREAT IDEA USING THEM AS KEY RINGS.CUTE!

Anonymous said...

It may have been messy but that dyed batting is beautiful! I'd have trouble cutting that up.

Anonymous said...

Those little felted soon to be key tags are adorable.

Barbara said...

I love felted pieces! Will visit again!!

k baxter packwood said...

if it's a wool quilt batting such as hobbs it holds up very well to immersion dyeing, I dye mine with natural dyes so this involves cooking times, and washing in the washing machine. The last piece I dyed was dyed with cochineal, I left it in the immersion vat for several days, after which it took three trips through the washing machine to get the excess dye out. This was smaller piece, I haven't tried anything larger than 3 feet square yet.

Zaz said...

glad you bought an embellisher! they are great fun and loads of potential for us experimenters :0)

I love the key ring charms ......could also be mobile phone decorations !

Dianne said...

Pretty good for a first time!! These are great for key tags!!