Felting Fashion E-Book

Lizzie Houghton

• Herausgeber: Batsford
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 104

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Although there are several books on felt, this is the first one that concentrates on felt fashions – in the broadest sense – with felt techniques and patterns for construction. From simple corsages through hats and scarves to jackets and full-length coats, this is an essential book for those already working in felt or fashion who want to make more of felted textiles. The author takes you through the techniques of feltmaking but goes on to show you how to embellish and colour the felt – including using velvets and silks and ruching methods – and then construct garments and accessories from it. The book covers: 1. How to make basic felt 2. Embellishing felt 2. Corsages 3. Earrings and other jewellery 4. Scarves 5. Nuno felt techniques 6. Hat-making 7. Felt sleeveless top 8. Felt skirt 9. Felt jacket, including nuno felt jacket 10. Felt coat With clear instructions, construction patterns and stunning images of felted fashions from a range of felters, this is a great book on a subject growing in popularity.

Leseprobe

Felting Fashion

Creative and inspirational techniques for felt-makers

Lizzie Houghton

Contents

Introduction

Equipment for feltmaking

How to make felt

Working with cords, spikes and balls

Working with network felt

Using resists and templates

Embellishment

Making hats

Seamless felt jacket

Nuno felt

Nuno-felt vest top

Nuno-felt jackets

Dyeing wool and silk with acid dyes

Nuno-felt jacket using a template

Mosaic jacket

Long and full-skirted nuno-felt coat

Suppliers

Index

Introduction

Felt, the most ancient of all textiles, is a marvellous material. It can be shaped, moulded and sculpted and it repels water and dirt; for these reasons it has a long history of being used for clothing, headwear and footwear, too.

I originally trained as a fashion designer and had been working for years making clothing using embroidery and appliqué. It was when I was introduced to the techniques of making fine felt and clothing that I became hooked on feltmaking. Up until then, I had really only seen fairly thick felt and, thinking it would be rather suitable as a base for machine embroidery, made some rather lumpy stuff, taking instruction from a book. It was nice to stitch on, but I now know that it was quite badly made.

The first workshop that I attended was to make a coat. I am eternally grateful for having been allowed to join this class, because at that stage I was a real novice and I didn’t really know how to lay the wool thinly and evenly. I also thought that it was necessary to use far more layers of wool.

The project was huge, and while making it I remember thinking that I would never make another one. However, I did keep working on it after the weekend course, and managed to finish it during the following week. Little did I realise that several years on I would be spending all my time making only felt garments and accessories.

Making seamless felt clothing does require a large amount of space, but the shapes can be quite simple and extra fullness can be shrunk away or even moulded on the body.

Nuno felt was a greater revelation to me. The fineness and fluidity was unlike anything I had ever seen before, and so suitable for making clothing. I have always loved colour, pattern and texture, and the textures possible using this technique know no bounds!

Nuno-felt jacket made on a base of patchwork silk chiffons. The jacket is worn upside down here for an alternative look.

Very fine nuno-felt jacket showing many textures where different weights of silk have been used. The jacket is reversible and is shown here with the silk fabric on the outside.

About this book

All feltmakers will work in different ways. Although there are some elements of the process that are essential, the ways that they are put into practice are very varied. Although some methods may be more traditional, none are right or wrong. If it works – it works!

This book is intended to inspire feltmakers and encourage them to have a go at making a one-off individual garment that is a piece of wearable art. There are instructions on how to make small items for beginners, such as corsages and jewellery, and there are patterns and diagrams, with guidance, for making more ambitious projects for those who have more experience. Precise instructions are given for using different techniques and for creating exciting and interesting effects. The intention is not to show how to make an exact copy of the photographed items, but more how to select and design your own individual one. Various techniques and methods are described and if you have mastered one of them then you will be able to follow the guidelines and make a felted wearable, be it a brooch, a scarf, a hat or a jacket. With practice you will be able to make them all.

I am very grateful to those great feltmakers who have so generously provided images of their work. They have inspired me and the inclusion of their work allows the reader a glimpse into the world of international contemporary feltmakers.

Inspiration

Much of my own inspiration comes from the natural world and other aspects of my surroundings also inspire me. A digital camera is a marvellous invention for me as it means I can capture everything I wish and it is not an extravagance to take as many photos as I like. I have mine with me most of the time. However, it does not mean that I consciously use all this inspiration directly in my work, just that I am absorbing colours, textures and shapes into my visual imagination.

I love flowers, the shape, colour and form of them, such as the minute patterns on petals and leaves, the odd dot of colour in the centre; the spotty petalled lily, stamens with brilliant orange chenille anthers dangling, carefully balanced on the end; checks, stripes and spots on fritillaries, foxgloves and delicate chiffon-like irises. Statuesque echiums, growing ridiculously tall and at strange angles; enormous aeoniums, rosettes of rich purple with acid-yellow flowers sprouting occasionally. The shapes and form of cacti and succulents, wonderful tree trunks and bark, covered with lichen and moss, and all the other plants to be found in sub-tropical gardens never fail to inspire. Beaches are a great source of fascination too: swirly and pearlescent shells with intricate patterns and textures; sea glass and stones in myriad colours and markings; rocks with strata and cracks resembling shibori dyeing, rockpools and glorious seaweeds with frills and contours that could have been made from nuno felt.

Inspiration can come from further afield too, from holidays to pictures in magazines and travel advertisements. Or it can come from the most unlikely places – Sunday markets, decaying buildings or shady side streets. There are exotic African, Asian and Mediterranean markets with their colourful fabric, flower and produce stalls; intriguing fruit and vegetables piled together or beautifully arranged, and fish with iridescent patterned skins. Also layers of flaking paint and rusty metal eroded after battling with the elements.

How I work

Nuno-felt jacket, showing shaping at the back. Silks and velvets have been laid into the wool during the making.

I have quite a strong visual imagination and when I am about to begin making a new garment, I think about it and ‘see’ it in my mind’s eye before making diagrams with measurements that indicate how to cut the fabric or pattern. Then begins the fun part, and for me the most important part – selecting my colours. I like to have out on my worktable a variety of different qualities of fabrics in near and complementary colours. I believe that most colours can be used together in a mouth-watering way as long as the proportions are balanced. I spend a lot of time playing with colours in this way. There are no rules, only what works for you.

It would be fair to say that my clothing is created organically. I will already have decided on my base fabric and possibly the fibre colour, but the fabric that will be added for texture and embellishment will be chosen as I work. I love my garden when flowers freely seed into the gravel or unplanned crevices, and so when making felt it is the little unplanned ‘surprises’ that I find exciting. You won’t often hear me say ‘less is more’ except, of course, when making fine nuno felt. I love to create a wonderful chaos of colour and texture; layer upon layer of silks and wool.

Equipment for feltmaking

Useful equipment for feltmaking includes hand carders, a spray bottle and a bar of soap.

The equipment for making felt is very inexpensive and easy to come by. Some of it you will probably already have at home.

Old towels are used to spread on the work surface to soak up the water, stop your work slipping and can be used to roll your felt in during the final stages.

Bubble-wrap with small bubbles is used to give the friction needed to felt the wool. A matchstick, bamboo or similar blind with the metal attachments removed can also be a useful piece of equipment, especially for large pieces of work. It can add extra friction, but I would recommend also using the bubble-wrap as the blind can be rather rough and will not give such a smooth finish. These blinds may often be found in charity shops.

An old-fashioned washboard is very useful too, as a finishing tool. The wool or when, making nuno felt, the fabric side, can be worked against the glass, steel or wood ridges to provide the friction needed to help with shrinking.

A rolling pin, a piece of dowel or a length of plastic foam pipe insulation is required. Ideally, the roller should be as long as your work. The foam pipe insulation is much lighter to use if you are working on a large scale. It is very cheap to buy from DIY shops, can be bought in one or two-metre (one or two-yard) lengths and can be cut with scissors.

Old net curtaining is sometimes used to place over the wool to prevent the fibres moving while being wet out (while water is being added).

Thin plastic dust-sheets, available from DIY shops in packs about 3.5 × 3.5m (12 × 12ft) square, or on a long roll, is used to help spread the water through the work and support the wool during the felting process.

A spray bottle, which can be a plastic milk bottle with holes punched in the lid, is used for wetting the fibres. Some felting suppliers now sell a plant mister, which has a bulb spray and a small rose at the top (shown on here). This is becoming popular with feltmakers as the spray is fine and even and does not move the fibres. A plastic trigger-action plant spray tends to have too fine a spray and does not wet the fibres quickly enough, making it very hard work.

A bar of soap. Although any soap will work, some of the cosmetic soaps make too much lather so olive oil soap is best to use and kind to your hands, too. This dissolves in hot water, but may also be used as a bar to add soap to the felt (shown on here). I usually put the soap in a jug and add hot water to dissolve some of it and pour the solution into a spray bottle. I then remove the bar to use separately.

Hand carders are used for blending fibres and mixing colours. They are flat wooden brushes, supplied as a pair, with hooked metal teeth and a handle (shown on here). The wool fibres are placed on the teeth of one carder and gently brushed with the other one, the hooks pulling in opposite directions. You only need these if you wish to blend your own colours – they are not used in the felting processes described in this book.

Washboards, like this one, can be found in second-hand shops if you are lucky, or are available new from some fibre and felting suppliers.

How to make felt

This coat is made using the network-felt technique described later in the book.

There are many different ways to make felt, but this is the way I do it. For most of the projects in this book I have used merino wool tops, unless otherwise stated. Tops is the raw fleece, washed, carded, combed and dyed, before being spun. Merino felts very easily and makes a fine, smooth felt, most suitable for clothing. It is very readily available in a huge number of lovely colours; blending gives many more colours and it will also dye very well.

Each individual fibre of the wool has little scales on it. When the wool becomes wet the scales open up and, to enable the wool to felt, the fibres must become tangled. The three essentials for this to happen are heat, moisture and friction. Soap, preferably unperfumed, is added to help with this process.

1 Put an old towel on your work surface and lay bubble-wrap on top with the bubbles facing upwards.

2