Nuno felting

My friend Nancy Bruce had talked about nuno felting for a long time and had shown me some wonderful pieces she had made with the technique. This past Saturday, she very graciously shared it with some of us, Judy Simmons, Mari Stori, Patsy Thompson and myself. We met at Judy's and even though the weather did not cooperate, we had a wonderful time.

The technique is based on felting roving though thin fabrics, so that the felt is permanently attached without stitching and creates designs. It is possible to get wonderful textures (of course, that would be what I am particularly interested in!) because the wool roving shrinks as it felts and gathers the surrounding fabric free of roving. It does involved quite a bit of work and some elbow grease but the result is so cool! I am always so thrilled to learn something new, and
there is no fear that I will ever run out of things to learn. Here are some images from our day




The roving is laid out on the fabric with bubble wrap underneath,





then lots of work and manipulations are necessary to get to the end result.
Of course now, I will have to add some kind of embellishment and beads!

Look how the silk fabric is gathered by the felted wool on Judy's scarf.
Check out Judy's blog (Windyhill happenings) and Mary's (The inside Stori), both on my blog list, to see more images of what we did and of Nancy's gorgeous work. My camera did not fully cooperate and the colors of their images are truer than mine.