Wednesday, December 12, 2007

More scarves...

I finally got around to trying my hand at nunofelt yesterday -- and then again this afternoon. I've made three scarves so far.
I first saw these laminated felt scarves at the Michigan Fiber Festival in August. I was really excited and couldn't wait to try it myself. So I bought two silk gauze scarf blanks and Suzanne Pufpaff's directions.
To make these scarves, I used a 6' long piece of clear plastic about 30" wide. I laid it on the kitchen counter and put my silk gauze lengthwise on one half. I put a thin layer of merino-silk top on the gauze. Then I sprayed it with soapy water and covered the wool with the other half of the plastic and then carefully flipped over the whole package. This photo shows the first side covered with wool.

After flipping it over, I carefully removed the plastic covering (so as not to disturb the wool and silk). Then I layered on more combed top in thin wisps. Then I sprinkled warm soapy water on top and replaced the plastic covering. The photo below shows the wrapped scarf with combed top on both sides.

The next step is to roll it up around bubble wrap - the big kind. I was short on big bubble wrap so I used a sushi mat too and some small bubble wrap. This photo shows it about half rolled up.

The rolled up scarf then has to be rolled back and forth 200 times. Unroll and then re-roll from the opposite end and then it's back to rolling back and forth another 200 times. Then you unroll, flip over, and re-roll from one end, then roll back forth 200 times and repeat for the other end. You get pretty tired in this part! After all that rolling back and forth, the scarf is staying together pretty well. So I removed the plastic wrap and then wrapped it around a strip of an old nylon curtain instead of the bubble wrap. I placed it under hot water and wrung and twisted the water out. Switched to cold water rinse and wrung and twisted some more, and plopped it on the counter top for a while. Then I unrolled it and rinsed it out completely. This photo shows the wet scarf. You can see how thin the silk gauze is, and the merino top is very soft.After it dried, I had to take a photo of it on me. Of course both my husband and my son had the same comment, "It doesn't look very warm." ;-) So then I made one with more wool - Shetland roving - it's the black and white one on the left in the top photo. I'm not real happy with that one. You're supposed to the dye the silk gauze first, but I didn't do that either, maybe next time. I bought 10' of 54" wide silk gauze so I have enough silk to make a total of 8 scarves. Three down - five to go!

3 comments:

  1. I think the black and white one looks nice. But then I am partial to black and white things.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm never heard of this technique before; sounds fascinating. And the results are incredible! I'm partial to the ones with color....

    ReplyDelete

Getting ready for Christmas Markets!

  I'll be doing two Christmas markets this year. The first one is at Sapsucker Farms in Brook Park, MN Nov. 18-19th. And the second one ...