Monday, August 5, 2013

Nuno Felted Beret Using Plant-Dyed Silk

Covering a large bubble wrap resist with wool roving...

...in concentric circles...

 
...light grey over dark.



Wetting out the project... 
 
...then adding a layer of plant-dyed silk gauze to the top surface.

 
Cutting a 'head hole' mid-felting.

(You can see just how oversized this resist really is!)

 
Felting and fulling the hat.

 
The finished beret with darker grey interior...



...and highly rugated outer surface.
 
Working from a concept taught by Judit Pocs...

...that several of my classmates had tried at Feltfull...

...I recently attempted to make a large, soft beret...

...using more of that plant-dyed silk gauze that I wasn't exactly thrilled with.

Result? The felt is very soft...

...and boy, is it ever large!!

(Obviously, I need to re-engineer the template prior to my next attempt!) :)

In order to salvage this project...

...I arranged the wet felt into the folds and ridges that you see...

...basting them in place to dry.

Lessons learned?

1) If I don't pay attention to all of the particulars of a project...

...I will invariably need to make more than one of them in order to 'get it'.

2) I learn more from my failures than I do from projects that actually work! 

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6 comments:

Mariana said...

now we need a photo of you wearing it :)

Heather Woollove said...

Mariana-I left it with my hostess in Spain...it wasn't the greatest 'look' on me" :(

Rachel said...

I think we always do learn more from mistakes than successes!

Unknown said...

Hopefully we all learn from our failures. :)

All is not totally lost. You probably have a great "slouchy" hat there.

FeltersJourney said...

Great colours, perfect with the plant dyed silk. Trial and error is a great way of learning.. can be a little frustrating sometimes though :)
xoxo

Heather Woollove said...

Most of the things I make are experiments, anyway, so a bungled project now and again is to be expected! :)