Fair Isle Felting Experiments!

I'm currently teaching myself Fair Isle knitting using Wendy Ramsdale British wool with an aim of creating a Fair Isle jewellery collection for the Winter. I'm trying out lots of different techniques at the moment to find out how the yarn behaves and here are some felting experiments I've been trying out, combing Fair Isle with other processes and then felting the samples in the washing machine. Here are some before and after photos!

For this piece I hand knitted a Fair Isle sample and then felted it in the washing machine at 60 degrees to see how the patterns came out when felted. I had tried washing it at 40 degrees but it only partly felted. It's made a lovely thick felt which would be great for making brooches and I'm pleased that you can still see the patterns- further experimentation required!

For this sample I knitted a plain piece in Ramsdale yarn and embroidered Fair Isle influenced patterns onto it using the same wool. Again I felted the piece in the washing machine at 60 degrees. I like the effect both before and after felting, especially as you can still see some of the embroidered detail, although I'd like the felt to be a little less fuzzy looking

I then knitted a piece combing Fair Isle and cable patterns, again putting it into the washing machine to felt at 60 degrees. Unfortunately the detail of the cables has been lost through the felting process, but it's all part of experimenting

 Take a look at more Fair Isle patterns I've knitted with Ramsdale here and read about how I tried Fair Isle in fabric! Now I'm off to experiment with combining cable, Fair Isle and embroidery in other ways, so I'll keep you posted!

Embroidery Class- Learning Shadow Work

Here are a few photos from embroidery class today! I have yet to finish the embroidered Toad stall we had been working on (sadly not enough hours in the day at the moment), but full steam ahead with learning and today we've started on a piece of Shadow Work. I'm fascinated by the technique- I'd never tried it before, but having seen our very talented embroidery tutor's examples of how to apply the technique, I'm keen to experiment!

Firstly we traced the bluebell design onto a double layer of Organza fabric and secured with an embroidery hoop

We then started to fill in the outline of the design with tiny back stitches

To colour the design we used tapestry wool and a crewel needle, sandwiching lengths of wool between the two layers of fabric, within the back stitched outline. You poke the ends of yarn into the fabric pocket with the back of your needle to give a neat finish to the back

This is how it's starting to take shape!

This is one of our embroidery tutor's examples of a shadow work embroidery piece she has made- a really inspiring example of how the technique can be applied! 

I'll keep you up to date on the embroidery progress- hope to have a couple of finished pieces to share with you soon!