Karen Kamenetzky Fiber Art

I love visiting New England Felting Supply in Easthampton, MA.! After months of percolating ideas about creating pieces that included large felted areas  juxtaposed with silk charmeuse, I went a bit crazy there last week.

Fiber to Dye

SO many enticing and varied choices of fibers! I stuck to buying only undyed fiber which helped me focus but I couldn’t resist the potential possibilities of combining various dyed-together fibers and the richly textured felt I might be able to create.

Emphasis on “might”. I’m venturing into dyeing and using wet felt methods combining pre-felt, bat, silk fibers and possibly cotton cording. I will most likely need to expect a few disasters initially.

First dye session on Sunday with my amazing fiber buddy, Kris.

I’ve gotten the go ahead to start work on a 7 foot long commission and I’m going to attempt to be organized enough to document its creation here. We’ll see…

It will live on a very large curved wall and will be attached with velcro strips (technical challenges are in my future!). I had to rebuild my design wall to accomodate this length and decided to go with gray felt instead of my previous black. This is partly because my studio is one end of our large bedroom and a 12′ black wall seemed a bit goth and gloomy.. Here’s the new design wall/blank canvas:

New design wall

I spent some time last week dyeing silk charmeuse and some new alpaca yarn specifically for this commission. I also experimented with Color Magnet while doing this dyeing. Very yummy results. So here’s my palette:

Dyed for commission

Next time: the design

No not my hair, it’s there already.

My new piece, tentatvely titled “You Are Here”, is predominently made of silk gauze dyed to various values of gray. There will be some saturated color at the end but right now my eyes are adjusting to sometimes very subtle variations in gray. I originally acid dyed a  batch but have found I need more of the darker variety. So I have been Mickey Mouse overdyeing for days using old containers of black Setacolor and fabric paints.

Dyed gray silk drying on a rack

A messy business indoors. And it is HARD to come up with just the right nuance of gray!! It’s too greenish or purplish or bluish. Of course it all looks the same wet so I have to let it dry and then iron it to see the results. I tried drying still damp silk in the dryer…trust me, don’t do this.

After 5 overdye attempts, I think I finally hit on a batch that hopefully will work!

Gray silk gauze strips