Karen Kamenetzky Fiber Art

A perfect day for having my hands in hot soapy water!

I recently discovered cobweb felt. I have visions of using this ultra thin, airy, almost translucent material as an overlay. The patterns of holes that form are deliciously organic.

After watching a clear step by step video by Greenwood Fiberworks, it was quite easy. I made some adaptations to the directions born out of laziness. For instance, the lay out for this felt is so thin, I stacked a second layout on top (over plastic) and rolled them all together. Worked fine.

I used Wensleydale roving bought at New England Felting Supply and embellished with lustrous Bombyx Silk. The fibers of Wensleydale  are straight but after felting they form intriguing curls and waves. And it does this transformation after only 100 rolls! My kind of felt!

cobweb closeup

Here’s the cobweb drying by the woodstove:

cobweb drying

We’ll see how it behaves in the dye pot!

Ever get an amazing idea when you awake that resolves a problem you’d been ruminating about? I awoke yesterday and remembered the bucket of stones from my brook sitting for years in the garage. I had originally used them for dyeing on cotton with fiber reactive:

Life Goes On I

So why not use those wonderfully shaped stones as resists while felting to create cellular craters after the stones were cut out?
If you are someone familiar with wet felting, you probably have already spotted some serious flaws in this plan. Not me.
Even as I laid those stones out on a base surface of prefelt and wool…

rocks on wool

…and even after it became clear that I’d have to try to TIE each stone in place becouse the overlay of Merino wool was not going to hold them during felting…

tied rock resists

…and even after I began suspecting that using my preferred method of wet felting might kill my dryer as it strained to agitate this quite heavy bundle…I persevered. Of course I ended up rolling by hand this lumpy, unwieldy  sausage and couldn’t get it to felt really properly so (in hindsight) cut out the resist stones too soon so there was a bit of further unwanted felting within the craters. Hours later and with an aching back, here was the still wet result:

rock resist result

Not exactly what I envisioned but after all that, I’ll make it work! After dyeing and stitching, I think it might be somewhat usable or even extraordinary. I’m ever the optimist.

For weeks I’ve had some ideas rattling around of some different approaches to making felted material for my work. Up till now I would first dye various fibers then pick and choose from that stash to use as I laid out layers to wet felt. this would leave me with  bags of unused dyed fiber. Since recently I’m taken with monochromatic felting (the better to emphasize texture), why not felt first and dye later?? I also wanted to try out using cotton cording as a resist while felting creating ridges or channels (if cut open).

So yesterday i had the opportunity to experiment with my 90 year old Mom as my studio assistant!

Felting with Mom 1

mom felt 2

What fun! The results are drying on the porch. I’ll let you know how successful this all was soon.