Felt

[thelittleorchard]

I try to use only pure wool felt but I am picky about colours and where I get it from now even though I like the felt, I have to buy my colours is a pack of 7, of which I only use 3-4 of the pieces.

Anyone know of an online supplier within Australia that sells pure wool felt.

Or anyone got good tips on how to get exceptionally strong colours when dying your own felt?

[Emmarose]

Just a thought, maybe you could try food colouring????

[eetak]

You could make your own felt from pre-dyed felt tops, they are available from heaps of different places, and in hundred of colours, and in making your own you can always mix up your own colour combinations. The process takes a while to get used to, and if you're used to working with commercial felt the hand-made stuff can have a 'rough around the edges', organic feel to it.
But I like to think it makes for a more spontaneous, individual piece, I adore sewing onto different thicknesses of handmade felt.

[thelittleorchard]

Hey Kate...

I actually managed to get some more info regarding felt colour from the supplier as well as a colour card.

By make your own do you mean like the wet felting techinique of making your own felt pieces? I have seen that once on River Cottage.

Also its good to see a needle felter around. I started needle felting about 2 weeks ago and really love it, I have so many ideas, but it is time consuming. What kinda wool do you needle felt with?

[eetak]

Yeah I was referring to wet felting from wool fibres.
I don't know what river cottage is, but wet felting is a fairly simple technique.
However, it is a practice that takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master.

I love both wet and dry felting, and for most of my work I use a fine merino wool I order pre-dyed from a victorian company, it's really fine, and perfect for wearable works. however in terms of needle felting a courser wool works much better, especially for more sculptural pieces, I am in love with nundal undyed wool batts at the moment for needle felting.
I also love using the raw wool, burrs, lanolin and all, this is definately tougher to master and control, but it has so much personality it's hard to resist!

[thelittleorchard]

I assumed yours was Merino as it looked much softer than what I am using...All they are called is Romney wool tops...is romney a type of sheep? I actuallt was about to say cow! ROFL :rolleyes:

I get stuff from Winterwood, which I am so glad to find a really decent supplier or wool felt and really top quality products.

[eetak]

I'm not sure, it could be?
To be honest I don't know a whole bunch about the sheep part of the process.
The closest I got was over-exitedly discussing buying a sheep for an on-going art project with another student, and making artworks exclusively from that sheep's wool.
Maybe one day, but I doubt the logistics and fairness on the sheep would work out in a suburban back yard.

[thelittleorchard]

Using a single sheep is an interesting idea...perhaps find an art sympathetic small farm, and pick a sheep and keep up a relationship with the farmers and keep getting that ewes wool. And you could do it as an art project where you also talk about the farm etc.

How do you find needle felting is with Merino? I have seen some awesome hand dyed wool but its all merino, and I know merino is softer and more use in wet felting...

[eetak]

The majority of what I do is in merino because of the wearability factor and it's what I started out with, so I've always just accepted the 'streaky' look of it, because of the long fibres, but have found a couple of ways to combat that also, teasing out the wool before using it give a more even surface.
It's only when I picked up on using the coarser wool from nundle last year that I noticed how much more difficult the merino is in terms of time! It's funny when I swapped to coarser wool, and after just a few jabs it was doing exactly what I wanted it to, I was so used to sitting down for a good 7 hour session of working in merino to make a 3d object, and I finished one in the coarse wool in about 4-5 hours.

But, I maintain use of the merino based on the fact it is the nicest to wear and I love all my colours and don't really fancy the expense, difficulty and time of dyeing my own wool.

[The Felt Grocer]

I have been using squares from a seller on Ebay and Etsy, Pietrina. She's very helpful and the felt is fine wool and in great colours. Her Ebay id is Bumblebeedesigns1, I think. On Etsy she sells under a similar name.
Good luck!
xx Sam