Textiles - week 2

In my second lesson of textiles I learnt another two techniques, wet felting and paper making. These techniques are quite messy but it made it even more enjoyable in my opinion.

Wet felting 

Wet felting is where you interlock and compact wool fibers together with water and soap to make pieces of felt that have your own designs on them. First you need to get some dried wool, a towel, bubble wrap, coloured wool, netting and soapy water (water with washing up liquid in it). Then lay the towel onto a table and put the bubble wrap on top of it. Then pull tuffs of wool off a big chunk of wool and start to lay it horizontally on top of the bubble wrap making sure the pieces overlap. Once you have done that and have the shape and size you want you have to do the same but lay the pieces vertically. After that you lay the netting over the top and pour some soapy water on the top, then take the netting off. You can then put your design on by putting some coloured tuffs of wool on top of the white wool. After this put the netting back on and pour more soapy water on making sure it is all wet by pressing down on it. Next you roll it up in the bubble wrap and start doing a rolling motion, you should do this for about 15 minutes and keep moving the felt 90 degrees clockwise to make sure the wool interlocks together in both directions. You do this so that the wool fuses together and doesn't fall apart. You can also rub the surface instead of doing the rolling motion, just make sure the felt doesn't crinkle and make sure to keep it wet so it fuses together. Finally you rinse the felt in boiling water for 1 minute and then cold water and let it dry then its finished.

Wet felting designs

Mine still need to dry but the above picture are of the designs I put on them. It is a fun process and they should look good once they have had time to dry.

Tools for paper making 

First for paper making you need a tray with water in it, paper pulp (mushed up paper), a sponge, a frame ( a wooden frame with netting stretched onto it) and a long thin cloth. Then put some paper pulp into the tray of water after this you can start. You put the frame into the water and move it till you have a layer of paper pulp covering the frame. After this take it out the water and run your finger along the sides, then lay the cloth on the table and put he frame face down on the cloth. Take the sponge and get rid of the excess water on the paper and peal the frame from the paper leaving it on the cloth. You can then chose to make marks on the paper or put string on it and then another layer of paper to make it wavy. Then you leave it to dry and there's your own homemade paper. You can also change the colour of the paper by putting dye into the water.

Paper that I made

I am still waiting for my paper to dry but I made them with patterns and marks and did them in different shapes and sizes. It is awesome to make your own paper I just have to wait and see if it's a success once its dried.