How to felt on silk chiffon

[Deleted]

I have a silk chiffon scarf measuring 170 x 45 cm. I natural dyed it to obtain a greyish-bluish colour that I would like to enliven with natural dyed merino wool fibre.
My plan is to cover the whole surface with a thin layer of wool and place individual embellishments here and there.
I would like to retain the length of the scarf and don't mind narrowing it a bit. Would that mean I had better lay wool fibres horizontally more and  only one layer vertically? I don't have much experience in thin nuno felting and would appreciate any advice.

[Karen]

Hi Lanka. You will probably get lots of different answers to this question as there are different ways to approach this. When I make my Nuno Felted scarves I only lay one thin layer of superfine Merino fibre and that is at right angles to the longest edge. I place decorative silk fabrics on one side and cover the other with Margilan silk which acts as a “lining”. I would always suggest making yourself a sample (or a couple of them) first. Good luck and have fun with it!

[Shepherdess]

Yes, I would only do one layer and I would do it at right angles to the long edge as well. this way it will shrink mostly across and not down the length. You should start longer and wider than what you want to finish. Please post some pictures of the finished scarf it sounds like it will be very pretty.

[Deleted]

What exactly do you mean by "You should start longer and wider than what you want to finish"?

[MTRuth]

I agree with Ann and Karen. Do one very fine layer at right angles to the long side. I think what Ann means is that you will get some shrinkage of length, even if you lay at right angles to the long side. As Karen, suggests, a small sample helps to see what will happen with shrinkage before you begin your big piece. Do you another piece of silk chiffon that you could use as a sample? Then you could try different layouts of wool to see how that affects your shrinkage.

[Shepherdess]

Yes, that's right Ruth. Most of the shrinkage will be across the width but you will still get some in the length.

[Deleted]

This scarf is the only piece of the kind I have as I usually use cotton or flax scrim for nuno felted scarves.
I guess I'll have to give it a go, hoping it does not shrink much lengthwise.

[MTRuth]

I just made a mystery fabric scarf. I laid out one fine layer of wool at right angles to the length of fabric. It only shrunk a little lengthwise and almost 50 percent width wise. We would love to see your results.

[Shepherdess]

Yes please post a picture when you are done.

[Karen]

Oct 22, 2020 20:17:46 GMT @lpmami said:

What exactly do you mean by "You should start longer and wider than what you want to finish"?

Normally when we make felt, including Nuno felt, it is regarded as being a prefelt if it’s holding together but hasn’t shrunk in size. It’s the next stage, the fulling (shrinking) of the piece that makes it “felt”. It’s also this stage that will create the beautiful textures associated with the Nuno process and will make the fabric and fibre as one. If you want to make your fabric go further you can use the “tile” technique.....cut your scarf into smaller pieces, lay them out with gaps between and then cover with a layer of fibre. This will create a Nuno Felted scarf with areas of fibre between the fabric. This is one I made this week using that technique, it started out 38cm x 112cm 

http://instagram.com/p/CGriUrkDtFe

[lyn]

It's beautiful Karen!

[MTRuth]

Gorgeous scarf!

[janekiwi]

What beautiful textures on your scarf Karen.

[Shepherdess]

Karen, what are you using for your shapes under the silk?

[Karen]

For the inclusions I sometimes use prefelts and other times it’s fully felted offcuts leftover from projects. If you use fully felted pieces the silk attaches around them but not to them and you can get a different effect.