Fiber Art Bundles: What CAN'T you do with a F.A.B.?

I spent three years as a line cook in a restaurant kitchen.  Cooking with the big equipment and kitchen power tools, a walk-in filled with fresh meat and produce, and shelves lined with every spice and seasoning you can imagine, all right at your finger tips, lead to some innovative, elaborate, and inspired dishes. (Cooking at my house is not nearly that kind of adventure. Who has saffron or a robocoup?) 

The Art House provides a similar environment with a focus on  fiber.  No idea goes unexplored and we have, or can get, the fiber to see it through.  It's a professional fiber kitchen!  And from such a place comes mouth watering delights.  One of those is Fiber Art Bundles:  dyed lots of a mix of top shelf fibers like Mulberry Silk, Mohair, Wensleydale, lamb curls, and other soft locks.

 
What can you do with such a bundle?  

You can do anything fiber related, wet felt, nuno felt, 2D, needle felt, sculpt, and spin.  

This particular bundle started out as a mix of Mohair roving, Mulberry Silk, BFL/BL cross, Wendsleydale lamb, and BL curls.  I dyed it a muted mix of coppery browns to aqua and teal to gold.  The color palette said "winter woods" to me.  

Soaking before the dye bath

16 oz Dyed and ready for action - Winter Woods

First I carded the Mohair and Silk together into a crazy soft and lofty batt.  I wanted the batt for ease of laying out layers in 2D feltng,  for further mixing for 3D felting, and for creating fluff for spinning.  All to be used along with the dyed locks.

2D Snowshoe Hare: 

Let's start with the 2D.  After I carded the Mohair and Silk together, I further carded several other colors together with the snowshoe hare in mind.  Several shades of "grey" to white were made with the aqua and browns from the FAB and various amounts of white.  I used a 1/4 piece of Prefelt as my backing.

I laid in some lights and darks in top coat roving and merino. 

 

Then I began to lay in curls, the carded colors, and even some yarn to represent twigs and branches.  

 



After all was in place, I wet felted the whole piece.

After it dried I needle felted the hare using all the mixed colors that I made.  

Spun yarn:

I am not an experienced spinner.  At this point I enjoy it therapeutically and use it in my own creations or give it away.  So please try to imagine what someone, with abilities that I do not have, could do with these fibers.  

For this yarn I fluffed together all of the fiber; all of the locks and the batt of Mohair and Silk got pulled and teased into a big box of fiber fluff.   I spun from the fluff into a thickish single, overspun slightly so I could spin it back with a thin commercial gold yarn that I had on hand.  

12 Ounces

  

Needle Felted Old Man Winter: 

For my 3D project I used the remaining blends of various colors from the 2D Hare project.  I started with a Forest Folk style armature a la Lee Charlton.  He has a robe and cloak with opposite ombre coloring all trimmed with the locks from the FAB.  His cloak was wet felted as we did in the Cloak Tutorial.  He also has a wet felted Icelandic rug, a New Year Baby, and sleepy arctic fox inspired by Cheryl Tomline's sleepy felted animals.   

Old Man Winter

 

I love this color palette.

I Hope you will try one of our FABs and cook something special up in your fiber kitchen.