Felted Rainbow's End

I don't have an 'inside set' so that I can have two warps going at once, so in order to get the Lemon Yellow warp onto the loom I needed to get the Wool Rainbow warp OFF. I wove off the last foot or so last night and threw it in the washing machine to felt it.

 I wasn't overly attached to the outcome with this warp. The Kauni Effektgarn was SUPER scratchy and unpleasant next to the skin so my only intent for the warp was to make some sort of a colourful yard banner. Well did I have a surprise taking this yardage out of the dryer this morning! It softened up a LOT! Not sure if a simple handwash (without the felting) would have been sufficient, but Kauni is MUCH nicer after felting!

Another pleasant surprise is the rather 'organic' look to the untwisted fringe when it felted.

 

This warp is intentionally quite long; far, far longer than I need for a single banner. I'll likely cut it into several yard banners, and perhaps reserve some of the scraps for other projects. For instance, this rather plain section might become part of a bag once I have done some embellishing on it. Embroidery? Beading? We'll see.



The next two photos are sections woven by my 8 year old granddaughter. She was having such fun experimenting! I enjoyed watching her enthusiasm.



One of her favourite 'techniques' was to pull the shuttle out mid warp and then tuck it back in again leaving long floats.



Her wild abandom certainly made my experiments look rather tame in comparison!



I do like the way the sequins twinkle. It should catch the eye sparkling in the summer sun as a yard banner.



One of the ideas I experimented with was that of side fringes. These were done using a clasped weft technique and short thrumb pieces that I left exposed at the sides.



I showed the 'Sea Creatures' section of the weaving when it was a work in progress. Here's how it looks now that it is felted. I have unravelled a section of the black polyester fabric I inserted in this section. I think it looks a bit squid like.



 This undulating weft bit turned out rather interesting.

 

 I had inserted some short lengths of wool thrumbs and the felted into interesting blobs.

 

 And here we end with the fringe that was actually the beginning.