Starry Brook Farm's Fiber Stories: First Workshop

This past weekend we conducted our first workshop at The Foundry. It was a lot of fun, and the one of a kind designs the participants created were beautiful and inspiring.

Nuno Felting involves felting wool or alpaca fiber onto a silk scarf using soapy water and agitation. The first step for us at Starry Brook Farm is to dye both the roving and scarves. As these are light-weight summer accessories, we thought a selection of bright and muted colors would appeal to most people.

So first we made our dye stock:

The un-dyed items are prepped by soaking them in a solution of vinegar and water.

We decided to use 2 different dying techniques. The scarves we dyed in mason jars and used the microwave. The roving we used baking pans in the oven. It worked wonderfully.

After they were heat set, both scarves and roving were washed and hung to dry...

So with our lovely components, we had a nice selection to work with...

A total of 16 participants attended class, and were paired up 2 per table. The large event space at The Foundry worked great!

The creativity flowed and the design process began. After a while all the fiber was in place and the soapy water helped keep it there. Then with pool noodles and bubble wrap, the agitation process began. What resulted were beautiful Nuno Felted scarves, great for the summer! Keep in mind that the scarves are still wet in the pictures below...