Category Archives: Daily Dose of Fiber

Wool Gathering

Posted on by under Daily Dose of Fiber, yurt

Today we drove to Florence which is about 3 hours from us to buy 200 pounds of wool for the yurt project. Once we got the wool on the trailer, we then took off for Hall, Montana to drop the wool off at the fiber mill. I’m just going to do a quick post tonight but I’ll do a more extensive post over on the Felting and Fiber Studio site next week.

 Here we are pulled up to Suzanne’s house in Florence to pick up the wool. It was all stored inside that white trailer.

 Here is one of her sheep. I’ve forgotten his name but most of the wool that I got for the yurt is that lovely brown color. I think he is a Targee. Suzanne informed me that this is Raven and he is a black welsh mountain sheep! Thanks Suzanne.

 Here I am in front of the wool mill with all the wool piled up in the back of the trailer. It was windy and cold but we got it all loaded inside and weighed. They are going to wash it and card it into 4″ batts for me.

This is the mill that I took the wool to in Hall, MT. Ed and Sue were very nice and Ed took the time to show me the big carding machine and a felting machine that he made himself. I’ll post about those soon. Dennis even took another video of the carding machine running. It took us 12 hours from when we left home until we got back again. We should be able to go back and pick up the carded batts by mid May. I can hardly wait to get them back.

Two More Machine Stitched Book Pages

Posted on by under Daily Dose of Fiber

Today I worked on my last two pages of my machine stitched book and started on the binding. I also picked up some wool from my friend Paula that she is donating for the yurt project. I will take it with me tomorrow with the rest of the wool to the mill to be processed.

Here is the page that I showed you yesterday with all the drizzle stitch completed.

 You can see that the zigzag stitch draws the felt up quite a bit. That is one of the reasons that I did the stitches in the vertical direction. I knew I was going to add satin stitch in the other direction and I hoped the two would counteract the forces of the stitching to prevent too much buckling.

 Here is the finished page after I added satin stitch lines. The edge definitely got a little stretched with satin stitch. The felt is just not quite stiff enough to hold up to that type of edging.

 Here is the second page I worked on. I decided to cut this one down a bit as all the pages are different sizes in the book. This one is mainly cable stitch done with automatic stitches. I really like the bold line of the cable stitch.

 I got a little off on one of my rows and decided I didn’t like it. So I cut it out of the middle and rejoined the two pieces by butting them up together and stitching with a joining stitch. Now I have a folding page! This started all kinds of possibilities roaming in my brain.

Here are the beginnings of the binding pieces.

 I got one “decorated” but still have the others to finish.

 When I went to take some photos by the window, this is what I found. A lovely shadow from the lace curtains. I might have to use this in Photoshop as a background layer for something.

Starting Drizzle Stitch on the Next Machine Stitched Page

Posted on by under Daily Dose of Fiber

I had a little time this morning to start on my next machine stitched page. I decided to cover the background with drizzle stitch and then do some organic satin stitch lines in the opposite direction. If you haven’t heard of drizzle stitch, it is simply zigzag stitch done in various widths and stitch lengths over top of each other.

 I’ve started here using a Madeira metallic thread. I will mix in some other shades of blue until the entire page is covered.

I did stiffen the felt with a bit of nylon organza fused to the back. I am working on finishing the edge of the last page but didn’t think you would want to be bored by another photo 🙂

Tiny Detached Buttonhole Border

Posted on by under Daily Dose of Fiber

I finished the edging of the machine stitched page I was working on yesterday. Then because I didn’t have another hand stitch project going, I decide to do detached buttonhole in blue on top of the orange edge. I used thin blue thread and so the stitching is tiny.

You can just barely see the blue edge on the bottom left portion of the page.
Here is a closer view. This might take a while!