Over the long Labor Day weekend, I didn't do much felting, but I managed to make one nuno felted scarf. As I posted a while back, I had dyed my own silk chiffon scarves to turn into nuno, or laminated, felt scarves eventually. One of a the colors that I used for dyeing was a rich dark purple.On Sunday, I decided to use one of those colored scarves for nuno felting. I was also inspired to do so by the silk rods that I purchased from Larkspur Funny Farm. It seems like lately that I've wanted to experiment with embellishments and add-ins to my traditional wet felting and nuno felting. I just couldn't resist buying some silk rods for this purpose. I added some of those to this scarf as well some novelty yarn, and of course some fine merino wool in creamy white. The first photo is the result of that mixture after being wet felted.
Well, I wasn't quite happy with what you see in the first photo. It had a lovely texture with all of the add-ins clearly showing, but it didn't seem balanced to me. And, the wonderfully dark purple silk base had faded a bit during the felting process (even though I used professional grade acid wash dyes). I decided to rework the scarf by dyeing it one more time. So I got out my dye pot and mixed a wonderful red-purple color. The second photo is the result after the scarf simmered in the dye pot for a while. Although, I liked the texture and variety of the original design in the first photo, I really like the dark purple shine of the reworked design. The add-ins aren't quite as noticeable, but they still provide a lot of texture and visual interest.
So what do you think? Before or after?
Sometimes it is so hard to decide what to do next when I'm creating. Quite often, I just wing it and see what happens.
