Nuno Felt by Chrissie Day

Chrissie Day

Inspired by the majestic landscape of the North Pennines Chrissie creates wearable art using traditional wet felting and knitting techniques. Her art has taken her to many places and she loves teaching and engaging with other fibre artists. Chrissie's work is for sale from her studio and she has written many books including Wire Jewelry, Felt Style, Cozy Hot Water Bottle Covers, Hats for all Occasions, Scarves and Shawls, Quick Crochet and Cozy Socks.From Felt to friendship and Nuno Felting . She teaches in Europe,USA,and at her studio.Teaching in 2013 includes Arbruzzoschoolofcreativearts in Italy. Chrissie also designs knitwear and currently designs for BC Garn Denmark www.feltingfibres.wordpress.com www.chrissieday.co.uk 1

I NTRODUCTION

Nuno Felt Chrissie shares her experiences as she delves and experiments with the fascinating technique known as nuno felting. In essence, nuno felting is where woven fabric and wool or anmal fibres are combined and felted together to form a totally new and unique piece of cloth. Initially developed by New South Wales artist Polly Sterling and her Japanese assistant Sachiko Kotaka as a way of creating extremely light weight felt for hot climates, nuno felting is now one of the most popular techniques practiced by felters worldwide! Natural habitat, the built landscape, found objects, a remembered colour, the shape of a pebble, these are all starting points for some of the nuno felt projects shared in this book. By starting with natural and/or man made fabrics Chrissie will overlap and combine them with one or many fine layers of fibre to create amazing textures. This in turn with fascinating shaped templates for you to work around leads you on a journey of discovery making what look to be complex garments in fabulous materials .

Index

percentage calculations lattice shawl Vienna Carpet Bag One Button Top Popover Pinny Deconstructed Screenprinting Chicago Milan Milly

Percentages calculations It's essential when felting jackets and fitted clothing to make samples and calculate the shrinkage rate for each individual project. With the set of free downloadable templates that are available to accompany this book (email chrissie@chrissieday.co.uk with your dress size for your personal copy) you may choose to scale up the templates and use them as a resist or alternatively felt yardage which you then cut and stitch into the various projects.

. EXAMPLE OF CALCULATING PERCENTAGE SHRINKAGE

so all original BODY measurements must be in-

creased by 1.25 to ensure your garment after shrinkage will fit you (ie your template is your body PLUS the shrinkage expected). Take a centre point on your diagram of original body measurements and for example if centre to neck is 16cms this must be multiplied by 1.25 giving us a scaled up measurement of 20cms. Continue in this way. Now let's get on with some felting!

Felt a 10" square sample using the fabric and fibres you will use for the project Measurement before felting = A eg 10” Measurement after felting = B eg 8” subtract B from A therefore 10 - 8 = 2 The sample has shrunk by 2” and to calculate this as a percentage you divide 2 by 10 and multiply by 100 which works out at 20% shrinkage leaving us with 80%. Therefore 10 divided by 8 (remember this is what remained after shrinkage) = 1.25

Increasing from the centre point until you can redraw the outline of your shape onto your felting template.

Lattice Shawl

Materials list 100g roving Approx 1m 4mm or 5mm ponge silk A roll of paper or bubble wrap for making your pattern, a pen, a measuring tape, scissors, bubble wrap, olive oil soap and a net Method 1 Determine the width by measuring from your shoulder to where you would like the wrap to hit your lower back and then measure from wrist to wrist to calculate the length. 2 Lay out your paper or bubble wrap on a table and using your marker draw parallel lines dividing the length of the shawl evenly. Strips of your silk will be laid out lengthways along these lines with space between each strip. 3 Draw lines width ways dividing your pattern into a grid, these width ways lines will be where you lay out your roving,again with space between each piece of roving.

4 With your plastic bubble side up tear your silk into strips approx 13cms (5") in width and lay along the length of your pattern.

5 Dividing the thickness of your roving by 3 lay this on the cross lines of your design.

9 Once the wool fibres have migrated well through the silk fabric rinse the soap out of the felt, give it a final rinse with lavander water is liked then either spin to remove the excess water or squeeze gently by hand.

10 Lay the shawl out flat to dry and then finish with a cool iron.

6 Cover with netting and spray down with cold water. Run your block of soap on top of the netting taking care not to disturb your design.

7 Rub through the netting and once you see the wool fibres adhering to the silk peel away the netting and continue to rub carefully.

8 I then like to roll my shawl 50 times each way and check to see how everything is felting together. At this stage I find it is usually ready to add some hotter water, fold into a package and gently start throwing on to the table.

Vienna Shrug One of the things that I am most asked about is how to utilize those beautiful and tempting mixed packs of dyed embellishing fibres that are for sale at all the big events such as the 'Knitting & Stitching' show.

I used a tantalizing selection of dyed silks from Olivertwists as the starting point for this little shrug to cover the shoulders on cool summer evenings, other suppliers sell similar packs so be on the lookout for them at the shows.

You can use the technique shared here with any of the templates in the book, for this I am using a 'no sew' template I call Vienna. Basically you will felt all around a template cut from laminate floor underlay and when the felt is ready, cut at the waist to extract the template. The front opening is formed by a simple cut down the front, the sleeves by two cuts at the side. Please email chrissie@chrissieday.co.uk for a personal template in your dress size. If you are using needlefelt increase the pattern size by 4cms all round and cut out your plastic template to this size, if you are using roving or batts increase the template by the percentage shrinkage you are working from. 7

Dampen your plastic template and lay out some of your mixed fibres from the embellishing pack onto the first side mixing the colours well.

Cover with a layer of merino fibre or needle felt making sure to fringe the fibre or needlefelt over the edges of your plastic template.Take care at the edges.

Place a piece of silk gauze over the top of your wool layer trimming the edges of the fabric so that there is 2cms extending over the outside edge of the template. Cover everything with your net, wet out and soap. Rub well through the net especially where you can feel thicker pieces of embellishments. Do not rush this stage.

Remove the net and gently turn over your package to the other side. Wet the edges of the template and fold the fringes back over the plastic.

Vienna Felted by Charity Van De Meer

Charity worked the design but customised by allowing the height of the collar to stay, adding more surface texture ,adding a prefelt peplum which looks amazing. Also having sheer silk on the arms

In the top image you can see the fabric and fibre from side one has been gently pulled over the edge of the resist onto side two. Lay out side two following exactly the same steps as side one, first the embellishments, then the fibre or needlefelt followed by the silk gauze. Fringe the edging on side two as with the first side, wet out and soap well then flip the extending edges back over to side one. Once both sides have been soaped and rubbed well and the fibres are starting to hold together place your package inside your bubble wrap and roll 100 times. Next it is time to cut along the bottom edge to remove your template. At this stage you can see the silk embellishments which you laid against the template are felting nicely with the wool and the silk, this will be the outside of your shrug. Begin to throw gently on your table for 10 throws then rinse in warm water and throw harder in the sink area. Now that the shrug has been thrown and then turned right side out you can really see it starting to take shape. Now to cut and shape 9

Cut straight across the top of the neck then make a vertical cut 2" deep down the centre of the neckline, fold this back. Remove this folded excess at the front. Place the top back on your template and using it as a guide cut down the centre front to make your front opening.

To make the armholes, leave 2” uncut from the bottom waist edge and then cut upwards from this to your shoulder line. Shape the neckline if desired, the back neckline is higher than the front in this shrug.

Carpet bag Beautiful felted carpet bag with two Nuno felted silk panels, leather handles,bag feet and magnetic catch fastening on bag strap. To create this stylish and functional carpet bag I used a Finnish landrace wool from Rodrick Welsh and Karoliina Arvilommi (www.rod.4felts.com) but you can adapt and use any strong, mountain type wool that you have in your stash. The initial thing to do is test your shrinkage rate and depth of layers. It is no use making thin fine layers for this bag, you can see my before and after samples in the first two images on the right and the sample with the thickest layers has had the least shrinkage. I decided to work on a 40% rate of shrinkage for this bag.

The aim is to felt 2 pieces of yardage with a finished measurement of 60cms X 20cms each. The first piece will incorporate the nuno process at either end (I used my own screen printed silk ponge 4 for this) and an inlay design in the centre third while the second piece will have the inlay design all over as per the third image. Once the yardage is felted the second piece is cut up the center, butted together and stitched lengthways to either side of the first piece forming a large rectangle. This may be done with the sewing machine or by hand using a waxed thread. The centre piece of inlay design in the nuno panel will form the base of the bag.

When the pieces for the body of the bag are joined together add some free machine embroidery or hand stitching to the design if you like. This is also the time to add a lining if desired. Now you need to sew the sides of the bag together and stitch the shaped seam at the base. The next step is to make a casing for the frame of the bag. Fold the top edge of the front and back of the bag over to form a tube and stitch it down leaving the outside ends open ready for the tubular frame to be inserted. Before we insert the frame we need to attach the strap and magnetic catch that will be used for closing the top of the bag. Cut a piece of spare felt approximately 6" x 1.5" and attach one side of a magnetic clasp to the underneath of this 1" from one end. Stitch this to the back of the bag

To use the frame remove the two fastening bars from the hinges, insert the frame into the casing and then bring the hinges together again. Drop the fastening bars back in position flattened ends to the outside edge. Bring the outside edges of the felt together around the metal pins and join together with a couple of stitches.

I attached little metal feet to the bottom of this bag.To insert these foot supports press the point through the felt from the outside of the bag and then pull these apart inside the bag and leave in position .

A rolled leather shoulder strap completed this strong and functional bag. I like handles stitched onto the sides of my bags but you can stitch these on to the front and the back of your back with waxed thread or strong sewing thread if you prefer.

One Button Top

1 On top of your bubble wrap lay out the needlefelt base 30% larger than your desired finished measurements.

Follow the instructions on the next page to work out exactly how large a piece of felt you'll need or you can email chrissie@chrissieday.co.uk and order a free template which you can scale up.

2 Decorate with circles of silk and silk velvet.

3 Cover with a layer of ponge silk. With the nuno felt yardage for this top we are adding another dimension between the silk and wool. We will be using needlefelt in a very fine weight and adding silk and devore silk velvet circles on top of the wool base prior to covering the entire with a solid layer of ponge silk. Further snippets of silk fabric and plenty of tussah silk fibres are then added on top as a final layer of embellishment.

4 Add snippets of silk fabric and tussah silk fibre, wet out and soap.

5 Felt as normal until your fabric has come together and achieved the shrinkage you require. Rinse, spin and dry.

This is a very easy and eye catching top to make but I suggest you practice the folding and cutting instructions on a piece of paper or scrap fabric first until you understand the concept clearly.or simply use the template .

1 Measure across your body from one wrist to the other, this is the width of your top.

2 Measure from your neck down your body to the place where you want the jacket to hang to, multiply by 2 and this is the length of your top.

3 Fold your nuno felt yardage in half keeping the folded edge at your waist.

4 Measure a comfortable wrist depth, add an extra 1/2 inch and cut a line upwards from this directly to the centre top of the fabric on each side, keep the triangular shape pieces that you have removed

5 Cut the neck opening. 6 On the lower folded edge note the centre point and mark one quarter of your waist measurement on either side of this. Cut along this section to form the opening for your waist and stitch up along the dotted lines for 7 inches. We will be adding a crossover fastening so don't panic that the waist measurements will be too small. 7 Cut up the centre line on the front of your top to where the triangles meet to form the opening. 8 Stitch the top edges of your top together with an overlapping seam. 9 Attach the triangular pieces to the front of your top to form overlapping edges. Add a large button on one of these triangles, whichever side you want the top to fasten from. Stitch a popper underneath the button and another one on the other flap to finish the closure. 10 I attached knitted cuffs to this top. Make a simple knitted tube the width of the widest part of my arm the desired length and after casting off stitch onto felt edge of top. Or as my pattern tester did re-use sleeves from a favourite sweater.

Popover Pinny Top

Make this top reversible

Perfect for hot steamy summer days Materials 1m x 1m the thinnest needlefelt, 1m silk ponge 3.5 naturally dyed, 1m silk chiffon naturally printed, small amounts of tussah silk and some ripped selvedge edges of silk chiffon to decorate plus knitting yarns if liked.

You also need a personalised template that fits YOU, please email chrissie@chrissieday.co.uk for this stating your dress size and a PDF file will be emailed free to you! Print this (it comes in 12 seperate A4 numbered pages) and match up the pieces, there is a quarter circle in each corner and it is not difficult to match up each piece. Stick them together and cut around the two template pieces, match up the front and the side pieces and stick together as shown in the opposite image.

NB When working with needlefelt it is only necessary to increase the template by 4cms all round. Place it on top of a sheet of laminate floor underlay and draw around the outline with a waterproof marker enlarging by 4cms everywhere. Cut out the template.

Cover with the silk ponge and lay torn strips of silk chiffon and knitting yarn for surface decoration. This piece of silk I dyed with delphiniums, roses and cherry leaves from my garden last summer. Carefully place a felting net on top and sprinkle with coolish soapy water, rub well through the net and make sure to soap well using olive oil soap paying particular attention to the outside edge and any areas where two pieces of silk meet.

Fold the needlefelt in half and cut out the enlarged template with the centre fold running up the straight edge at the centre of the pinny. Place your plastic template directly on your felting table and lay out the first layer of silk chiffon on top of the plastic. For this pinny I printed my chiffon with walnuts and folded the bottom part in slightly overlapping pleats. Spritz lightly with water to hold the chiffon in place and lay the needlefelt on top.

When you feel that the pinny is well soaped and beginning to felt carefully place it on a piece of bubble wrap and roll approx 50 times. I then like to leave the felt to rest for about an hour. Continue the nuno felting process by rubbing, rolling and throwing until you are happy that your felt has shrunk by 4cms all round and is the size of your original paper template. Rinse then hang to dry.

econstructed Screen Printing

One of the most frequent questions I'm asked is how I get imagery onto the silk or cotton that I use in my nuno felting. If you don't have any design ideas maybe deconstructed screenprinting is the technique for you! The silk gauze in the next sleeveless waistcoat was printed using this method and here are the steps I took to achieve my design. In addition to your fabric you will need a screen, a special printing table to work on, soda ash, dyes,bottles with nozzles (www.alternativeplastics.co.uk sell these), masking tape, dyes and thickener, a squeege or old credit card plus some items you can find around the house such as rubber bands and rubber gloves DIY PRINTING TABLE Making your own specialised printing table couldn't be easier! I made mine as a removable surface which I place on my regular table when needed, to make one you'll need some plywood, carpet underlay, heavy duty pond liner and a staple gun. Have the plywood cut to the size you require (make this as big as possible), place a piece of carpet underlay the same size as the plywood on top of it and secure everything together by covering with the pond liner, pull it tightly over the two layers and staple it to the underside.

To use, you place this on top of a regular table or trestles and tape your fabric to the surface using masking tape making sure to stretch the fabric as you tape it down. When you've finished using the printing table make sure to clean it well with water and dry the surface before you put it away for the next time.

PREPARING YOUR FABRIC All fabric has to be treated first before screening and the quickest way to do this is to mix 6 dessert spoons of soda ash into a bucket of water and leave your silk to soak in this for 2 hours. Take it out of the liquid and pin it outside to dry, don't fold or iron fabric that has been soaked in soda ash until after it has been screened.

SCREENS You will only need one screen when you start to experiment with deconstructed screenprinting. There are many art supply shops in the UK or online where you can buy a blank screen, I like to use APH frames with a mesh size of 110 or 156. The mesh size 110 allows you to lay a fairly thick layer of dye down and is excellent for block text letters and larger designs, 156 is finer gauge. In the U.S. you can order from www.poconoscreen.com or www.chicagosilkscreensupply.com and just choose which size mesh you would like to try out first.

MIXING UP YOUR DYES AND THICKENER You will need some Manutex (sodium alginate used to thicken the dye), urea, natural dye, some Procion MX dyes, screw top jars to hold the dye mixes and a bottle or two with nozzles for the thickened dye mixes. Start by making a solution of natural or Procion dye (mix with water) in the colours you want to use for printing, put these in screw top jars and label. The prepared dye solutions may be stored until you are ready to screenprint, you may also make the Manutex (thickener) up in advance and store it in the fridge for up to 5 weeks if necessary, remember to label everything carefully! To make the thickener, dissolve six and a half tablespoons of urea in three cups of boiling water and strain through a cloth to remove any grit. Sprinkle six teaspoons of the Manutex into the urea water and stir briskly with a hand whisk for 3 to 5 minutes, leave to cool stirring occasionally. When it has cooled the solution will be the the consistency of thick runny honey. At this stage all you have to do is transfer some of the thickener into a nozzle topped bottle and add some of your premixed dye solution as soon as you are ready to start printing.

The Process The general idea is to have something interesting underneath your screen and the thickened dye will retain an impression of that. I placed an old rubber glove and some elastic bands under the screen and then drew circles directly on top of the screen using the nozzled bottle and different colours of the thickened dye. When this is dry spread some thickened dye of a different colour on top of the screen, I find that not more than 3 different colours in a design works best. Allow the thickened dye paste to dry and then remove the rubber bands and anything that is stuck underneath your screen. Now stretch your prepared and dried fabric on top of your printing table and tape it securely in place. Place your dried screen on top of the fabric and squirt some of your original plain thickener on top, this will be used to 'push' the coloured thickener through onto the fabric beneath. Using either your squeege or old credit card as a scraper sweep the dye once along the screen, if necessary you can sweep it back once more then lift up your screen and repeat on the next area of your fabric. What you will see happening is that the original dye transfers to your fabric and as you continue to screen. 20

STEAMING YOUR FABRIC TO SET THE COLOUR

The Chicago Sleeveless Top

Once you have printed all your fabric it is necessary to finish the process off by steaming it to set the colour. Wrap your printed fabric in sheets of plain paper doughnut style, I like to use newspaper blanks and www.thebagandboxman.co.uk is one source for these in the UK. Place the wrapped fabric in the top section of a food steamer and cover with a cloth, this stops condensation dripping on your work. Add water to the lower chamber and then put the lid on. Set your timer and steam the fabric for 20 minutes. Remove the packages and unwrap the fabric, hang to dry. When your fabric is dry it's ready to be used as you wish in the nuno process! The second image on this page is the printed fabric used in a lightweight sleeveless vest. The colour of the needlefelt or fibre that is combined with any fabric when nuno felting also helps determine what the final felt will look like.

CHICAGO REVERSIBLE SLEEVELESS TOP As with the reversible pinny you can email chrissie@chrissieday.co.uk for your own downloadable template for this sleeveless top. You can either scale up this and create a plastic resist to felt around or you can felt yardage and then cut out the top and stitch it at the shoulders and the collar. With the template laying open like this it gives you more opportunity to make a reversible garment--paying strict attention to all your edges as you felt and also laying out.

Printed silk laid on top of turquoise needlefelt then circles of contrasting needle felt positioned to imitate buttons

Wet and soap this side too then really rub well before rolling 50 times from each direction.

Wet and soap everything through a net then turn over and add random circles all over the turquoise needlefelt.

The felt is now ready to throw. Continue felting as normal then rinse, dry and iron before proceeding to cut and sew the top. Add decorative stitching to finish. 22

Milan Jacket Milan is a fabulous city and this nuno jacket of the same name is really full of hip chic! The shape has a wide curved back piece which actually comes around and fastens with a big button just above the hips. This allows the front panels to fall waterfall style from the shoulders to the waist, wear it open for truly chic style.

The body of the Milan jacket is felted from a combination of wool gauze from Ideen, silk ponge and merino fibre and the cuffs and bottom of the body are beautiful pieces of felted silk velvet which are stitched on afterwards. The first thing we need to do when making this jacket is work out the shrinkage rate for the main pieces, for this we need to felt a sample comprising one layer of wool gauze sandwiched between a layer of silk ponge and one even layer of merino fiber. Working from the shrinkage information at the front of the book my sample shrunk by 15% which meant that I needed to increase my template by 17.6% to get the correct measurements to base my pattern pieces by. Order template from chrissie@chrissieday.co.uk and print off then stick it together before proceeding. Cut individual pieces of wool gauze to the size you have scaled your template up to then stitch the shoulder seams for the front and back together and attach the sleeves to the armhole. This jacket is now laid out and felted flat and the side seams and sleeve seams are stitched together after felting.

Start by laying out the your stitched together wool gauze pieces on your bubble wrap and cover each section of this top side with ponge silk cut to size. For the Milan jacket I used silk that I had previously printed using the deconstructed silkscreening method. Wet it all down and soap before turning the jacket over and covering the reverse side of the sleeves and back with an even fine layer of merino in colours of your choice. The front two panels do not have any merino fibre laid on them as I want them to be finer and more floaty so for these pieces cut two more pieces of silk to size and place them carefully on top of the wool gauze.

Wet, soap and work as normal for felting nuno by rubbing, rolling about 200 times each side and throwing rinsing and rewarming the piece in hot water as necessary. Rinse well with lavender water, spin gently then lay flat to dry. To finish, stitch the sleeve seams and the side seams together, add a button to the bottom of the back pieces to close. My jacket has a felted silk velvet trim placed on the edges which I dyed with rich acid dyes in colours to tone with my screenprinted silk. A wide strip of approx.5” was machined around the lower edge of the back and around the wrists. 25

To make this piece of felted velvet I laid one layer of long fibre merino tops lengthways on my silk velvet and felted these together.

Milly

The beauty of working with woven wool gauze is the lightweight nature of the finished garment but it is incredibly strong and the weave gives a marvellous felted appearance which is unique to felting with woven wool.

Milly is a Japanese inspired top with minimal sewing to assemble. One third of it is lighter than the rest allowing for a beautiful draping effect at the front when it's stitched up.

To felt this you'll need a piece of etamine measuring 1.5 x 2 metres, 2 metres silk chiffon, 1 metre silk ponge, 20gms each of 4 toning colours of merino, silk fibres of your choice, olive oil soap, some netting and two large pieces of bubblewrap. Etamine is a very finely woven merino fabric that takes to the nuno process beautifully.

Lay your etamine on your bubble wrap and divide the fabric visually into thirds, the top third will be felted on both sides and the bottom two thirds on one side only. The top third will have no merino fibre on either side meaning that the etamine and silk will felt into a lighter fabric and drape beautifully at the front of the garment.

Starting with the top third of your fabric lay two to three strips of ponge vertically from the top edge to a point one third down the fabric. Cover with wisps of tussah silk then lay a piece of silk chiffon over the whole third leaving an edge of 2cms to be folded over to the reverse of the etamine. Spray with a soap and water mix then press gently through then place a piece of bubble wrap on top and roll it all up to enable you to turn the package over. Open the package up and bring the silk chiffon edges from the first side over the edges of the etamine. Repeat the steps above on the top third of the second side, strips of ponge, tussah silk followed by silk chiffon. Now we start to work on the bottom two thirds of the etamine. Lay out one fine even layer of merino all over this portion mixing up the colours as you go along, I like to lay out my wool working from left to right. Add random strips of ponge running from the middle to the bottom edge then wisps of tussah silk before covering this section in silk chiffon. I find it helps to wet my fibre before laying on the chiffon. Wet out and soap well rubbing through your net to remove any air bubbles. Rub directly on the felt for a little while then wrap in bubble wrap and roll 100 times from each side. Leave to rest for 30 minutes, I believe that this resting plays an important part in the felting

process so please don't leave it out, relax and have a cup of tea! When you come back unroll the package and check to see if the fibres are migrating through the fabric, if not rub and roll some more paying particular attention to all the edges of the rectangle. Throw, rinse, spin and dry as normal.

To assemble your jacket measure the length from your wrist to where you want your armhole to be. Where the top third of the rectangle meets the bottom two thirds cut along this line inwards for the length of this arm measurement on both sides. These upper pieces will now form a scarf like piece at the front of your jacket.

Turn the jacket wrong side out and fold the bottom of the lower rectangle upwards and topstitch it to the top of the lower rectangle to form sleeves, where the dotted line is in the image. Turn right side outwards and sew another line of stitching using stitch length 5. I like to angle my sleeve seams 45 degrees towards my wrist opening and remove the excess fabric although you can just stitch the seams as they are and have big wide sleeves. If you choose to sew at an angle keep the excess fabric and use

Suppliers Although this list is not definitive and in no way reflects a lack of quality or choice available elsewhere I feel that it would be helpful for readers to include a small selection of favourite online suppliers and resources with websites where available! www.worldofwool.co.uk great blended fibres www.feltingsupply.com

www.wollknoll.eu ..... wonderful fibres and felting tools www.filzfun.de brilliant magazine (in German!) www.selvedge.co.uk www.charlottebuch.dk www.artwearpublications.com ....www.winghamwoolwork.co.uk www.etsy.com/shop/worldonadot ..... Estonian wool

Aknowledgements from Chrissie Thanks have to be made to all the international tutors I have learnt from and also my students who always show me other ways of looking at the world Many thanks also go to Dawn Cloake of www.fashionacademy.co.uk who has worked alongside me and has encouraged me in developing the templates for the designs. Thanks to Alan Joseph photography and my new model Ayesha Leila Caunt-Buonocore ( you are great) My suppliers who always go the extra mile for me and all my friends and students who support and encourage me.

www.whaleys-bradford.ltd.uk www.vvrouleaux.com www.feltmakers.com www.handweavers.co.uk www.interweave.com

My family who mean the world to me and Nigel who makes everything possible and calms and encourages and believes in my dreams and me and always makes me laugh. MH for giving me ‘tomorrow’, I will never forget.

www.filzrausch.de ..... short fibred merino and beautiful 16 micron merino www.alafoss.is ..... Icelandic wool

To all of you who wish you could, or had, or did ------ do it. Take hold of your dream, catch onto that star. Have faith in yourself, you are what you are.