Fibre East and arty comfort blankets!

Fibre East! WOW, what a great place for felters!

This newish exhibition, held in Thurleigh in Bedfordshire is only in it's second year and bills itself as 'A celebration of British wool and fibres' Truly it was!

I have never been to Woolfest in Cumbria or Wonderwool in Wales but this was close to home for me and was a great chance to see and find wool fibre produced by British farmers in the most exciting and colourful products. It was also so good to support small makers who were so committed and enthusiastic about their breeds and products. 

I talked to lots of felt artists, spinners, weavers  and dyers. It is amazing to see what you can do with wool.

The display of balls of fibre above was HUGE! the pile was almost as tall as me! The colour blends are beautiful. there were lots of baskets of fibres and pick and mix selections of gorgeous Wensleydale and other scrummy curly fibres which I find so difficult to source. It was good to choose by feeling and looking at the colours which you cant do if you are buying online.

One of the things I absolutely loved were the recycled wool blankets which had been space dyed. I dye these sometimes but it was so nice to pick and mix colours that someone else had chosen because we all make colours in our own  way and sometimes it is nice to step into someone else's colour scheme.

Having said that I picked a lovely teal/lime green that is one of my favourites. I have bought a new sketch book (addicted! can you tell?) and it is short but very wide. It obviously needs a cover of its own!

The dyed blanket is thick, soft and colourful. A lovely arty comfort blanket! I also bought....
to decorate it all with! Isn't it all delicious? There are curly wool fibres, handspun wool rovings, space dyed cotton threads and some rough handspun and dyed yarn that has a great matte tweedy feel to it.

And here is what I did with it all.....My newest sketch book cover!

 I am so pleased with the textures on this front cover. I am going to do something completely different on the back cover but with the same colours and supplies. Of course I am going back to Fibre East next year!

Space Dyeing Heaven!

When we both had small children, my friend Moira and I used to set aside a day every year when we would find all the white cotton and silk fabrics  and threads and braids that we had stashed and we would spend a heavenly day space dyeing them into luscious colours. We used to buy neutral coloured things to keep for dyeing days. So if we ever saw silk velvet or linen threads or great cotton sewing yarns we would add them to our stash and keep them ready!


There is nothing quite as unpredictably exciting as throwing  dyes onto a pile of all kinds of threads and seeing them do their magic.  


Life has got so busy that we haven't done this for about 3 years but on Friday we finally both managed to find half  a day when we could  have one of our special sessions and we both had a really great time.


So here is how we started:  Two of the trays of undyed stash...

You can see that I dyed some things that were beautifully textured  but not exciting in colour at all!

This next photo is of the threads with the dyes spaced at intervals for the colours to merge together for a red based batch. And one of the green batch  merged in the dye bath.


Would you like to see the results??

There are crochet doileys, silk velvet, cotton scrim, Broderie Anglaise cotton, and some cotton braid.

These are the silk and cotton threads. The colours are so much brighter in real life and the sheen on the silks is wonderful..

Aren't they fab? I love the way the true colours are only really visible when they are dry and then you can see the colours blended through the fabrics and cotton and silk threads.


This is the perfect way to spend a day when you have lost your creative mojo or when you just need to be inspired with colour. I can't wait to sew with these and use them in stitch projects, fabric books and with felt...... I may spend quite a while just stroking them though! Heavenly!