But with batting, the wool comes off the machine in thin sheets which are layered to form thicker fluffy sheets. The layering results in a textured wool where the fibers are no longer aligned, making it perfect for needle felting as it felts up very quickly.
I washed it, which is quite a labour of love! It was light and fluffy when it arrived in the post and remained so. This fleece was easy to process and I was left with core wool, which is essentially a lump of washed fleece.
It's lumpy, stringy and great for stuffing into nylon tights for building up body or other 3D shapes. It's also the cheapest way to buy wool. You could card and dye it from here if you wanted to do that for yourself. The next stage from core wool, are carded batts. Carded batts are what you get when the washed and cleaned wool is run through a drum roller. Woollen mills do this on a grand scale.
When the wool is put through a drum it sorts the fibres out a little so they still lay in a criss cross fashion so they aren't all bunched up and lumpy. Carded batts are brilliant for building up 3d shapes. You could even use it as a base to wet felt as the fibres are short and open which lends itself well to binding to itself and other fibres.
There are several ways to layout your wool roving. The most common form is called shingling. We use one hand as a clamp and pull away a staple length of wool fibre. Each shingle overlaps the previous one by one third — image left. Two layers will create a lightweight consistent felt. More layers may be used either depending on the thickness of each shingle, or the desired thickness of your finished felt. If I use the same weight of wool fibres, and start with the same size of layout, my end result should be the same with either wool roving or batting.
I used exactly the same felting techniques for the same durations in both samples. The batting was faster to layout. The roving developed a more strong felted skin more quickly. The batting felt more cohesive and started to full or shrink sooner in the process. They were both finished in the same amount of time, and the finished size was the same in both samples, with equal shrinkage in the width and the length.
My batting sample was more even in finished density overall. If I had of been a little more attentive in my layout of the roving, I think it would have been as consistent, if not more than the batting.
But I was working quite quickly, so in this case the batting had a slightly better end result. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email. Related Posts. Creative Sparks. Scholarship Opportunities :: Online Workshops Keep up the great work. Thank you! She said that it was Lopi and that the word means roving. Guess I need to dust off my spinning wheel and attempt to turn this into a usable weft yarn…. Thanks again for your clear descriptions.
Ruby in northern Vermont. Lopi is a special case. True lopi is made from the fleece of icelandic sheep, which are double-coated, containing a longer outer coat and a downy undercoat. Lopi has wonderful insulating properties, and will full some, and tend to shed water. Thank you Abby! This is going to help me so much! You explained it so clearly! I have a friend who is raising Shetlands.
She has had some of her fleeces processed into roving. The end product lacks the luster and softness of the same fleece after hand processing.
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