One Year One Outfit 2016

I haven't talked much about the totally local outfit I made during the whole of 2016, but I have been beavering away and it is finally finished!

Now I have to admit here, that 'totally local' is not exactly an accurate description for this outfit. The challenge was to create an outfit that was completely sourced from naturally-occurring materials within a 500km radius of my location. As discussed last year, there are not a lot of dressmaking materials available around Perth, Western Australia except wool. I stuck to the rules last year, but rebelled this year and used a couple of imported products. I decided that having a wearable* almost-totally-local outfit made more sense than a totally local outfit that sat, unworn, in the cupboard. 

*I use the term 'wearable' somewhat loosely here!

This year's outfit includes a dress, a bag and some shoes. The bag and shoes are felted from Merino and Corriedale wool from West Australian sheep and are 100% locally sourced apart from the soles of the shoes, which I made from jute string imported from China. 

The dress is nuno felted with silk hankies and wool on silk. I had really wanted to try nuno felting and had intended to use local wool and imported silk and dye it with local plants. However, it turned out that locally sourced and dyed materials were going to make life as a newbie nuno felter too complicated, so I bought everything from Treetops Colour Harmonies. Treetops is the most glorious shop and all their silk and wool is carefully hand dyed in colours inspired by West Australian bushland and beaches. If you're going to deviate from totally local, this is the place to do it!

My supplies were silk hankies, silk georgette fabric and superfine Merino wool tops in the colours 'Chinchilla'. I had never worked with silk hankies before and was quite surprised to find that they were not the nose-blowing variety, but squares of fine silk fibres, each stretched from a single silkworm cocoon. It felt very special to work with these little wonders of nature.

The dress was made during a three day nuno felting workshop with Nancy Ballesteros at the Feltwest studio. The course was absolutely brilliant and I learnt so many new techniques. Nuno felting a fitted garment with silk hankies is a long and involved process. It begins as a pattern that would fit a giant and is worked and washed and rubbed and rubbed and rubbed until finally it fits a real person. Despite having three full days to make this, in the last hour or so I was actually running back and forth from the sink to the table to the rubbing boards in a manner reminiscent of Project Runway or Masterchef!

My design for all three of my items was based on an abstract flower design I saw in the book '500 Felt Objects' by Nathalie Mornu, which was kindly lent to me by Carolyn of Handmade by Carolyn. I used the colours of the wool and silk hankies to vary the colours of the flowers and to highlight the edges and centres against the background. The flowers were placed close together at the neckline and bodice, for strength and modesty, and further apart towards the hemline. I am wearing a flesh-coloured slip under the dress.

The front and back of the dress were made separately and fitted during the felting process. Areas of the dress, such as the armholes, were shrunk with further felting so they were fitted and not gaping.

The dress was then sewn together with silk strips to create a decorative seam. The hem was hand rolled and stitched.

The bag is completely felted from local wool in white and brown and incorporates the same abstract flower design as the dress. I made the bag at another fabulous Feltwest course run by Sue Eslick. I attended the course with Sue from Fadanista, who is always great fun and has made a breathtaking totally local dress and accessories that you must see.

The bag was made in the round as one piece with a plastic 'resist' in the middle to stop the front and back felting together. You can see here that I went to considerable effort to dye some of my wool with locally sourced indigo. This is a bit of a sore point as the indigo nearly all washed out during the felting process!

An inordinate amount of rubbing and shaping followed before the bags were sufficiently felted and strong. Here Sue was laughing as my indigo dye ran out all over my shoes. Little did she know that my bag was watching her every move!

Encouraged by my newfound resist felting expertise (!), I attempted the shoes on my own! To make the template, I drew around my foot and measured the width at the widest point. This measurement, 9.6cm, was divided by three giving 3.2cm. I then added 3.2cm all around the foot drawing to allow for the wool shrinkage and foot shape. The left and right templates were made from thin packaging foam sheets covered with duct tape.

Rub a dub dub...

Once the felting was done, I cut a foothole in the top. I thought I'd made it in the right place, but I ended up having to patch the heel as it was too low.

The sole was made with a plaited strip of jute string that I placed on a template of my foot, sewed together and stitched to the shoe with local wool.

So there we are!

I have an outfit that is only partly local. However, every inch of it was planned and designed and made lovingly agonisingly by hand in a process that was exhilarating and difficult and immensely satisfying.

So, the big question now is will I wear it? Well, I can happily report that I have already done so! I wore the dress to a wonderful get together of the Perth Sewcialists late last year. The Sewcialists, as always, were very kind and complimentary of the dress and much patting of the fabric took place. I call that a win for One Year One Outfit!

Huge thanks must go to Nicki of This is Moonlight for conceiving this idea of nature and sustainability and facilitating the meeting of wonderful, like-minded people. She will be doing a round up of the participants soon and has made an exquisite hand woven coatigan. Thank you also to Carolyn, for the fun get togethers, for encouraging me to keep creating my outfit and for her (very kind) enthusiasm about my shoes! Her outfit is the most beautiful knitted dress and hat, dyed with local plants. You must see it. Thank you also to Sue for the laughs, the inspiration and being my partner in crime at the workshops. If you didn't click on her gorgeous doily dress earlier in the post, do it now. My outfit from last year can be found here.

One Year One Outfit - THE BIG REVEAL!

OK, here it is. The outfit I've been working on all year that is 100% sourced from my local corner of Western Australia.

Also known as 'Pocahontas goes on a winter holiday'.

The only part that is not locally sourced is the boots and the, er, underwear.

This challenge was dreamt up by the quirky and creative Nicki. We had one year to create an outfit that had been 100% sourced from our local area. People from around the world have taken part including a small and enthusiastic group from Perth, Western Australia (WA), consisting of me, Carolyn, Sue and Nicki. I have to say, I could not have completed this project without the help and support of these lovely ladies. Together we have investigated local sources of fibres and textiles, experimented and learned new techniques, played with natural dyes, hand stretched silk cocoons and endlessly discussed our outfits over cups of tea and coffee. It has been stimulating, cathartic, exhausting at times (try rubbing and rolling huge pieces of felt by hand!) and always incredibly good fun.

At the beginning of the challenge we made a list of the fibres, textiles and other things, like zips, buttons etc. available in south west WA. Here is the list:

1. Wool

We did discuss harvesting roadkill, but abandoned the idea fairly quickly. We were going to have to get creative with Eucalyptus leaves or resort to using wool from sheep or alpacas. Fortunately wool is pretty fantastic and can be used in many ways. I used knitting and felting for the majority of my outfit and incorporated the natural colours of the wool into the design.

Let's start with the cardigan.

I began with a Nikki Gabriel pattern for a jumper made of knitted triangles that were sewn together. I am not a knitter, so thought triangles would be do-able. I used three colours of wool from Corriedale sheep. I knitted a few triangles and was pleased. I knitted some more and was bored. I forced myself to knit even more. I knitted throughout a tropical Singapore holiday, on the plane, in the hotel, even at Universal Studios. By this point I was about halfway through the triangles and decided that if I had to knit another one I would go stark raving mad. Then I suddenly had the brainwave to fill in the gaps with felted triangles. Felting! So much quicker than knitting...until you decide to blanket stitch all the edges before sewing the triangles together. At least it was a change from the interminable knitting. I gradually pieced the triangles together in a random mixture of colour, knitted and felted and it evolved into this cardigan. 

I finished the edges with a felted strip of mid-brown wool and black splotches of Truffle (dog) fur. 

The cardi is rustic to say the least. I think it is a bit much worn with the rest of the outfit, but I do quite like it and it might look ok with jeans or something else less, well, woolen. The different textures are kind of cool and some of the felt looks almost like leather.

So, what else do we have. Oh, more felt! OK, I was perhaps not as creative as I could have been with my treatment of the wool. It's all knitted, felted or stitched. The other parts of the outfit consist of a felted top, skirt and hat.

I've mentioned before about the ombre felted skirt. Sue was a huge help with the felting and, after the first session, she discovered that her car polisher sped up the soapy water rubbing process no end. I used Sue's polisher to felt my skirt into a tube shape.

Truffle inspected the dog fur splotches in the skirt and gave them a woof of approval.

Sue also helped me knit a waistband for the skirt on her knitting machine. I say 'helped' when what I really mean is 'did it for me while I drank tea'. Sue is a legend!

The top is a piece of white felt that I cut to shape using a pattern and I now can't remember which one. I didn't have quite enough for the sides, so I sewed on some felted circles that I had originally intended as embellishment. 

The neckline and armholes are blanket stitched for stability. The darts and shoulder seams are dry felted together with a felting needle.

I'm quite pleased with the top and skirt. I'm not sure if I'll actually wear them, but they do feel light and cosy.

The final part of the outfit is the accessories. I made the hat using the Madeline hat pattern. It is sewn together with wool using the Alabama Chanin hand sewing technique.

I finished it off with two little felt flowers.

But wait, the necklace is not wool! It is made from Neptune Balls, which are balls of WA seaweed, Posidonia oceanica, that I collected from a beach south of Perth and strung together with wool.

I also made a little felt dog for Truff to thank him for donating his fur to the project.

So there we are. One Year One Outfit. Locally sourced and the height of fashion.

OK, the latter claim is pushing it, but I am still very proud of my outfit. After all, it's not just an outfit, it's the culmination of a whole process of researching, gathering materials, experimenting, learning and creating. It's also a reminder to look at what is on your doorstep, unleash its potential and consider the environment and the mass production factories in the process.

I loved this year. Thank you to my OYOO friends for all the fun, help and inspiration, to the sheep and the wool spinners and to Truff and my lovely family for their support and fur donations.

Gosh, I look hilarious!

To see the other stunning outfits of our merry Perth band, have a look here for Carolyn's and here for Sue's. You won't regret it. Nicki's is coming soon, so keep checking her blog.

Fun times felting - One Year One Outfit challenge

As I've mentioned before, I'm taking part in the 'One Year One Outfit' (OYOO) challenge. This involves creating an entire outfit this year that has been sourced only from locally grown and sustainably produced materials. I bought supplies for felting a skirt a while back, but had suffered too much from newbie felting nerves to actually make anything. I mentioned this to fellow OYOOer, Sue of Fadanista, who made the excellent suggestion of getting together for a felting session.

It was a bit of a case of the blind leading the blind, although we both had a tiny amount of felting experience. Sue wrote recently about a felting session she had with a textile artist friend and we used her notes from that as our guide. We decided to begin with my felt and work on it together. This turned out to be an excellent strategy as the rubbing and rolling process was far easier with two people. However, my piece took so long we will need to reconvene to make Sue's felt.

We began by pulling off thin fibres from the wool roving (above) and laying them on a piece of bubble wrap, which was placed over a towel. I had drawn my skirt front and back on a piece of vinyl as a guide for the size. This worked well as a guide, but I should have made it bigger to allow for shrinkage - oops!

The fibres were placed over the pattern guide, the first layer in one direction, the second at 90 degrees to the first, and so on until we had four layers. I had three colours of wool roving, which I separated and placed, lightest to darkest, to create an ombre effect. I also added a few tufts of my dog Truffle's fur between the third and fourth layers at the bottom. Non-wool materials can be felted into wool felt in small amounts.

So fluffy and lovely!

The next step, once I'd laid out the front and back of the skirt, was to cover the wool with netting. We used tulle, but apparently flyscreen also works well.

Then we rolled up our sleeves for action. Using scrunched up plastic bags, we scattered hot water and rubbed olive oil soap (other soap can also be used, but this was local) over the netting until the wool was completely wet. We then did a sustained bout of circular rubbing all over the piece. The netting holds everything in place, but we checked from time to time that it was not felting to the wool. It wasn't.

It was lovely working with the olive oil soap, soft wool and warm water on a cool morning, not to mention the good company. The fibres began to felt together fairly quickly so we neatened up the edges by pushing them towards the main piece. The imprint of the bubble wrap could be seen on the felt at this stage, but this disappeared after further steps. 

At this point we rearranged the felt so it had a piece of netting on both sides. It was placed back on the bubble wrap and the towel, then the whole lot was rolled around a pool noodle to make a cylinder. I haven't got a picture of this as Sue and I took one end of the noodle each and rolled back and forth 1000 times, while moving our hands in and out to cover the length of the noodle. Obviously this was far more cumbersome with my largish piece of felt than with the small pieces we'd done in the past and I was especially glad of Sue's help here. I was also glad of her Fitbit wrist pedometer, which made counting the back and forth rolls so much easier!

My front and back skirt pieces partially felted together in the middle, but that was fine.

The wool was well and truly felting by now. We rinsed it well in cold water and microwaved it for 2 x 30 seconds. The felt was then placed in a plastic bag and whacked down on to the table a few times. This caused much hilarity as it kept bursting out of the bag and showering droplets everywhere. I guess that was a good test of its integrity!

This is the felt before we hung it over a chair to dry.

The full piece. I love the way the ombre effect turned out and the little black Truffle speckles.

The striations of different colour wool add interest too.

I did make my skirt pieces approximately 8-10cm larger than the pattern pieces, but the felt shrunk by more than this amount once it was completely dry. I am not letting this concern me and will simply make more felt at our next session to use as strips along the skirt's sides. I only used about half the wool roving that I had bought (approximately $8 worth) so have plenty more to play with in the future. 

My felt did end up quite thin and translucent in places so I returned to Bilby Yarns, where I bought my wool, and asked the opinion of the very knowledgeable lady there. She said it was fine, but may need lining to stand up to being worn as a skirt. Not knowing how to find locally-produced lining material, I may just ponder that problem for a while before finalising my skirt plans.

In the meantime I have other things to take up my time. I've started knitting for the first time in 25 years! Well I have to wear something on my top half for the OYOO. While at Bilby Yarns, I bought some beautiful West Australian wool in my felt colours to make a jumper. Progress is slow. Better get back to it!

Thank you Sue for the fun morning and the use of her beautiful garden.