A Long Felt Want

We had a workshop at our craft group on Monday, led by textile artist Linda Sadler.She told us how, in retirement, she had done an art course in Norwich and found herself creating artworks with a knitting machine. Specifically she had worked out a way of knitting lengths of woollen fabric with channels across, through which she threaded 'wool tops'. 

Then she machine washed these, and sliced the resulting felted fabric to make 'chains' - shaped rather like wrack seaweeds. She cut these into different lengths then stitched them together: a few to make brooches and coasters, or many to make rugs and wall hangings. The results were fascinating...

You can see the unfelted piece top right, and below it some bags of 'chains' and a red 'flower' awaiting its brooch pin. Then there are lots of finished items. Some times she uses just one shade of wool tops, other times there is a mixture pushed through the channel.

After her fascinating talk, we all had a go using some chains she had brought along, I chose some red pieces with multicoloured fillings, and stitched them to make a couple of brooches, I picked out the colours and stitched French Knots in the centre to finish each flower, before attaching a brooch pin.

It was really interesting to meet someone who had created her own unique fabric. She and I had a chat about the knitting industry in Leicester, and the round sock machines, which knitted tubes. Oh, and the Sweater Shop - very popular back in the 90s. Bright, loose fitting jumpers. The Leicester company went into receivership in 1998, I remember buying all the family jumpers for a song in their factory shop one Christmas. [Now there is another company of the same name  in Ireland]

I wore one brooch pinned to my dress on Saturday and three complete strangers complimented me on it. Thank you Linda!