nuno felt | Teri Berry Textiles

A couple of weeks ago a friend from my day job approached me and asked if I would make a top for her. We had a bit of chat about what colours she liked and what shape the top would have. She was clearly besotted with the dress I was wearing at the time:

This front panel of this dress is parfait dyed haboti silk. This became the basis of her top.

Instead of just having a panel of silk we thought it would be interesting to cover the entire top with silk so I set about dyeing a few metres of haboti in similar colours to the dress:

Then set about laying out the silk and wool over a template cut to Karin’s measurements.

The wool colours were graduated from white at the top to chocolate brown at the bottom.

After lots of rolling, massaging and throwing, the wool started to contract and the silk puckered.

I added a few darts to help with the shaping, these photos were taken at the second fitting, I think it looks beautiful already but will add a couple more small darts around the collar.

I’m chuffed to bits with how this top has turned out. The silk has the most beautiful sheen (the photos really don’t do it justice) that gives the top a luxurious look without being “in your face” bling. I’m already planning a purple version as a Christmas present to myself, and Karin has asked for another with a 3/4 length sleeve… I guess I will be a little busy for the next few weeks!

Wishing you all a wonderful, woolly Christmas and Happy New year!

My wool order finally arrived today, it should have been here on Wednesday but it appears the Interlink drivers aren’t capable of following their sat navs. Interlink have a really nice system where you can watch your driver going from drop to drop as it counts down to your delivery. For 2 days running I watched the driver come within 50 yards of my address only to click “cannot deliver / cannot locate address”. Utterly exasperating!!! I can’t help but wonder if he was behind schedule so couldn’t be bothered to stop?

Anyway, here is my bag of woolly goodness 🙂

The large white bags are merino and corriedale top, most of which I plan to dye, above them are some commercial merino and silk blends, a bit of a novelty for me as I normally blend my own. The dark grey in the centre is Gotland, it always amazes me how heavy and dense Gotland is, this parcel is 500g, most of the others are only 200g but are a similar volume.

I have already started to play with some of the merino/silk blends, I chose the purple-blue mix for starters:

And have been laying out over some cotton scrim I dyed yesterday:

I am trying out a new design for the sleeve attachments after making a jacket last week. If it doesn’t work this top will go from being long-sleeved to a vest 🙂

This is the jacket, I love it and have worn it every day this week but feel there is a bit too much fabric in the armpits, while this allows great freedom of movement I think it looks a bit bulky when my arms are down, hence the experiment to find alternative designs.