Description
If you enjoy a somewhat interesting origin story, this red and green art batt for spinning or felting used to be a hand dyed braid of wool top! After looking at it, I decided it needed to be something more exciting – so out came the drum carder and the extra fibres to make it textured. This is why it’s heavier than your usual 100g carded batt at 111g or 3.9 ounces.
This is one fun art batt for spinning or felting – after layering the merino in the colour order I wanted, I added some silk, some bamboo and finally some hand dyed nepps (the little wool “balls” you can see scattered throughout the merino wool base). The end result is this lofty marvel that I have to keep away from me so I don’t squish it all day long.
What can I make with this art batt?
I prefer to spin my art batts by core spin them and using a sticky yarn (such as mohair) as the core, and then ply it with some shiny thread. You can, however, do whatever you like with this fibre combo – textured art batts are a great way to experiment with texture and remember, sheep are growing more wool as we speak, so don’t be afraid to just experiment and see what happens!
Unfortunately I’m not very knowledgeable when it comes to wet felting so can’t really offer much advice, but I am told you can “disassemble” art batts by moving the fibres around to suit your purposes before felting, which sounds to me like a really fun way to play with wool.
Whatever you make with your art batt, this red, green and pink squishy marvel is here for your fibre enjoyment.
Colour settings
Please be advised that the reds on the photos are slightly deeper in real life (though not by much), however I have no way of knowing whether your monitor settings are similar to mine and how you might see the images on your end.