It was in 2017 that I last changed my dyeing and felting process. The influencing factor then was my reflections following a brilliant online course, creative strength training, with Jane Dunnewold. Here is a link to the blog I wrote about that change.

This week I have been assessing the naturally dyed felting materials I have and concluded I need lots more greens! This is all have left.

My process to date has been mordant my fibres, dye my fibres, make prefelts, sometimes modify them, and then felt my prefelts.

Complicated!

It also has one drawback. Once mordanted and dyed the wool fibres are quite sticky. This makes laying out the fibres difficult and time-consuming and I am never happy that I have made a nice even prefelts.

As I started to weigh out alum and fibre last week I suddenly had a thought.

Why is my process in this order?

Why not, make white prefelts, then mordant them followed by dyeing.

Why not indeed?

I can’t see a problem with this process change. It seems to me, to be just like spinning your fibres and then dyeing them, or weaving your cloth before it is dyed.

Am I missing something?

I don’t think so. The only way to find out is to try it.

So I made 4 Masham prefelts.  Mordanted them and dyed two with dried carrots tops and two with dried nettles.

Here are the results.

Very pale, due to the use of dried dye material I think.  But a good start, as I set off to make more felted field pictures using my revised process these colours will be useful.