i started

i traded for some of the most gorgeous wool yesterday.. it's from a mule sheep which is the name for particular sorts of cross-bred sheep.. in this case a bluefaced leicester and jacob cross. the wool had been processed into a luscious striped roving, and i just knew i needed to try and felt it with my tattered pieced top. the mule reference really had nothing to do with why i wanted to use this wool for my cloth, at least not consciously, but how strangely appropriate!?!

so i started by making some prefelt (i've never been much of a felter, but so easy and so much fun!) and then added a bit of my tattered pieced top to it. but i was afraid at that point to get too involved in the felting action.. it's fairly vigorous and i didn't want to damage the scrappy bits. so i started stitching the top down first. once it's all secure, i should be able to continue felting.. at some point.

i can't even describe the feel of the needle gliding through these soft old scraps and prefelt. other than bliss. i'll add another layer here or there and it will still be.

***for anyone who wants to help me figure this out, i'd so appreciate it... india has a number of projects along these lines in second skin. i was following along generally with the instructions for the tube-felted scarf on pp. 215-216, but i got stumped. the idea is to put down some muslin, then sewing scraps face down, then some wool sliver and lastly, your prefelt. (then she describes a resist-felting process which i'm skipping.) but i do want to end up with my scraps face-up, on top of and melded into my felt. i'm just not clear how this works with the muslin - it seems much easier to stitch and felt with the muslin on top, so that your scraps don't go sliding around, but then how do the scraps end up on top? it is something to do with cutting the scarf into a spiral?