Experimenting with silk laps and nuno felt

I bought some silk laps from Sue Pearl on her workshop.  It's a gorgeous sheet of silk which opens up into a sort of net and can be put straight on top of the wool and then wet felted in.  I wanted to do some samples to get an idea of different effects and how it would felt.

Turquoise silk laps on clementine merino wool.  You can make the silk have a fairly thick coverage or open it up more to get more gaps.

The winter light doesn't really do it justice, it has a really gorgeous shine which contrasts well with the felt.

Silk laps on a tanzanite merino wool background, I tried adding texture with marbles... my first experiment with this!  I don't think the white wool background works, maybe a contrasting colour?? 

Close up, again, the shine hasn't shown up.

 I also wanted to try out some different fabrics for nuno felting.  I had some organza (not silk) fragments so had a go with those.

Experiment with felting organza.  It took quite a while to get it to felt but the effect was quite cool.  I like the way it concertinas up when the wool shrinks.

I love this effect.  Add a network of wool to organza and you end up with bubbles of fabric. 

 Finally I wanted to have a go at making a felt vessel.  I made this by using a sheet of plastic as a resist and then shaping during the fulling process.  It was a bit like making a clay pot!  Although I never had much success with that when I have tried it.  I think felt is a bit more forgiving!

Felt vessel, made from blue faced leicester with turquoise tussah silk.