Fibercraft Fun @saltpixiefibercraft - Tumblr Blog

Look if a garment is like. Wool or silk. And it’s like, don’t put me in the fucking wash. I’m like yeah of course ma’am I shall lightly dab you with a damp cloth and air you out so you don’t get stinky. But when a polyester garment is like “hand wash only” I’m like who the FUCK do you think you are. You’re plastic. Get in the drum.

derinthescarletpescatarian

The whole reason anyone let you be plastic is so you could go in the wash. If you're gonna pull this shit then what's even the point.

finelythreadedsky

"none of those words are in the bible" but it's me nitpicking about what textile manufacturing techniques weren't invented until late antiquity and are thus anachronistic translations of biblical language

hypokeimena

#you did NOT knit me together in my mother's womb. that was weaving. #offshoot of me wincing every time someone uses 'embroidered' to describe ancient greek fabrics that would've definitely been tapestry-woven #it makes a difference!!! #knitting and weaving have VERY different symbolic/metaphorical connotations!!! #embroidery is a secondary process applied to already-complete textiles! different implications! (op)

batbetbitbotbut

Honeycomb and some related stuff by Sharon Alderman in Mastering Weave Structures

#fibercraft #weaving #handcraft

elodieunderglass

it's a well-known fact in the textile crafting community that "making objects from textiles" is an entirely separate hobby from "having a collection of materials to make things with."

crafters often refer to this collection as a "stash" or a "hoard."

it's normal to have, but sometimes comes with a certain awkwardness.

the problem is that it takes a very long time to make things from textiles - and it is extremely quick, fun and easy to get more materials.

Presents, impulse purchases, leftovers from other projects, things you bought FULLY intending to make something that you changed your mind about...

Another problem is that you genuinely DO have a plan for the materials! your intentions and desires are THERE!

and admitting that it isn't going to happen - or that your mind has changed, or you're no longer able to do them - can be really painful!

it's incredibly hard to say: "we are not the people who can do these things. we are not the people who WILL do these things."

but sometimes you need to.

it's a natural part of life. it might feel painful to let go of things that you really want to use, but won't. But clearing them out - and the attached guilt and shame - will make room for a lot more things in your life. Room for things you'll use. Room for the projects you'll do.

Room and space - not for hanging on to the shades of the ambitions and intentions and people you aren't - not being held for lives you don't have - but room and space for who you are today, and who you'll be tomorrow, and for the things you'll do.

Room and space to grow.

My first hand dyed warp!! I'm absolutely loving this stitch pattern with how it's making the warp POP

Have some weaving asmr!!

#i was So Worried after dyeing that it wouldnt work #but alas i got it on the loom with little issue thank all #weaving #fibercraft #handcraft #handwoven #fiber art #handweaving

saltpixiefibercraft

My littlest weaving assistant.

Not pictured: her nipping at my toes when I try to treadle, like the worlds pointiest game of whack a mole lolllll

saltpixiefibercraft

She got bigger, but still loves to help~

#my little wormmmmmm #i call her and her sister my administrative assistants

headspace-hotel

it's definitely my predisposition to extreme frugality+redneck engineering, but i'm now obsessed with creating things literally without buying Anything. no supplies no tools no nothing, only the stuff you can just find outside, like Plants, Sticks, and Rocks.

I'm making textiles with nothing but foraged plant materials using no tools except sticks. Nature allows you to do this! There's no rules! I mean okay well maybe there might be some rules sometimes but they're just weak human rules! The plants themselves? They're like "Why sure! You can make yarn with nothing but fibers from the dead stem I don't need anymore, a couple sticks from that tree over there, and your own body and mind! Why not?"

Plants like to give us gifts! And nobody has the power to stop them!

headspace-hotel

Once you know the ways of the plants, the ways of our capitalist society become silly and hard to understand, sometimes even instilling you with a sense of dread.

I was looking at the textile books in the library to try to learn about plants you can make textiles from. I was shocked to discover how incurious most books are about the origin of the very matter from which textiles are made!

For one thing, there were whole shelves of books on how to weave, how to knit, and how to quilt, but barely a single complete volume on how to create yarn or thread to begin with.

Of the books that did cover how the yarn is created, many of them discussed only wool, and those books didn't concern themselves with how to get the wool off the sheep, or how to find such an organism and enter a mutualistic partnership with it in the first place...

If you know the ways of the plants, you will be almost offended when a book about how to make a thing, starting from the beginning of that thing, tells you immediately to buy something. You don't mean "one or two steps further back in the process of a thing being assembled"—you mean the BEGINNING beginning. You seek to learn how the thing is born from the living Earth, not where to buy a Product in a less assembled form.

Where do Products come from...?...According to the capitalist, consumerist way, they come from other, simpler Products of course, which ultimately are born from Industries. I found a book or two which made some attempt to give a more exhaustive list of possible textile materials, with sub-section for plants, which included: Flax, Cotton, Hemp, Jute, Ramie, and some allusion to other possibilities such as Nettle. This of course is a list of plant fibers for which a Huge Industry exists. Regarding plant fibers for which there is no huge industry, the books either said nothing or said something like "...but sadly, there is no huge industry based upon these plants (so they are not worth talking about any more)"

I found a few cryptic statements saying that the range of plants that could be used for textile purposes is theoretically limitless...but none of the books were interested at all in those theoretically limitless plants.

It's not that only those few plants are really good for textiles and the other ones are inferior, either. I have learned from my delves into the Internet, that many plants now considered totally useless to humans and not investigated for their potential applications at all...have actually been used by some human culture on Earth for thousands of years as a fundamental part of everyday life.

Native Americans for thousands of years utilized plants native to this region for textiles. These ones are among the plants I have been gathering; they are plants that naturally grow here and can be harvested sustainably, in fact in many cases they benefit from being harvested.

Apocyonum cannabinum, also known as Dogbane, is essentially a North American analog to hemp or flax; you extract the bast fiber from the stem by beating it until the woody part breaks into pieces and falls out and the outer bark flakes off. This plant is native to all U.S. states except Alaska and Hawaii and I reckon that's because of its importance as a textile plant.

I've collected big bundles of the stuff by picking over fields that have been mowed already by a brush cutter; it's so easy, because the fibers are so strong that they are not broken by the brush cutter. Instead, I find mats and bundles of fiber 1-2 feet long stretched out over the ground or trailing from the stubs of stems, often with the woody parts and outer bark already beaten out by the mowing. Simply mowing a field where dogbane grows essentially pre-processes the fiber so your work is half done for you.

It is amazing to me that a person can see how the fibers do that if you mow the plants in the fall, and not immediately think, "We should be making string or rope out of that." Early colonial texts call this plant "Indian hemp" and say it is superior to actual hemp. Likewise what few resources I can find on Native American textile plants, list dogbane as one of the main ones.

So I gather the dogbane. It is astonishingly strong, fragrant when you handle it, and beating the fibers is loads of fun, just a great way to blow off steam. The fibers range in color from almost pearly white to cream to peach to beautiful shades of orange and copper, and have a lovely sheen to them.

After I've beaten the fibers and gotten them to mostly separate I tease them out with my fingers and scrape out all the remaining little bits of bark, and pull them through a plastic comb until the soft and lustrous fibers are separated and all that's left is some nubby bits of lint.

The last picture is what it looks like after combing and cleaning. The color looks more washed-out than it is for real because of my white lamp.

These fibers weren't quite as well-processed so the end result was kind of rough and scraggly, but I experimented by making some string:

All I used to spin it was a stick with a notch in the top so I could twist with my fingers, holding the other end of the stick steady and pulling the strand back towards myself. Whenever I finished a little more I would just loop it over the bend in the top of the stick and keep going.

The other fiber I've been experimenting with is milkweed seed fluff. This one is an interesting one because it was the first material I became interested in spinning, and the first I experimented with to the point of making a yarn. It took a long time to figure it out, I have quite a bit of single-strand seed fluff yarn now, and intend to spin this into a three-ply yarn to make it strong.

I was so happy! My first yarn! Spun with nothing but a stick. It's delicate but it holds together and handles being unwound and rewound just fine, and I think making a 2 or 3 ply yarn would make it pretty workable.

So imagine my surprise when I begin reading about textile arts and the possible uses of the plants i'm working with, and learn that spinning milkweed seed fluff is impossible?

Milkweed bast fiber has been used, like the dogbane bast fiber, but according to the internet, spinning the seed fluffs into yarn is something that cannot be done, because they are too short, smooth, and fragile. Many have tried! It doesn't work!

That was news to me.

As I read more about spinning the more conventional plant fibers, though, I consider what a deep knowledge humankind has cultivated of the ways of wool and flax and cotton, and think...is my total lack of knowledge about spinning yarn, the reason I was able to spin the milkweed fluffs?

Normal people would have armed themselves with the proper tools for undertaking a new activity, but I didn't even bother to look up what I was doing, because MacGyvering cool stuff out of materials from nature you can find anywhere outside is basically half my personality at this point, and makes me feel unreasonably powerful. As a result, I made a technological approach to spinning yarn that was designed specially for the challenges of spinning milkweed seed fluffs, and only later realized that 1) this is not a normal way to spin yarn and 2) i'm not supposed to be able to spin this stuff at all.

And it's because I came at it backwards. Instead of trying to use existing technology to spin milkweed fluffs, I became determined to spin milkweed fluffs and developed my technique based on what would work to do that, without any knowledge of what I was "supposed" to be doing.

If I had been normal about it and thought "Hmm, I should buy the right tools to do this" or even thought "Hmm, I should start with fibers that are usually used to make clothes" this would not have happened.

I'm coming at everything backwards: instead of "Where can I purchase Thing I Want To Work With?" it's "What does Nature provide, and what cool stuff can I do with it?"

I didn't even set out to work with textile materials. It's just that the plants kept giving me textile materials. This hobby absolutely snuck up on me out of nowhere this was not my idea

People have had success blending milkweed fluffs with other stuff, so I'm going to try to blend it with the dogbane next! I am fully going to go all the way and make like clothes or bags or blankets out of this stuff. There is no turning back for me, the euphoria of creation and the profound wisdom of the plants have inflicted a fascination with my task.

dr-dendritic-trees

What's the staple length of that milkweed please? I am fascinated by it.

headspace-hotel

You mean like the length of the individual fibers? They're like an inch on average, the biggest seed pods have fluffs a little longer.

Basically the reason it works, I think, is that I'm twisting the strand with my fingers, pulling back toward my body and using the other end of the stick as an anchor point/leverage. There is something about the warmth and moisture of touching the fibers so much that makes them want to bind together more.

There is a lot of twist to the yarn, but it's not a problem, in fact if you twist until it kinks up, you can just...mash the kinked part between your fingers really hard and it'll flatten out and you can keep going. The fiber is springy and pliable in a way that lets you do things like that with it.

Where a lot of people messed up was they tried to card it. All you need to do is spend some time gently pulling the fibers between your fingers to separate the individual fibers in each "tuft" that attaches to a single seed. If you're too rough with it, the fibers will just break and that's not good. But you do kinda have to play with it in your hands? I don't know if it's the oils in your hands or what, but touching it a lot makes them want to mold together to each other more.

I can really see how this material is totally different than anything else you could spin in many ways.

headspace-hotel

Top: Dogbane bast fiber

Bottom: Dogbane bast/Milkweed floss blend

On a different note I went thru mom and dads closet to find really old clothes to practice sewing and embroidery on, and I am so mad!!!!! at how much more sturdy and robust clothes from the 1990's are compared to today.

I am just staring in fascination at these clothes from a few decades ago like "Wow they are so strong and sturdy...the fabric is such high quality...." What HAPPENED?

headspace-hotel

Inner bark fibers of first-year grapevine twigs. They can be processed into incredibly fine strong soft strands with soaking, stripping off outer bark and gentle crushing by rolling a round rock over them

motsimages

Thank you for this.

I have been on a personal quest (that is now in stand by due to life events) about flax. I live in a village that was famous for its flax, hemp and wool fabrics. Its name is literally related to the hemp-farming. And currently, nobody ever grows any of these plants and what I find surprising, with my very limited knowledge of botanics, is that... there are no rest of them either? Even in the first half of the 20th century some people still worked the flax in the traditional way, and now there aren't any carried-by the wind rests anywhere? no abandoned farms where it poorly grows anymore? no decorative reasoning to have them in your garden?

People don't remember, they don't even know. Linen was an estimated fabric and this village had enough to dress its inhabitants and sell the left-overs around. Same with the wool. Only the old people remember because they still worked it. Other villages, with larger textile industries, also have lost this memory.

The moment you look at things the way op mentioned, with the "how do you get this done?" mind, things change. Its value change. I only wish I had more time and more health to really make myself a linen tshirt, from scratch. To make myself a woolen blanket, from scratch. Particularly, I have the wool because my parents have sheep. I could do so many things if I dedicated every bit of time off and energy to it, but alas I can't. I do it when I can, little by little. I envy you, op. Please, keep us posted of your progress.

sunrisenebula

I'm thinking of this one time time I was bored while catsitting... I went out on my friend's property, found some sticks and rocks, improvised a spindle, brushed the cats, and spun up some yarn. One cat has slightly darker fur, and they are both long-haired and very soft, so I was interested to see what the yarn would feel like.

My original spindle fell apart, and they must have just cleaned the yard because I couldn't find sturdy enough sticks for replacement, so I did admittedly use borrowed bic pens instead of purely natural supplies...

I ended up with a few strands of 2 ply cat hair yarn! It was kind of scratchy and felt like twine. It wasn't the easiest to spin compared to the wool I've worked with, but boredom is a powerful motivator!

I left the yarn with my friend as a memento, but I'm considering making more the next time I catsit so I can try actually knitting something with it.

dr-dendritic-trees

@headspace-hotel

I have another dopey question about your milkweed experiment if you aren't out of patience yet.

Did the books that claim milkweed is unspinneable mention what tool they were using (drop spindle, wheel etc)? Because I just reread the post and it sounds like you had the spindle in your hand the whole time, rather than letting it hang freely in the air?

That's a specific style of spinning I'm currently failing to learn: supported spinning, and its specifically often used to spin short, delicate fibres, and/or very fine delicate thread, but its not done very often in anglo-european traditions, so I'm wondering if there was some Distinct Cultural Biases in the books you were referencing.

makerandbean

I also wanted to ask how your cat yarn and milkweed yarn have held up? I’ve spun with cat hair “fresh off the cat” before - I just groomed my resident beast and then pulled the hair out the comb and spun with a drop spindle - but I’ve found it’s not held up very well. I knitted a teeny tiny swatch with it and it’s fuzzing and sort of slowly edging towards either felting or just sort of falling apart :(

might have worked better if i plied it, or I might have underspun it bc I was very new to spinning when I did it, but… I do wonder also when people say “you can’t spin with that” whether they sometimes mean “the yarn falls apart very quickly so don’t bother”

headspace-hotel

Two very good questions from @dr-dendritic-trees and @makerandbean !

First: Yes! I haven't posted photos of my spinning in a while, but yeah, I essentially use a stick with a side branch at the top that I use as a spool. I hold the stick in my left hand and twist the strand together, letting my left hand slide down the stick as I spin, then when the strand is as long as the stick I wrap it around the top and continue.

I'm actually really happy you brought that up, because I had no idea what the technique was called, and had never heard of it before despite it being a fairly intuitive, ridiculously low-tech way to spin that gives you a lot of control over the strand you're putting together.

You basically pinch a big thick tuft of your fiber between your index finger and thumb of your right hand and splice it into the strand you're working on, and as you work you pull the tuft downwards so it slowly distributes all the fibers into a long strand.

This is especially effective when you're working with dogbane bast fiber, which inevitably has a great number of fibers of just 3-5 centimeters, and a smaller but still significant amount of fibers 10-20 centimeters long. The long fibers give the strand a backbone and the short fibers give it more weight and fuzziness.

The staple length you could get from dogbane fiber if you processed it carefully is, I feel certain, longer than any other natural fiber that exists.

Using dogbane, I have figured out how to get an incredibly smooth even thread by twisting the strand, then scraping my fingers up and down the strand to make stray fibers stick up, and untwisting and retwisting it in short sections at a time so the stray fibers get twisted into the strand.

I think it helps the final result to alternate between holding the strand in the hardest twist you can manage and then letting it relax to whatever extent it wants to, and twisting again.

It's slow but I'm getting steadily faster and faster at it, and it feels plausible that a person using this method could produce enough string for weaving into a garment on a Neolithic type amount of free time.

On the second question: I havent actually tried turning the milkweed yarn into anything since I can't knit or crochet, however, I think it would be so clearly better to blend the milkweed fluff 50:50 with another fiber (possibly milkweed bast fiber!) that I haven't really tried experimenting with pure milkweed fluff much more. I will hopefully show y'all how the bast/fluff blend goes!

My experiment shows it's possible to spin milkweed fluff, however I think it wouldn't be sturdy enough for an item for daily wear unless blended. However blending the milkweed and dogbane has excellent results.

I actually did some research online into milkweed fluff, and the main purpose for milkweed fluff in textile-adjacent things is actually stuffing. It apparently makes amazing stuffing for pillows, blankets, and jackets—it is incredibly warm, hypoallergenic, and so buoyant that it can be used to stuff life jackets.

#fabric pile of handwoven ready to go!!!!#fibercraft #weaving #handcraft #handwoven #handwoven towels

bronzeagecrafts

Finished the first braid of this Regenbogenwolle „Standing Stones“ Polwarth/Milk Protein mix. Got used to the slightly tacky texture throughout. Now let‘s keep fingers crossed I can stay on this fineness so we get a fairly balanced colourway!

#ahhhhhh fiber fun #handspinning #spinning yarn #handspun #hand spinning #handcraft #fibercraft

bookshelfdreams

first spinning project of 2024 😊

undyed multicolor bfl

#so pretty #fibercraft #handspinning #fiber art #handspun yarn #hand spinning

paisleycowboys

snake sweater, snake sweater

#snekkkkkkkkk #very cute sweater #knitting

magicsheepmakes

Sudoku puzzle blanket!

I came up with this idea when I was thinking about how to properly randomize the colors in a granny square blanket.

You'll need 9 different colors (I used white + 8 shades of purple) and 9 squares of each color. Assign each color a number 1-9. Get a completed sudoku puzzle (or solve one yourself) and start assembling!

I had my squares organized in this bin while I was working and kept this picture saved in my phone with the sudoku puzzle picture to make sure I didn't mix any of the numbers up.

#super cute blanket!#crochet

brownbuttercookies

it’s finished!!! rainbow scarf, yarn by bona yarns and pattern is the terra maris lace shawl on ravelry. no modeling shots till it’s done blocking but it’s too beautiful to not share 😸

#oh the shade of this rainbow is really nice #the pattern is beautiful too #love it #knitting #rainbow

ezekiellsplayground

My new inkle loom arrived last week & I’m so in love! I spent the weekend warping and starting the weaving of a simple tablet band to teach myself this technique. The design is out of the ‘Tablets at Work’ book and isn’t twist neutral, hence I used swivels at the warp ends.

#this is the prettiest inkle loom I've seen ohhhhhhh #such beautiful craftmanship #weaving #inkle weaving #band weaving #hand weaving #fibercraft