thelmasmith

I finally cleared off the rest of the detritus from the six foot long work table that has my Juki set flush into the top. I’m looking for a 1960s vintage, sturdy, typing table with locking wheels. I need a task specific table for the Pfaff Smart 350. It’s a needle felt machine that is newly in the marketplace. Until today my only experiments were to darn my wool socks.

I decided to do some experiments. Yesterday I had torn eight inch widths of muslin, cotton flannel, cotton sateen, and a fairly heavy silk.  I decided to work both with hand dyed wool roving and with scraps of red matka silk. Here’s the sample with the cotton sateen face.

There is red-orange, black and a purple brown wool needle punched both as cobweb felt and as disciplined, controlled lines. The red matka silk was manipulated in the middle swath and just needle punched on the lower right. The dupioni silk was a scrap; half of it had fuseable web on the back.

The three layers took the felting well. I think if I decide how and when and were I’ll do this sort of work with a design rather than random testing I will either lay the face fabric on the flannel or just felt on the base fabric. The needle punch holes are quite apparent.

Here is the sample I laid up with a muslin base, cotton flannel, and a heavy silk.

Same materials, handle slightly differently. The purple silk ravelings took the punching nicely although they drew up a lot shorter than they started. Do click on the thumbnails as the needles I am using are too coarse and have damaged the fairly tightly woven silk face. I am in the process of ordering some size 42 triangular needles. I suppose while I am at it I should inquire about size 44, too. Back is as boring as the front.

I’m encouraged. Even though I damaged the silk sample the process shows a lot of hope. I’m particularly interested in the cobweb silk. If I can solve the fineness aspects of the needles I have some lovely space dyed roving here.

There is still almost the full width of the samples I made up. So I’ll lay them on top of the wool box. That way maybe I’ll be able to find them when I have more experiments in mind.

As an afterthought - here’s the task specific modification of an old typing table that holds the Bernina. It’s particularly useful as it’s the same height as all my card tables. I can extend it to side or back simply by wheeling it out away from the wall.