Felting tip: Many of you are given alpaca fibre from those less in the 'felting know'. To check the fibre's suitability for scarves or jackets, tuck a little fibre next to your skin for an hour or so. If it remains warm, soft and luscious, it will be good to use for jackets, scarves and shawls (anything close to your skin). If it has some 'scratchiness' to it is fibre from an older animal and is therefore coarser and may have guard hair. This quality of fibre is well suited to bags, slippers, hats and art pieces.
A sustainable and eco-friendly craft
We try to engage with
an attitude of creating a small footprint and so
our felting uses alpaca fibre from our own alpacas that live on our
property, there is minimal water usage and no chemical additives to
clean the fibre other than soap which is added in the felting process.
Generally, there is no pre-washing (other than for white) as we use the
felting process itself to clean the material created.
Our participants really enjoy the hands-on connection of making a
handcrafted item from a raw product straight off the animal's back...and
being able to meet the animal that grew the fibre. But they don't have
to work hard as alpaca fibre felts with about 80% less effort than
merino requires and the results are outstandingly beautiful regardless
of the skill level of the maker.
We use the natural fibre without dying ... who would want to
contaminate such beautiful natural colours :) but we add colour and zing
with embellishments such as silk and yarn and fabric. I like to use
op-shop treasures when I find them and locally produced handcrafts (e.g.
yarn).
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