This post is from Angela Stanfield
A lovely lady, Jill, came up with the idea of a Rare Breed Challenge and got two other lovely ladies, Adrina and June to help her turn it into reality. They have a wealth of experience and talent crafting with a variety of sheep breeds found in New Zealand, what they produce is amazing. They worked very hard getting this wonderful challenge together.
When I heard about it, I was hooked on the idea. I’m in love with the beautiful range of natural colours found in every fleece of the rare breed, Arapawa as well as the fact they are historically significant to NZ. These sheep got their name from their isolation on Arapawa Island in the Marlborough Sounds. More information on their history can be found at https://www.rarebreeds.co.nz/arapawa.html.
In my usual style of never doing things the easy way, I often work with Arapawa wool, which is not, in any way shape or form, known for its ability to wet felt, quite the opposite in fact. This wool is very springy and while it will felt a little it won’t form a solid piece of felt unless it is needle felted. This should stop me in my tracks but alas, it doesn’t. Arapawa wool does blend with other wool for felting, and the challenge only had to include 50% rare breed wool but I wanted my challenge piece to be 100% true to the breed.
How to felt something interesting and creative while using a wool not good for wet felting? I had to do a bit of thinking. I did a few sketches and doodles in my little notebook then put it aside while I worked on other things with earlier deadlines. I came back to my initial drawings and thought a bit more. This time I needed to consider the technicalities of my piece.
Eventually I decided I was going to make a bag. So, I was going to have to do wet felting as I’d still be felting it in 5 years’ time if I needle felted it. I knew I couldn’t felt this wool into a bag like I would do with a wool like Merino or Corriedale. What would I do? I finally came up with the idea of making long cords, coiling them into a circular-like shape and stitching them together for form a front, back and flap. I thought I’d make a gusset out of leather and line the bag with a lovely fabric. Well, it was worth a try.
I made the cords. These certainly didn’t felt like beautiful merino cords I’ve made before, these were rustic to say the least. Once these were dry, I set about coiling and stitching. The stitching made the coils firm up, so to speak. Once I had my front and back, complete with flap I used an iron and a
wet cloth to “block” my work. Next, I lined these pieces and stitched the leather gusset in place. My handle was made by platting more cords.
The set-up date for the challenge finally arrived. I dropped my piece off. The judges would judge the next day and then it was all open to the public. It was fantastic that this challenge was able to be a part of the West Auckland Heritage Trail, also on that weekend, after all, spinning, knitting, weaving and felting are all ancient crafts. There was a display table as well as the table for entries into the challenge. What beautiful work was on display on both tables from rustic peg loom rugs through to delicate lace knitted shawls. The range of natural colours was gorgeous, delicate creams and light greys through to the darkest of brown they sometimes looked black.
How did my Arapawa bag fair? I got 3rd place out of 5 felted entries. Two entries used Arapawa, the other entry won. Not bad for a wool that is notorious for felting, so much so, most felters won’t touch it! Second place used Gotland wool as a beautiful grey bag.
The moral of this story is, even the impossible can still stand a chance.
Check out more from the Rare Breed Challenge on Facebook.
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