FeltLOOM

February 23, 2016 By Lee Leave a Comment

Like Looking Through a Kaleidoscope

Our efforts to combine silk and alpaca into sheer fabrics just turned another corner.

Since we began Whispirit, we have felted without water to create our alpaca fabric. We have relied on a mechanized needle felting process to create yards of stable and strong textiles. With this process we have been able to range between more dense outer wear for outdoor winter, which uses 3 layers of alpaca; less dense early spring/fall and lighter”innerweight” fabrics for the warmer spring and air-conditioned summer, using a single thin layer of alpaca. This is a quick look at last year’s inner weight jackets, wraps and other spring and summerweight apparel.

Recently we have been working with techniques of using small amounts of water and soap after needle felting to create even lighter, airy, summer-weight fabric. We experimented with water felting in the washing machine for a handful of scarves and shawls last summer. We found this technique to use too much water and to be too difficult to control or even predict the outcome. Over the last few weeks, we have been trying out a technique recommended by fellow fiber artists and FeltLOOMERs Janice Arnold and Laverne Zabielski for finishing the felting after looming. Laverne even created a video about this simple technique that uses a small amount of soapy water sprayed onto the felted fabric, a technique of rolling the fabric and wrapping it in plastic and then running it in the dryer for a short while.

This technique allows us to leave sections of the underlying silk unexposed, which develops lovely puckers and gathers as the water, silk and natural fibers work together in lovely weaves of texture and color. It is like a felted kaleidoscope.

Off to Puyallup, Washington for the Stitchery and Sewing Expo 2016. If you are there, you will see me wearing one of our new designs. Til next time, Sandy.

February 2, 2016 By Lee Leave a Comment

Hearing the Music of the Earth … From the Garage?

I am certain that George Santayana anticipated Whispirit’s creations when he wrote: “The earth has music for those who listen.”

This is the time of year when Sandy seeks solitude to listen for the “music” that inspires her creativity which become Whispirit creations. You might think that Sandy would escape to a remote high mountain or deep desert retreat. Nope. Actually, she retires to the Fabric Design Center (FDC), aka: our garage.

Decent space. After all, it was built to be a three car garage. Our cars, however, have NEVER seen the inside. Thus, we never use the term “garage.” Cement floors covered with alpaca rugs, maize yellow walls, art (some created by Sandy) on the wall and a refrigerator in which adult beverages are kept until needed (daily between 5 & 6).

Usually the FDC (or Loom Room) is shared space. Our Whispirit resources and supplies (FeltLoom, cutting & design table, steam press, many containers filled with fleece batts and finished items racks) take up about 4/5ths of the FDC. I am assigned about 1/5th of the space for a work area. Well, a work bench, tools for Whispirit equipment and my pottery supplies. (My 1/5th seems to be shrinking). It’s cozy for our shared work. Most of the year we are making fabric, it’s shared space. We are a team of two and I am very much part of the process.

But during this time of year Sandy is by choice alone, listening, and creating. Fabric remnants, batts, roving, silk, yarn, fabric paints & dyes, stencils and block paints are everywhere. It’s Manhattan Project ground zero. A space heater and Sandy’s Uggs become most essential. I venture in only when summoned for assistance by the emergency calls, “Help the silk is stuck in the loom!” or “get Atticus the hell out of here. He’s eating the fabric.”

No, the space is not quiet. Loud music apparently inspires Sandy’s creative “listening”. From Yo Yo Ma to Eric Clapton, to Annie Lenox, to Modest Mouse. When creativity gets really stuck, Enya or the Rolling Stones can be heard wafting to all corners of our ten-acre ranch.

Surprising, fun, amazing and beautiful creations emerge from Sandy’s listening to the earth.

Watch this site for Sandy’s creativity. Thanks…….. Lee

January 20, 2016 By Lee Leave a Comment

Finding Whispirit’s 2016 Groove

All of us at Whispering Spirit Alpacas are concluding a much needed break over the winter holidays which graced us with travels to Spain & France, time with parts of our family and opportunities to ponder ideas for our Whispirit 2016 creations. Traveling gives us a great chance to change our rhythm, take in new vistas, and be inspired by other artisans.

Now returned and as we settle back into running the ranch and designing new garments for Whispirit, we are impressed again by how much creativity and productivity there is in New Mexico, our chosen home and how many new ideas we have bouncing around. New Mexico is where our imaginations and our dreams take shape.

As we collect with our creative partners who help us pull our ideas into Whispirit products, we are excited to take on several new projects, which we will describe in future blogs

We will be deepening our focus on eco-friendly textile production.
Our new fabric design which is light and airy.
A “design your own” section of the web store and a gallery featuring our customers creations.

We are excited and hope you will follow us throughout this year.

November 30, 2015 By Lee 1 Comment

Evergreening Our Fiber

On our first day in the Seattle area, we visited Evergreen Fleece Processing LLC mill which has been processing our fiber in batts for more than three years. We had never visited Evergreen mill before, although we have spent time with owners Chuck and Lynn Armstrong at several FeltLOOM gatherings. In addition to owning and operating equipment that can do the batts we require, Chuck and Lynn are expert operators of the FeltLOOM. They know what we are trying to do and how fiber processing can make or break our operation.

Chuck and Lynn and their alpaca herd are transplants from the Northeast to the Pacific Northwest. And they run a pretty lean and mean fiber business from their ranch in Woodinville, WA.

We talked about things we want to do at Whispirit and ways wed can cooperate on some ventures. One area of exploration will be adding recycled green bottle fibers like those being used in other sewing materials, to our batts. We at Whispirit are following others in the greening of the fashion world and looking for opportunities to reduce our carbon footprint, and help battle the waste in the fashion world. Take a particular look at Themis and Threads and O Ecotextiles, two companies that have really impressed us.

We have tried recycled materials in one of our garments. This garment was created in late 2012. Intriguing but we realize we needed to play with the percentage as it changed the feel of the fabric.

It is great to have partners like Chuck and Lynn Armstrong!

‘Til later, Sandy

November 17, 2015 By Lee Leave a Comment

Artisan Fabrics — Creating A New Fabric Tradition

Whispirit’s Artisan Fabrics are first and foremost felt. It is a non-woven, tangled natural mammal fiber textile. We consistently have people express confusion because they have seen alpaca and merino felt before, but have never seen a fabric like Whispirit’s. If you haven’t had the opportunity to touch and feel our fabrics, let us describe our process for you.

Whispirit’s felt surprises in many ways. First, it is not stiff nor dense like familiar felted fabric. In fact, it is drapey. It hangs like wool and has similarities to linen. Second, it is so light weight, you can barely feel some of our sheerest weight fabric in your hand. Third, its handle is soft and smooth, almost buttery. Finally, it is flat and tight. You simply want to rub it against your skin.

Five elements come together to make our Whispirit artisan fabric so special. First, we individually select alpaca fiber with a good handle. We mix it with a little merino wool to give it better memory. (Merino is as soft and fine as alpaca and makes a good partner.)

Second, we use silk and cotton sheer gauze for scrim. A scrim is the base, the stabilizer. These fabrics are soft and drapey, but strong. They give the structure to the fabric and contribute their own drapey nature.

Third, our alpaca fibers are washed and milled into a spiderweb thin batt (washed and combed fibers) prepared specially for our products. Most mills make batts that are thick and contain 3/4 to 1 pound of fiber. The batts we require are much thinner and lighter.

Third, we use a needle felting machine that is capable of felting many yards of fabric at a time.

Lee setting the needle & roller speed on our FeltLOOM.

Needle felting is an old and established way of making felt that uses neither water nor soap, like wet felting does. The needles punch through the fibers stacked on the scrim, pulling the fibers of the alpaca and the scrim through each other, creating an entirely different fabric. Industrial felt equipment has been used for a very long time to make felted pads, such as is used in Kevlar vests or rug pads.

Until the FeltLOOM was designed at Lan Mark Farm, Sharpsburg, Kentucky, craft needle felting was primarily done using a hand tool with anywhere from 3 to 12 barbed needles, or a mechanized needle felting machine, like Babylock Embellisher. We make extensive use of the Babylock for finish work and small products. But it’s the hundreds of barbed needles on our FeltLOOM machine makes a tight strong fabric for our garments possible.

Finally, we use heat and pressure to do the final tightening of the fabric. The results can be found in our online shop and our partner boutiques.