In class I often say “I’ve made this mistake so you don’t have to.” This is a sincere comment! Please feel free to benefit from the money and/or time I’ve spent trying a new technique or pushing a product beyond its intended use.

Such is true of the silk roving Lori and I shared with a spinning guild yesterday. We wanted to apply rust-dyeing techniques to materials a spinner would use—and we did.

Lori packed the roving on Tuesday and washed and rinsed it on Wednesday. I tried to needle felt the roving on a wool felt background and found it didn't felt well at all. Even using the sewing machine I converted to a needle-felting machine, the fibers simply didn’t entwine as they normally would have.



So, I stitched the little rascals down with free-motion stitching. HA! The little doodle you see above is a test swatch. The texture is really interesting and there is a high possibility this technique will be found in a quiltie very soon!

The upshot is, rusting for weaving and spinning needs to be completed after the roving has been carded and spun, but before it’s knitted or woven.

Rusting roving works well on silk or wool, but don’t plan on needle felting it, unless you want to add free-motion stitching on top to secure the fibers.

Nuno felting? Haven’t tried it yet!