Stuffing a quilt with fleece (and other things to do with raw fleeces)

[FarmerDenise]

My cousin raised sheep for 4H one year and my grandmother and great grandmother processed the fleece after the sheep were butchered.
My grandfather had made the carding tools for them. I remember great grandmother doing the carding and she did make a comforter from it. I think she carded it to make it soft and fluffy then she sewed it into the quilt a little bit at a time. I know she did this mostly in her little bedroom and I vaguely remember her sitting and hand sewing the quilt while adding bits of wool as she was sewing. She did not have a frame or anything.

 

[freemotion]

Cool! I bet that is how my grandmother did it, too.

 

[Lalaith]

You can also make a yoyo quilt. This is where you stuff individual tiny squares with wool and stitch them together.

I recently repaired an old Victorian carriage yoyo quilt which was made out of silk and wool. A few of the silk squares had shattered so I put in new and stuffed with my wool. It looks gorgeous!

As far as doing a flat quilt with wool, you can card it smooth, lay small sections in it flat, and tie each section through the quilt with a small piece of yarn or ribbon. Then when you quilt through it you can either remove the ties or keep them if you like the look. It is not going to be as uniform as a complete piece of quilt batting but if you are reasonably careful it won't be lumpy either.

Have fun!

 

[freemotion]

Thanks! My fleeces are in the garage waiting for snowdays....hopefully months from now, the fifth day of summer.

Any chances we can have a picture of your restored quilt??

I was also toying with the idea of making a pillow. Next Joann's coupon I get will go towards pillow ticking.

 

[Lalaith]

I should have taken pictures! It turned out really nicely. It was a black wool backing with hundreds of tiny coloured silk yoyos. It was later Victorian as the colours were the bright jewel tones you get from the aniline dyes. A lot of the fabric held up surprisingly well but obviously the heavily salted silks shattered.

The quilt was tied with gold wool yarn and around the border was a simple but well-executed cretan stitch in the same gold wool.

 

[freemotion]

Oh, did you restore this quilt for someone else? You no longer have it to take a picture? Poo.

 

[Lalaith]

Correct. And boy did it hurt to give it away .

I'm working on a crazy quilt at the moment. All modern materials (silk and wool) and a few of the squares have animals stuffed with wool. It will eventually have a thin layer of my wool batting too.

I love working with wool from my sheep- I give the nice fleeces to my spinners and keep the not-so-nice for all kinds of things from garden mulch to quilts to felted wool rugs.

I don't want to derail this thread but I'm curious what other kinds of things people make with their wool.

 

[stano40]

Try you tube they have a few video's of wool felt making that may help.

http://www.google.com/search?q=maki...refox-a&hs=so6&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

 

[freemotion]

Gotta check out that video after chores....the sun is going down! But first....I changed the title. Derail away!