These felt pieces are not only some of our very first fine art pieces but they are our first felt embroidered fine art! Working with the Zyaada Collection design, these felt pieces were created in our studio. From design concept to the final stitch, these are DABU studio handiwork at it’s finest!
How were these felt fine art pieces made? Great question, I would love to tell you!
Felt is made by a very simple yet time consuming process. You can read all about it here. To create the wallhangings, first the felt is cut to size and scoured in hot water with a mild laundry detergent. After simmering for a few hours it’s pulled out to dry. The big thing to keep in mind with felt is that it is created by agitation and lots of massaging the fibers together, so keeping a light touch is important not to spoil the form or cause shrinkage.
For these pieces, Indian madder and iron were used in a two step process. For the first step, (using the root of the Indian madder plant) the dye is heated in water and left to soak overnight. In the morning, it’s simmered for 1-2 hours to extract all the color. The dye stuff is strained out and the dye is ready to go! Soaking the felt in clean water, each wet piece is dipped in to the dye vat for about 30 minutes, stirring often.
Step two, the felt pieces were dipped into an iron vat to get that beautiful dusky pink.
Once dry, the embroidery can begin! The design was first printed on paper as a sort of stencil. Placing this paper over the felt, the ladies marked the starting points for the initial X design. Using chalk and thread to mark as they go, they embroidered with an undyed eri silk thread.
What is eri silk? It's a sustainably made type of silk where instead of boiling the silkworm to harvest the silk, the silkworm crawls out of its cocoon on its own. Then the cocoon is boiled and processed into silk. We are proud to use this type of silk because it aligns with our values of sustainability.
As you can imagine, the stitching is quite labor intensive! To complete one piece, it took four days of full time stitching.
And let’s not forget the hand-stitched edition at the bottom! These are limited-edition and very special pieces.
These pieces are some of my personal favorites and a favorite of our artisans to make! Full of texture and character. Felt just might be my favorite medium!
Bye for now!
Sarah
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