Strong Fleece Challenge

As promised here are the photos of the project our whole spinners and weavers group got behind early this year.

The NZ Creative Fibre Festival this year included a strong wool fleece challenge where groups entered articles made from a strong fleece - the one chosen by our Area was Border Leicester. As you can see from the above photo we had a great time together combing, spinning and plying the fleece which had previously been washed by moi. Once the wool had been plied I took it all home and looked at it for a while. After about a week of cold, rainy weather (this was meant to be late summer!) all I could think of was Spring - so spring colours this yarn became. Daffodil colours, in fact!


The clubs in our Area had decided that each club would make a cushion (easier for the delegate to squash into her luggage to take to the Festival). To save on construction time I conscripted one of our ladies to weave the back for the cushion, leaving the decision on the type of weave up to her. She chose to use a twill weave and stripe the colours across it with the pale yellow as the base.

To be on the safe side she asked me to dye another skein of this colour, as she wasn’t sure there would be enough. Out came the dyepot again – thank goodness I took notes the first time! The skein came out exactly the same shade as the original – even I was shocked!

It was then time for the other ladies to start working on the front of the cushion. To include as many as possible I had thought to construct this piece in a scrumble/freeform fashion. Having never knitted anything like this before, there was a little scepticism at first but once it was started the ladies actually enjoying working on it and the cushion quickly took shape.

Once it was roughly the dimensions I had asked for, I joined the cushion pieces together. Not the simple job I had first thought, though! I had been going to join it all together with an attached I-cord but, for some unknown reason, the edges showed through the I-cord stitches. Not nice at all. Instead, I knitted a stst border on the front and sewed it on the back. Time was getting very short, so I am not that pleased with the quality of this part. Too bad, at least it did get finished just in time.

Enjoyable though it all was, I don’t think our group will be in a hurry to take part in another Challenge too soon!