Ancient Paths New Visions

Ancient Paths New Visions is the theme for this years Convergence 2010 and the Designing Weavers theme as well. I started off wanting to explore a little Shibori dyeing, since felting is already an ancient. Shibori is the Japanese term for resist dyeing using threading, bunching, clamping, and today's tie dye techniques are based on these methods. I first made a large piece of felt using C-1 wool and started to sew threads.I used embroidery thread that I had, it was strong enough and only broke a few when I was pulling them.

Dyeing was the next challenge, originally it was going to go with a friend piece that she was working on, but I couldn't get the vibrant colors that she had in her weaving, so I went with colors that I would like. Purple, green & yellow
I didn't really like the colors so I re-folded the felt in the opposite direction, tied it so the folds would stay and added a brown dye.
Now for the fun part, I made a pair of boots! I didn't take pictures of the process, but here are the finished boots.


With my ancient techniques of Felting and Shibori, my new vision is a wearable pair of boots.