Wondering Wednesday : Differences...

Button Mad, from Facebook, asked if spunbonded fabric is the same as non woven fabric.  The answer to that is ...yes... and no... 

There are a lot of similarities between the two.  Both are made from man made fibres, using an industrial process, not a loom, so they have similar properties.  They don't fray.  They don't have a bias edge, or a 'right way up', for that matter.  They come in a variety of different weights.  They can be coloured in a variety of different ways, too, and heat distressed, though with differing results (try it and see...). 

The main difference between the two types of fabric, though, is their method of manufacture.  I have already described how spunbonded fabrics are made; basically, the fibres are floated on air and zapped with heat, resulting in a semi transparent mesh type fabric.  It is made for use in industry, and is therefore very strong, and resistant to heat. Non woven fabrics are made in a variety of different ways, sometimes using heat, but more often using chemicals or solvents.  Whilst the lightest of them are undeniably semi transparent, their strength and their heat resistance will vary. 

I use both, but the texture of lutradur and zeelon for me is the clinching factor; it is an interesting fabric in itself, whilst non wovens tend to be uniform in structure; think of interfacing, for example.   I hope that answers the question.. if you want more details, just ask in the box...

PS  Transparency is not necessarily a feature of non woven 'cloth'; felt is a non woven, and wool felt is certainly the odd man out; it needs heat, soap and friction to felt, or a felting needle/machine.  

Try It Out Thursday : After The Spray...

Remember Monday's post?  Well, having made all that sprayed fabric, I wanted to find something to do with it.  So, when in doubt...yes, you know it.... make a postcard.  I've been making a lot of felt recently, and when I spotted a handful of dyed Wensleydale wool tops that sat beautifully on the sprayed Zeelon, I thought it would be useful to do something with them.  What better than a bit of hand felting?  I've used Lutradur for felting before, but never Zeelon.  So...I positioned the Zeelon carefully on a piece of Lutradur XL that had been cut to postcard size.  I wanted to avoid the scarlet dots which I disliked when I sprayed the original piece, as well as the watermark I created when I tested it for colour fastness. 

Having established I could do that, and which way up I wanted to work, I started trying out the fibres on the cloth.  The first photo, below, shows a wisp of wool tops on the fabric.

 Not a good look; it doesn't show either fabric or fibres to good effect.  So... I moved to this...

...yup, that looks better... and finally to this...

...notice, by the way, that the design has changed a little, has moved across to the right of where I originally started, for no reason other than I like it better.

Why did I use a single needle, and felt by hand?  Because I wasn't using much fibre, and didn't want the holes to appear on the cloth, as they  might have done if I had used a machine, even if I did take out some of the needles.  As it was, I still have holes in one or two places where they shouldn't be... but that's okay.  
My original intention was to felt the fibres straight through the Zeelon and into the Lutradur.  Nope.  I was surprised at how much work it took to get the fibres through the Zeelon, though I suspect that had I used the machine, it would have been much quicker.  I'll fuse the piece together instead.  For obvious reasons, you really don't want to try felting through fused fabrics...

So...what next?  I have a plan, but what would you do?