Kunin Felt techniques

Kunin felt is really exciting to work with because of the shape it forms from heat application. I like to layer this over other fabric or prints  because the holes allow sections to be seen through. It can be stitched together or stuck with double sided tape. It can be coloured any way you like or it comes in single colours.

I began by painting an A4 size cream piece of Kunin felt with Remazol reactive inks from Uni. These don't stay fixed the way I did it but I like the bright colours of the inks. I used a pipette to drop colour in sections putting colours that mix well next to each other like blue next to yellow and red next to blue etc. 

 

I then used just water in my pipette to make the inks bleed. I found that if you angle the pipette in the direction you want the inks to bleed the pressure from the water being pumped out makes them do so. It can be so strong that it can push all the ink out in places. I found that in some places the colours had no mixed as well as I wanted to I dropped a little yellow on to blue for example and worked back into it with water. The felt is quite thick and holds all the water you put on it. I couldn't squeeze it out because  the inks would have ran out. I left it to stand on a few layers of newsprint and let gravity get rid of some of the water but got impatient after a while so I just got on with the heat gun part.

 

Noticing that lots of the colour had sunk to the back and the back was actually brighter than the front so I decided to swap them. The heat gun firstly dries it then melts a small layer at the top. I had to hold it in one place for about 45 seconds before it started to distort in shape. It sort of separates itself creating a hole which just gets bigger until you take away the heat.  It does not give off much of a smell it is quite a clean fume free process.

 

The final result is very eye catching, packed with texture and still a fabric so flexible.