Blending different colours of wool roving (un-spun wool fiber) is an easy technique to use when you need a slightly different colour wool. You can also use this method to make a mottled colour to make realistic animal fur.
Wool blending can be done by hand, or by using hand carders. In this blog post I will show how to do this by hand.
Materials:
- wool roving/sliver or wool bats in colours you would like to blend
- hand carders (if preferred)
With your wool you can use more or less of a colour depending on the shade you would like. It may take a bit of experimenting if you're looking for a specific colour. When wool blending by hand, I would recommend only doing this with small amounts of wool as this makes it easier to keep the wool going in the same direction.
- Take wool roving colours you would like to blend and place on top of each other.
- Holding each end of the wool roving gently pull on each end until it separates.
- Place wool roving on top of each other as shown below so wool is going in same direction, then gently seperate wool again.
- Repeat this until you have the desired mottled effect seen in the below, or until your wool is completely blended.
Note: the more similar the wool colours you use, the more natural the blend will look. A good example of this is the yellow and toffee blend below.
