SEs, Wraps and Transitional Twists Tutorial

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miasmahair
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SEs, Wraps and Transitional Twists Tutorial

Post by miasmahair » Sun May 09, 2010 11:58 pm

Here's my method of making SEs, wraps and transitional twists with roving.
I use a spinning wheel to get the most quick and effective results (you can get old ones for cheap on ebay or in antique shops or whatever), but you can use your hands, or a drop spindle or something like a pen as shown here viewtopic.php?f=65&t=11016

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We're making SEs here, so you'll need a piece of roving that's twice as long as you want the dread to be, and half as thick as you would usually use to get the thickness you want.

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Loop the middle of the roving around a clamp and attach it to the orifice of the spinning wheel (or around your pen or whatever.)

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Holding the ends firmly, twist the wool tightly in the OPPOSITE direction to the direction you want your wraps to go, without drafting the wool like you would if you were spinning yarn. Here the twist is right to left, so I have treadled clockwise. If you want to make plain SEs, you can unclip the wool now, poke the end through the loop at the top while maintaining the twist, and do your first wet felt on that. Then pull the end out of the loop and wet felt again.

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With the base wool still twisted firmly, take the wool you want to wrap around the dread and for left to right twists leave a little bit hanging off the left side.

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Wrap this little bit right to left around the top once, then under the long bit and keep wrapping right til the very end of the fibres. This keeps the wrapping in place.

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Then wrap the long end around the dread from left to right. Try to keep this bit as flat as possible, and cover as much of the base as you want. For full wraps you want to cover all of it right down to the bottom of the dread. For twisted transitionals, make sure the wrap completely covers the base at the loop end of the dread, then when you want the transition to start, move the wraps further apart so you can see the base underneath. Make sure you wrap right down to the very end of the fibres of the wrapping wool as this keeps it in place.

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Then you hold the end of the dread tightly and twist the whole lot firmly back in the direction of the wraps, here it's left to right, so I treadle anti-clockwise.

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Remove the clamp from the dread and let it twist in half and it's ready for it's first wet felt. Then you straighten the dread out and wet felt again. If you've done twisted transitionals take special care to felt well over the transition to make it all smooth.

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When they're all done you will probably need to open up the loops again, use a knitting needle or something else tapered til you get the hope the right size.

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And there you are! Not too hard! It took me a while to figure it out, but with wool it's all about wrapping and using opposite twists to keep everything in place, because unlike synth you can't just twist the wool and felt, because all the twist will fall out of the dread and you end up with vertical stripes!

So anyway, you can do all sorts of fun things with this technique, and it's a good way of using up little scrappy bits of wool. Here's some other things I've done using this technique...

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Hope that's helpful for everyone! If you have any questions just post a comment and ask :)

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Re: SEs, Wraps and Transitional Twists Tutorial

Post by ScarletLady » Mon May 10, 2010 8:56 am

This is a really cool tute!

Can I ask what fibre you're using as it doesn't look like Merino :)
It looks coarser somehow
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Re: SEs, Wraps and Transitional Twists Tutorial

Post by miasmahair » Mon May 10, 2010 11:13 pm

Cheers! I use the Ashford Corriedale. I reckon it felts better and it comes in more colours and it's cheaper :P

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Re: SEs, Wraps and Transitional Twists Tutorial

Post by MrsEss » Wed May 26, 2010 7:11 pm

I may have to attempt this at some point as I have a big bag of corridale roving :D
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Re: SEs, Wraps and Transitional Twists Tutorial

Post by VixenSingsBlack » Wed May 26, 2010 10:42 pm

"Then you hold the end of the dread tightly and twist the whole lot firmly back in the direction of the wraps, here it's left to right, so I treadle anti-clockwise."

Wouldn't this un-do your original clockwise twisting of the purple wool?

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Re: SEs, Wraps and Transitional Twists Tutorial

Post by miasmahair » Thu May 27, 2010 2:07 am

Yeah it does, but it twists enough in the anti-clockwise direction. Twisting it the other way first just helps the wrapping stay, er, wrapped. Haha, does that make sense? :P

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Re: SEs, Wraps and Transitional Twists Tutorial

Post by VixenSingsBlack » Thu May 27, 2010 2:37 am

I'll just trust you and give it a try. :)

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Re: SEs, Wraps and Transitional Twists Tutorial

Post by heartofdarkness » Wed Sep 29, 2010 9:21 am

Cheers for this tutorial, nice and easy to follow, which is good as I now need to start making myself SEs instead of DEs. I'll have to buy some more roving now and give it a go :)

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Re: SEs, Wraps and Transitional Twists Tutorial

Post by toxic trish » Fri Oct 29, 2010 3:10 pm

cant wait to try this method :)
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Re: SEs, Wraps and Transitional Twists Tutorial

Post by toxic trish » Mon Dec 20, 2010 10:27 am

hiya I have been trying this method and sadly my second wrap bit is loose (the one after the initial twist) and im worried that it will just loosen up, making a big messy se loop is there instead of having a transitional se, is there any way you can stop the wrap coming off like felting two three maybe even four times ? Thanks Taran
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Re: SEs, Wraps and Transitional Twists Tutorial

Post by miasmahair » Mon Dec 20, 2010 8:22 pm

Yeah dude, just twist it back up and wet felt over it again. I wet felt mine until I'm happy with them, and that can take a few goes :)

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Re: SEs, Wraps and Transitional Twists Tutorial

Post by toxic trish » Mon Dec 20, 2010 8:35 pm

miasmahair wrote:Yeah dude, just twist it back up and wet felt over it again. I wet felt mine until I'm happy with them, and that can take a few goes :)
That’s brilliant just wanted to make sure I wasn’t going wrong some were :)

Thanks for such a quick reply

also have you found some wools work better than other with this method
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Re: SEs, Wraps and Transitional Twists Tutorial

Post by miasmahair » Thu Dec 23, 2010 8:57 pm

toxic trish wrote: also have you found some wools work better than other with this method
Yeah man, I always use Corriedale, because it felts up super easy :)

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Re: SEs, Wraps and Transitional Twists Tutorial

Post by toxic trish » Fri Dec 24, 2010 10:53 am

miasmahair wrote:
toxic trish wrote: also have you found some wools work better than other with this method
Yeah man, I always use Corriedale, because it felts up super easy :)
brilliant i only stock merino so i will order some in thanks :)

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Re: SEs, Wraps and Transitional Twists Tutorial

Post by Skookums » Sat Jan 08, 2011 8:51 pm

thank you so much for this
Boo!

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Re: SEs, Wraps and Transitional Twists Tutorial

Post by VixenSingsBlack » Tue Aug 02, 2011 12:31 am

Merino doesn't seem to work so well with this, but I bet corriedale does due to its bit coarser texture.

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Re: SEs, Wraps and Transitional Twists Tutorial

Post by toxic trish » Tue Aug 02, 2011 8:39 am

VixenSingsBlack wrote:Merino doesn't seem to work so well with this, but I bet corriedale does due to its bit coarser texture.
yep i have tried this on about 14SE's with merino and only one of them looks decent and that has been needle felted to death, But i have used this technique on corriedale and it has worked really well. :)
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Re: SEs, Wraps and Transitional Twists Tutorial

Post by miasmahair » Wed Aug 03, 2011 7:26 am

That's cos Merino is rubbish at felting, I don't know why anyone would bother using it! :D

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Re: SEs, Wraps and Transitional Twists Tutorial

Post by ..::AtomicLox::.. » Wed Aug 03, 2011 11:38 am

oHHH Cathy. You win, you win, you win.
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Re: SEs, Wraps and Transitional Twists Tutorial

Post by VixenSingsBlack » Wed Aug 03, 2011 3:19 pm

miasmahair wrote:That's cos Merino is rubbish at felting, I don't know why anyone would bother using it! :D
Hahaha! I can't seem to get Corridale to felt as well; I've always struggled with it! :lol:

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