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Wool Felting 101

Submitted by ClearlyChosen on Sat, 06/20/2009 - 01:56
in

Wool Felting 101

Woo-hoo! Am pretty excited about wool felting. Have been gathering information all over the place and here are the basics one needs to know to get started.

Strictly speaking, what we will be talking about here is called "fulling". In fulling, we use a woven, knitted, or crocheted woolen piece. In felting, we use raw fleece that does not have any initial structure.

But as 'fulling' becomes increasingly popular, the term "felting" is now used to mean the same thing. Less commonly, it is also referred to as "tucking", or "waulking".

Felting Yarn Needed

As with anything else, there does not seem to be 100% agreement on what kinds of yarns is needed.

No Machine Washable Yarn: For a certainty, you cannot use any yarn that is treated for "machine washing". (If it is, it will often say, "Machine Washable" or "superwash". These woolen yarns are treated so that they do not shrink and harden (felt) in the (machine) wash.)

100% pure wool ~ many state that only this can be used for felting. There are others who believe that anything with more than 50% wool content can be use. And that other animal hair can also be felted, e.g. camel, angora, alpaca, llama, ... and even long doggie hairs!

Some say that white or very white yarns are hard(er) to felt.

Knitting and Crocheting

You first knit or crochet up your project, e.g. hat, bags, swatches, animal shapes, whatever ...

Of the two, knitting seems to be more popular. Whether this is due to there being more knitters or that it works better, I am not sure but I am going to give both a try. Either case, the following reasoning is going to hold pretty much true for both.
  • Use a larger needle or hook than you normally would. So your piece will initially be pretty loose.
    Why?
    Felting is a result of heat, friction, and agitation. The loose stitches will help the yarn rub against each other during the agitation/felting process and should result in better felted results.
  • Make it even longer than normal (this is true for knitted items ~ not so sure about crocheted items at the moment).
    Why?
    Because a felted item shrinks more lengthwise (i.e. number of rows) than it does width-wise (i.e. no of stitches)
  • Assemble and sew pieces together (rather than felt loose pieces and try to sew them after they have felted).
    Tidy up all loose ends of yarn - sew in, weave in, tuck away.

Done? So far we have only done the preliminary work and gotten ready our 'finished' pieces that we want to be felted. Now let's get to some felting or maybe you want to read some handy felting tips before you get your hands wet (literally).

How To Felt

To felt is to wash.

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