First-time Felter?????

[Lollie2639]

OK crochet friends

 

1. What is felting?

2. What is the purpose of felting?

3. How do you do it?

4. Can you show me pics of felted projects?

5. Can you felt anything???

 

Crohet RN:think

[AidanM]

Ever heard of felt? It's a fabric, I'm sure you've seen it or heard of it before. Well, felt is basically wool that's been boiled and then squished together. It creates a fabric because wool naturally locks together because of the way the fibers are.

 

Felting is where you take wool yarn and do what your mother should have told you to never, ever, ever do with your wool sweaters. Run it through the wash. There's more to it than that, but you can look that up any ol' place. Crochet Pattern Central's "Free Instruction Directory" should have something about felting.

 

The purpose of felting depends. Some people do it because they like the effect it creates with variegated yarn, some people will felt something because they want a more solid piece, some people do it 'cause they like the fuzzy your project will get when it has been felted.

 

Nope. You cannot, I repeat, CANNOT FELT ANYTHING BUT A 100% WOOL YARN!!! This is VERY IMPORTANT. If you try to felt acrylic, it will not work. Acrylic is a synthetic fiber, it is essentially plastic. That's right, plastic. Felting works because of the nature of wool's fibers, and thus only wool will work.

 

There are all kinds of felting pictures in this forum, feel free to dig around I'm sure you'll be able to find some.

 

Hope that this helped.

[Veronika]

AidanM thanks!! I didn´t know about felting.. and now I have an idea

[Burgandy]

Now I know why all my blankets won't felt. Mom forgot to mention the wool part!

[AidanM]

Synthetic fabrics will actually melt if you get them too hot in the dryer. Thus ruining your dryer, not to mention your project!

[LadyintheMoon]

I was wondering about the whole felting craze, too. I love the way the stuff looks, but I thought it would be really complicated to manage. Think I'll study it more!

[Aggie May]

I was looking through my OLD pattern books and found some OLD Vogue Knitting books. The very first one I opened had an article about Fulling & Felting. I will fish it out again and see if there is any info which would be helpful.

On a basic level, felting is often done unintentionally, by over washing your woolies or using hot water when you should not.

My daughter, while sorting stuff to move house (& countries I might add,) came across a large cardigan she mad about 20yrs ago. It was made from wool so she put it into the washing machine and gave it a hot wash right through the cycles and it shrunk & felted up just enough to fit her nicely. Luckily the colours did not run or bleed out as it was black background with all the colours you can think of & white. :cheer

Makes a very warm cosy garment.

I will go now and look for that book.

Have fun.

Colleen

[marlodc]

I have some pictures of my felted bags on this page. Beware this is very addicting and all you will think about is felting!

 

http://www.marloscrochetcorner.com/patterns%20for%20sale.html

 

 

marlo

marlo's crochet corner

http://www.marloscrochetcorner.com