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Felting shrinks more in one direction than another?


Craftonite

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A couple of months ago, I completed my first felting/fulling project, and I have a question. This project was a very basic single crocheted tote bag. I used Paton's Classic Wool, and I was pleased with the result.

 

I realized it would shrink in the fulling process, however, it shrunk quite a bit more in width than in height. I was not expecting that difference, so the bag is longer and a bit narrower than I planned. That was fine for this project, but I was wondering if this is typical? Is there a way to predict which way a particular project might shrink more?

 

Thanks! :)

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I've had that happen, it really is one of the variables that, to me, makes felting intersting. If I am making a project (like planned notebook case) that needs to be a specific size I'll pay more attention to felting a swatch to see what needs to be done, but otherwise I just take it as it comes.

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i'm running into a similar problem with my bag as well. my test swatches shrank horizontally pretty well, but almost nothing vertically. to counteract this (hopefully!), i'm making my bag longer horizontally than i would have normally made it. i have no idea how it's gonna turn out...hopefully it won't be awful and i'll have to get more yarn to redo it.

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In my experience, that's pretty typical. I actually have a leaflet by Patons (from when felting was HUGE a couple years ago) that has different charts for knitting and crocheting, b/c the felting for each would "shrink" differently. Crocheted felting tends to get narrower, and Knitted felting tends to get shorter. (the booklet had brown edging. Patterns were for 3/4 projects I belief, each in both knit and crochet)

The choice of wool will affect the tightness of felting (and how fuzzy it gets or if it will shed etc) but it won't affect the direction the felting will go.

But like others have said, a swatch is always a good thing. :)

HTH

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In my experience, that's pretty typical. I actually have a leaflet by Patons (from when felting was HUGE a couple years ago) that has different charts for knitting and crocheting, b/c the felting for each would "shrink" differently. Crocheted felting tends to get narrower, and Knitted felting tends to get shorter. (the booklet had brown edging. Patterns were for 3/4 projects I belief, each in both knit and crochet)

The choice of wool will affect the tightness of felting (and how fuzzy it gets or if it will shed etc) but it won't affect the direction the felting will go.

But like others have said, a swatch is always a good thing. :)

HTH

 

That sounds right to me. I had read that I should it to get shorter, but maybe that is more for knit items. This bag lost very little length - the width had a lot more shrinkage. I picked a basic project - single crochet, nothing fancy - because I hadn't fulled anything before. I'm fine with the outcome, but it's good to know for future projects where the size might matter more.

 

Thanks to everyone who responded!:ty

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For my likes, the hdc felts up the nicest, but I have experienced what you've said as well. So if I'm crocheting something to be felted I usually try to give it a little more width than height depending on what the piece is and how I want it to turn out.

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