Fun Felting

A couple of weeks ago, my friend, Katherine, invited me around to her house for a ‘Crafternoon’.  Well, it was actually all day rather than just an afternoon but a ‘Cray’ doesn’t sound quite right!  It was one of those scorching sunny days we’ve had lately with a temperature of 30˚ but we were able to craft outdoors in the shade of a yew tree, which was handy as wet felting is quite messy.

Katharine had set up our work stations which consisted of an old towel with a bamboo mat on top onto which we laid out a thin layer of white roving wool.  Another layer was added perpendicular to the first.  Then came the creative bit – making my scene, and I decided to try for a sunset over the sea. A third layer was placed in the same direction as the first and a final fourth layer of wool was added perpendicular to that before the wet bit began.

Next, I covered my scene with a piece of mesh and wet it all over with hot soapy water.  Then, using my hands flat on the mesh, I started to massage to get all the wool fibres wet.  This took 5-10 minutes.

The second stage of wet felting was to place a piece of bubble wrap over the mesh, then roll the wool sandwich tightly in the bamboo mat and secure with elastic bands.  This “sausage” was then rolled back and forth for about 5 minutes.

The sausage was unrolled and the felt rotated 90˚ then re-rolled into a sausage for the rolling to begin again.  This rotation and rolling was repeated until the wool felted together.  The felt panel was then rinsed in clean, cold water and left to dry.

This is my finished wet-felted fabric piece and I love it!  I’m going to add a little free-motion embroidery to it before making it into a roll-up pencil case to take my pencils/pastels to my art classes. 

I had a go at making another piece whilst the first was drying.  This time, I was aiming for a lavender field.   I don’t think this one is wet felted together enough but I was getting way too hot and sweaty with all the rolling!  This piece is also going to have some embroidery added so I’ll do another post once I’ve completely finished these projects.

This was great fun and it was very exciting to make my own unique pieces of fabric.  Plus, I had a very enjoyable time crafting with my friend.