The old fashioned wash board is quickly becoming my most used felting tool. I use it for the final fulling process when wet felting. What it does is it straightens out the top layer of wool and smooths it out creating a harder surface of felted wool.
When wool hasn’t been felted enough it starts to pill as the fibers continue to move around in the felted wool, break and rise to the surface. Fulling your felt sufficiently prevents this from occuring.
I had a bag that I felted recently. I was a bit impatient and didn’t felt it completely. Soon my lovely bag started to get little wool balls rising to the surface.
Tag Archives: how to felt
Feltmaking – Wet Felted Hats: wet-felted-hats
I got a hat block for Christmas – Lucky Me 🙂 This one is a cloche style of hat block made of styrofoam from Gillian Gladrag . These hat blocks come in 4 sizes:
| Metric | Inches | US | UK | Punti |
| 55/56 | 21 5/8 | 6 7/8 | 6 3/4 | 4 |
| 57/58 | 22 1/2 | 7 1/8 | 7 | 5 |
| 59/60 | 23 1/4 | 7 3/8 | 7 1/4 | 6 |
| 61/62 | 24 | 7 5/8 | 7 1/2 | 7 |
Hat Shapers
Another good source for hat blocks.
If you are not sure of your hat or head size, using a tape measure, measure around the circumference of your head. Place the tape measure across the widest part of your forehead, just above your eyebrows, around the tips of your ears and across the back of your head. Take the measurement with the tape measure snugly but comfortably around your head – not too tight, unless you like a very tight fitting hat. You may need a friend to help you with this.
Felted cat bed
My cat loves wool and crawling into small places to nap. I have many bags of wool so I thought I should make her a own special place to hide from dog and curl up.
Felting Project – Felt pillow: felt-pillow
This is a project to felt and sew a hand felted cushion cover.
Materials used:
Wool roving for making felt
approx 1 yard of cotton fabric
16 inch zipper
19 inch pillow form
Hand made Felt
To make the felt top for this pillow, I made a large piece of felt approx 24 inches square. During the felting process the felt will shrink about 15%-30%.
I don’t like to waste wool, so I use the leftover thrums from carding for making felt. This comes from the fleece that is left on the drum carder and isn’t a good enough quality for hand spinning.
I placed a thin layer of the leftover wool onto the felting mat. I then added a second layer of gray wool roving over the wool thrums, laying the fiber in the opposite direction. I added a third thin layer of gray roving over the previous layer, again in the opposite direction.
I wet the wool with warm water and soap and rolled it up in a felting mat.
For more detailed instructions of how to make a piece of felt please see below.
Felting Project – Waterlily: waterlily
A great way to use up some of your handspun stash is to knit flowers and felt them.
Here is an example of a waterlily that I knitted.
The pattern came from a book I purchased from Amazon – Knitted Flowers, 20 to make.
The pattern calls for double knitting weight yarn. I substituted this for my woolen hand spun in variegated colours.
Felting Project – Felt Necklace
Instructions for how to make a felt necklace - with a bit of crochet and wool roving.
Felted Posey pot
Recently I purchased a feltmaking kit from my favourite local sewing shop – Clothkits. The felting kit was made by Gillian Gladrag.
The felting kit contains all you need to get started with feltmaking – a large bamboo mat, a piece of netting, and an assortment of dyed wool roving.
I also purchased a kit for making a handfelted purse.
Wet Felted Easter Eggs
Instructions for making quail size Easter eggs using a wet felting method.