Felting

Happy Tax Day! This past Monday at doll club one of the gals gave a demo on wool felting. We took wool roving and using soap mixtures, window screen, and non-slip rubber matting created a cool looking piece of fabric. Here's mine.


Felting
Click on image to enlarge

Mine didn't get the wool fibers as compacted as it should but it's still usable. When I pull on it the fibers don't separate. This was a lot of fun and it was fairly easy to do. Didn't take long either. I think it took about half an hour to make this piece. My fingers looked like prunes when I was done though because it's a very tactile process. There's an article on how to do this in a recent Quilting Arts Magazine. The current issue has an article on how to embellish your felted piece of wool.

What we did was take the pieces of wool roving and separate it into long thin pieces. Then we put two layers of the roving down horizontally and another two layers of the wool roving vertically. Wet it with a 'wetting agent' that was a mix of pure soap and water. Then using the ends of your fingers you patted the water into the roving. After that we put the piece of window screen on top and put a thicker soap solution on top, and using the pads of our fingers made circles until little bits of roving showed through. Then we changed the direction of the piece and rubbed some more. By now it was supposed to be fairly compacted. Then we took the piece of rubber matting and rolled the piece up in it - did this a bunch of times - you change the direction of how the piece is laying inside it so it gets rolled in all directions. Hard to explain. Then we rinsed all the soap out - and you have a strong piece of fabric to play with!

I'll make a postcard with mine. I'll do this again as soon as I get some roving. Of course soon I'll need another room to store all this stuff in!

Posted by judi at April 15, 2005 11:43 AM
Comments

Hey, Judi! How are you today? Looks as tho' I'm going to have to call you 'Fearless' Judi - you dive right in and try any type of craft. Kudos to you! Finished my Ethipoian figure last night and I guess it looks pretty decent, but I wish I'd had more time.Seemed the more I worked on it, the more I thought of doing and couldn't because it was too late. You know what I mean, right? It's hard to know when to quit. This weekend I'm heading to one of my 2 favorite places - the craft store - and stocking up on some supplies. I tried the crocheted hair, by the way. Did some in eyelash yarn, some in Fun Fur, and some in as yarn called 'Clouds'. I LOVE them! Now all I need are the dolls to PUT them on ... sigh. I'm getting pictures of everything so when I get my scanner in 2 weeks, I'll show you. Have a great weekend. I'll be looking on your site to see what new things you're trying, and how the Crash Test Dummy is progressing. Smiles from Kai.

Posted by: kai at April 15, 2005 11:12 PM

I missed the felting workshop put on by our guild - I think I was the Phantom Member that year - but making silk paper is very much the same. You separate your silk tops, arranging one layer vertically and one layer horizontally (all of this on top of a piece of tulle in a cookie sheet) until you have as many layers as you are pleased with. You can sprinkle stuff in it as well: I like using bits of metallic threads, silk knots, orts - I didn't have as much luck with botanicals. The rose petals turned brown. Anyway, once you've got all your bits and pieces down, you put the second layer of tulle over the top and saturate the whole thing with 1:1 ratio of water and textile medium. I've been told you can use white glue instead of textile medium but I haven't tried it. Hang the whole thing up to dry, peel off the tulle pieces, et voila! Silk paper - it can be ironed, cut, sewn, embellished etc.
Would you like to exchange postcards?
Kathy

Posted by: Kathy White at April 18, 2005 9:14 PM

v v bad

Posted by: fariha at August 6, 2007 11:38 PM
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