[Nfb-krafters-korner] Felting

[Eileen Scrivani]

Valarie:

If you want to try some felting without knitting or crocheting an item 
yourself, look through your sweater draws for perhaps an old store bought 
sweater that you no longer wear and that probably was not very expensive. 
Make sure it is 100-percent wool so it will be sure to shrink.  If you have 
something with colors or perhaps a pretty stitch pattern like a cable 
pattern that can help to snazzy it up.

Throw the sweater in your washing machine with about two pairs of jeans so 
there will be something for the sweater to rub against.  Set your washing 
machine to a normal cycle & very hot water with cold water rinse.  Throw in 
an amount of standard washing detergent, nothing that is meant for gentles, 
but of course, don't use bleach.

If you want to prevent any fuzzy stuff from clogging up your machine, you 
can place the sweater in a pillow case.

After one go through, take the sweater out of the machine and look at it, or 
in our case feel it.  Did it shrink?  Did it partially shrink?  If shrinkage 
was only slight or not at all, throw it back in and repeat the washing 
cycle.  You may have to wash it three or more times.  It is imperative that 
you have things that are heavy like jeans in with the sweater.  Friction is 
a part of the felting cycle along with shocking the wool by having hot wash 
and a cold rinse.

Also make sure your sweater is not "machine Washable" or it will not shrink.

Once the fabric feels nice to you and you still have some stitch definition, 
consider your felting finished. You can felt to much so that the fabric 
becomes so dense & tight that you will not be able to feel or see any pretty 
stitching that might have been on it prior to felting.  How much to felt is 
your call.

Once the sweater is felted, you can take a pair of scissors and cut the 
thing apart to make yourself a hand bag or tote bag of some type.  Most 
sweaters can be cut horizontally across from one under arm to the other. 
The nice even part of the sweater body fits the bill for the body of a hand 
bag or tote.  You will just need to sew one long seam.  Before you sew it up 
look at the piece, perhaps any ribbing that is on the bottom waist band 
would be better served  for the top edge of your bag rather that the bottom 
seam edge of the pag.  Look at the sleeves and yoke sections, and perhaps 
they can be cut into sections to use as pockets or straps or applied 
decorations.  Or you might be able to make a little makeup pouch or 
bill-fold out of the left over parts.  You can get very creative with it. 
Or, you can purchase suede straps or bottoms and sew them onto your bag.

Let me know if you try it.  Good luck.

Eileen

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Valerie" <rosetta at adam.com.au>
To: "'List for blind crafters and artists'" <nfb-krafters-korner at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, May 15, 2009 6:11 AM
Subject: [Nfb-krafters-korner] Felting


> Thank you very much for the approximate shrinkage measurements for 
> felting,
> this sounds such an interesting craft to try, hope someday a class might 
> be
> possible to try out our skills. It's very cold here today, we have all the
> winter garments out of storage now, time to be wearing the hats that Joyce
> helped us with too. All the best. Valerie
>
>
>
>
>
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