Felting 101

I took the time to do some felting today! It's been a long time since all the lambing this last month was my main focus. This is what I've decided to use. The colored roving is BFL that I died this winter. The batts of fiber are Shay my shetland ewe and some moorit merino wool I have from Terry Mendenhall. I ran the two together on my drum carder to blend them and form some batts that are easier to felt with than locks or thin roving. The yarn I get from "Embellishment Village" on the web. Layed out on plastic and a bamboo window shade is my resist a piece of cardboard from a Cheerio box. The yarn and colored roving go first to decorate the outside of the purse. I make them inside out! Now I lay some of Shays wool over that in light whispy pieces going right to left then up and down. The piece of netting will be placed over the top then I wet it with a sponge or my sprinkler ball (next picture) flip the whole thing over fold the edges to the other side and lay out more wool. Wet that and flip and fold and do it again and again till there are three to four ounces of wool, half on each side of the cardboard resist. All the wool is layed out and the edges are folded over and it is soaking wet with hot water and some olive oil soap. I make the soap here. This picture shows the purse with card board resist inside, a plastic bag I put my hand in to rub the tender wool some olive oil soap, netting, sponge and my spinkler ball that Linda Lu gave me for Christmas. A felting must! Now the purse is rubbed and rubbed and rubbed then rolled and rolled and rolled in the bamboo window shade. This entire process of laying out the wool and rolling has taken a few hours and the purse is ready to cut open and turn inside out.

The card board is carefully taken out and the purse is turned. It is very tender now since the inside was not able to full because the wool is so thick. Not quite done. This is a prefelt still. Needs more fulling to become a durable felt. This side of the purse needs more color also to match the other side. And of course no project is done until it's embellished!