How to Felt

Felting is a fun, easy technique with great results!

Felting a knitted piece makes it SHRINK. Therefore, the piece you knit will be much bigger than your felted piece will actually turn out to be. How much  it shrinks  depends since there are so many factors that go into it –

 how hot your water is,

 how hard your water is,

 how much it is agitated,

 the amount and kind of soap you use,

The colour of yarn (darker colours felt quicker than lighter colours), and so on.

You can felt your piece a little or a lot. If you felt it just a little (maybe by taking it out of your machine after half a cycle), you will still have stitch definition. If you felt it more, you won't.

Just about any knitted object can be felted, from flat pieces like coasters and afghan squares to bags, belts, hats, home accessories such as scatter cushions and more. But felting can be a little mysterious and intimidating to those who have never done it before.

The Seps to follow are:

1.Wash in hot water with soap, soap actually speeds up the felting process and felting can often be improved by adding baking soda or washing soda to the water also washing felted things with other laundry can speed up the process because agitation is another important element for the felting, and the rest of your laundryhelps with that. It is best to check on your item regularly.

 2.Rinse in cool water this  "locks" the fibers in place.

3.Air dry ,If you are making a piece that needs to be to a particular shape ( a rectangle piece for a bag), it is likely be lopsided when it comes out of the dryer. BEFORE you let it dry adjust it to the right shape (remember: once felted, there's no changing it back) or pin it into shape on a blocking board or terry cloth towel and let it dry there.

 Be sure to follow any specific felting instructions for the piece you are making, and check your piece a few times during your felting process to make sure you are getting the desired results.

 Since felting “fuses” the fibers together, you can cut it!, if your piece is truly felted, it won’t unravel. That means you can cut into the bottom to make a cute fringe, you can cut strips of felted fabric and plait them there's no end of things you can do!

 Mixing yarns is really fun with felting. Try  mixing fun fur and  Wool, wait till you see the  results!  because the fun fur won’t felt you get wicked furry effects! You can try lots of other yarn comdnations to see what looks coolest – remember, only the wool will felt, so you can create great textural differences with mixing.

There’s no limit to this  craft, so play around and let your imagination go wild!

Have Fun!!