The Dodo Blog

There are thousands of ways you can decorate a wet felted project. Some just involve wool, others can include silk or other fabrics, as you know. This is then called Nuno felting. But today I bring you a sample that contains wool, silk and something else.

I wanted to show you an example of how you can use a transparent piece of silk to hold any type of synthetic material, that wouldn’t otherwise attach to wool. In this case, I’ll be using a pre-felt and a piece of white silk chiffon with the same size as the pre-felt. Alternatively, you can lay merino wool tops or batts, and use light gauze instead of silk.

TIP # 1 – USE LIGHT GAUZE INSTEAD OF SILK TO MAKE YOUR EXPERIMENTS CHEAPER

I’m also using circles of a synthetic golden fabric (that doesn’t attach to wool), but you can choose countless other materials like small beads or sequins, for example.

If you’re making a sample, please remember to measure the size of the wool now and after shrinkage.

TIP # 2 – ALWAYS MEASURE YOUR SAM...

Are you going crazy with the ‘what is what’ in terms of the wool for felting?

I do my best to avoid insider lingo, but the truth is there’s no escaping. You’ll just have to learn a couple of new terms when it comes to this. Otherwise you risk not getting the right materials for your projects. So here is some of the terminology you’re bound to hear if you’re taking on felting:

Raw fleece is what you call the wool when it’s right off the animal and unwashed (that means dirty and greasy). This is not something you can normally get, unless you buy directly from a sheep farm.

Scoured fleece has been washed to remove lanolin and dirt, but it still has the lock structure. I use it to fill pillows or for doll’s hair, for example.

Wool batts, wool batting or carded wool is very similar to quilt batting. It’s the result of removing the debris from the wool with a machine that breaks up the lock structure, and then going through the carding machine. The carder brushes and blends the fibers ...

I’ve been working in a new video workshop, which I hope to finish and post in the next couple of weeks. And the video tutorial I bring you today will be part of this workshop.

I wanted to share it with you, because I know there are so many questions about how to make a pre-felt.

Hope you enjoy it!

Talk to you soon!

Am I happy to be back!!!

What started out as a couple of technology problems, ended up as a great example of Murphy’s Law. After having taken my tablet – where I store eBooks, notes, my calendar, and all sorts of information – to repair, my Internet stopped working, I had huge difficulties in getting it fixed because it’s August (and everything stops in August), and – last but not least – my laptop started giving me problems.

So, I convinced myself it was time to take it easy, and just let things take care of themselves. And, in the process, I had to skip a week of posting here.

But I’m back to stay! And I’m back with something new. I wanted to try a new format to answer some of the most frequent questions about felt, that don’t require showing a process on video.

So, today I’m going to dive into the following questions:

• What’s a pre-felt?
• How do you make it?
• Why does it matter?

A felted piece that isn’t completely felted is called a pre-felt, so it’s just the stage before ...