The Dodo Blog

I’m working on a new class that is meant to help felt makers go all the way (smoothly) from total beginner to intermediate. If you’ve recently started wet felting or you’ve been felting for a while, but still feel like there are many gaps in your knowledge, this may be for you.

But I’ll need some time until I can offer it, since I haven’t created it yet. I’m working on the class outline for now. And I’d like to invite you to participate in the creation of the class materials. Just click here or on the image below to access the list of topics. Please let me know which ones are important to you and what you think may still be missing.

Just a last note: I’m considering an intermediate felter, someone who knows all the fundamentals, and is able to confidently felt on a resist, knows how to add fiber, fabric and other materials for embellishment and texture. All this while achieving high quality felt.

Thank you for taking a moment to...

I think the importance of prefelts in wet felting is sometimes underestimated. Prefelts are extremely useful and there’s no end to how you can apply them in your wet felting projects. So, mastering how to make them exactly as you want for a particular piece can massively improve your work.

Let’s have a look at some of the many ways prefelts can be used, as well as a couple of tips to apply them successfully.

PREFELTS FOR NUNO FELTING

In most cases, nuno felted pieces decorated with crisp designs are created with prefelts. But prefelts are a bit more difficult to attach to silk than unfelted wool.

So, to make it work, you need to:

• use thin prefelts,
• felt slowly and gently,
• and work with cold water,

to give the wool fibers time to migrate into the silk.

The most effective felting technique in this case is sanding, since it creates a lot of pressure, that accelerates the fiber migration through the fabric.

If you run into issues, and some parts of your prefelts...

As you may know, I’ve been working on a blog series about prefelts. I’ve started by going into what prefelts are, as well as explaining the differences between commercial and handmade prefelts.

The next post in the series dealt with what you need to pay attention to when making prefelts to use in other projects.

And I’ll finish this collection next week by going deeper into how you can use prefelts, what type of projects you can use them for, as well as the best felting techniques for making them.

But, before that, I wanted to answer the questions that I received from you about this topic. So, today we’ll have a format that’s a bit different from what I usually do: a simple Q&A.

Q: I am very curious about prefelts - especially as a new wet felter. When is something prefelt? Or what is the prefelt stage?  I’d like to create some prefelt in order to place onto my work and felt everything together. How do I do that?

A: A prefelt is...

As we’ve seen last week, a prefelt is a partially felted piece of wool felt. That means, it’s made in the exact same way as a piece of felt. The only difference is the degree to which it’s compacted.

I usually make my prefelts by wet felting Merino tops. For some projects, I have also needle felted wool batts. This second method is a way of imitating the industrial prefelts. But I find it’s only a good option for small projects.

What do you need to pay attention to when making a prefelt to use in other projects?

1. Evenness

It’s important to create your prefelts with an even thickness. If this is difficult for you, start by training your layout skills.

Do you need help with this? You can find everything you need to train your layout skills in the blog post “Resources To Help You Perfect Your Layout”. (Click link or image to access!)

2. Thickness

The thickness of your prefelt will depend on which projects you’ll be applying it...

Years ago, I wrote a couple of blog posts about prefelts, but there are many details I didn’t mention back then. Since I still get a lot of questions about the topic, I thought it would make sense to write a new, more complete and up to date series.

This first part caters to new felt makers, who I know are often a bit confused about prefelts.

If you’re more experienced, this won't be new to you. But, as I explore the topic further, there'll be more details that may be useful for you too. So, I recommend keeping an eye on the rest of the series, if this is a topic that interests you.

We’ll start by looking at what prefelts are, and then talk about how and when to use them. So, let's dive in!

WHAT ARE PREFELTS?

As the name suggests, a prefelt is a partially felted piece of wool felt. In other words, it’s simply a stage in the wet felting process before the fibers fully compact.

That, of course, means a prefelt can be further felted. And that is precisely...

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WHAT DO YOU NEED FOR THE BUNNIES?

That will depend on how many you want to make. So, I’ll just give you the list of materials for 4 bunnies like mine. You can adapt the colors and/or decoration to your own taste.

• 40 cm of green ribbon
• 40 cm of pink ribbon
• 2 small bells
• 2 sew-on strass pieces
• Green and pink thread
• A thin needle (that can pass through the holes of the strass)
• A thimble
• 2 thin felting needles
• Felting foam
• Some white fine merino wool
• 2 thick (about 7 mm thick) sheets of pre-felt (pink and dark brown); each of them should be big enough to cut 2 bunnies
• The pattern
• Some gold and silver thread

INSTRUCTIONS

Start by making the pre-felt with your wool of choice. I can’t say exactly how many layers you need, since that’ll depend on how thick you lay your wool. But 4 should do if you’re working with thick layers.

Cut 2...

Have you just recently discovered wet felting, and don’t know where to start? I’ve put together a list of resources for you to help you know what to learn next.

START BY MASTERING THE BASIC WET FELTING SHAPES

When people approach me about learning to wet felt, they often tell me they’d like to make scarves and garments, so they’re particularly interested in nuno felting.

But to get to nuno felting and other more demanding techniques, you need to be confident with the basics first.

So, here are the simplest instructions for the 3 basic shapes, whether you would like to work with wool batts or with wool tops.

• Felting a cord with wool tops
• Felting a cord with wool batts
• Felting a ball with wool tops
• Felting a ball with wool batts
• Felting a sheet with wool tops
• Felting a sheet with wool batts

And here are a couple of additional tips that can help you perfect your technique:

• How to correctly pull the wool
• How to know if you’ve got enough soap?
• How to...