The Dodo Blog

I frequently get emails from felt makers asking me if they can purchase only the patterns for my baby booties. When I taught how to make slippers, I was often asked if I’d sell only the patterns for the slippers.

I opted for never offering the resist patterns, the reason being that I’m for teaching people to make their own stuff and not keeping them coming back for everything they need.

So, I’ve always wanted to show felt makers how they could make their own resist patterns. For everything they want to felt!

Why should you learn to make your own patterns?

You probably have the experience of looking in vain for a specific pattern and having to make do with what you find.

You may also have noticed that, even if you managed to get a template from someone online, the size may not be the one you need. So, if you don't know what to do about it, the template will be useless.

If you've always wanted to make your own slippers, shoes or boots, but were never sure how you could make them...

Today’s video is the second one from a short series about my system to design resists for wet felting.

Last week, we looked at how we can transfer the measurements from a 3D object to a flat resist. If you didn’t have the chance to watch that video, please go back and watch it now because it’s important to be able to understand this week’s topic.

So, after designing the basic pattern, deciding on which wool type to use, how thick to lay it out, on the layout and fulling methods, it’s now time to:

6. Make a sample

7. Determine the shrinkage rate

8. Increase the pattern

9. And calculate the amount of wool for the project

Watch the video for more on how to make the sample and determine the shrinkage rate.

When we have our shrinkage rate, we can increase our base pattern to make a resist in the right size to account for shrinkage.

And, finally, we calculate the amount of wool we will need to felt our vase cover.

When all of this is planned, it’s time to finally felt the piece,...

What do you do when you need a resist for a new wet felting project? Do you find yourself desperately going through Facebook felting groups, YouTube channels and all over the Internet to find the right template for the piece you want to felt?

Or are you able to draw your patterns by yourself?

If you’re going around the internet looking for the template for the exact piece you want to make, you may be feeling pretty frustrated. First of all, you don’t always find it, and, many times – if you do find it – it’s not in the size you need.

So, I’d like to suggest that you consider that you can start making your own templates for the pieces you have in mind. After all, the felt makers, who sell the patterns or offer them for free, they make them as well. So, there is a way to develop your own resists for your projects.

The question is HOW!

There is, in fact, a system. If you understand how it works, I’m sure you can start making your own templates. So, I want to give you an idea of my pr...

Easter is just around the corner. Here's an idea to make your Easter gifts extra special! 

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 bunnies in pink and 2 in brown. You’ll need...

Last week we had a look at how to felt thin cords the easy way. But what if you want to felt thicker ropes like the ones you use for bag handles? Are they made in the same way?

What do you do if your wool top isn’t thick enough?

How do you guarantee that no grooves form on the surface of the cord when there’s so much wool involved?

How do you make sure the ends don’t get wet and felted so that you can attach them to the bag afterwards?

And how much will the handles shrink in length?

Today we’re going to answer all those questions, so make sure you watch until the end.

And If you’ve started wet felting recently and you’re feeling a bit lost about the next step in your journey, you can download the guide I’ve prepared for you “Beginner To Intermediate Without Overwhelm”.

In this guide I give you my system that helps you know what to do next, no matter which phase you're in. You can download it here.

This video is the first one of a new series, in which we’ll be looking into the topic of making cords or ropes in wet felting.

While it’s more geared towards beginner felt makers, I know that many more experienced people also struggle with this. During my years as a felting teacher, I’ve gotten many, many questions about how to solve different issues that show up when you’re wet felting cords.

So, the goal of this series is to go through all these questions, so that you’re able to solve these problems once and for all. Today, we’ll start by looking at how to make thin cords in an easy way.

Watch the video to see how to make sure you get the right thickness for your cord, without having any creases or wrinkles on the surface. I have three tips that will make felting these thin ropes really easy:

• the base to use for felting,
• the way to do the layout,
• the amount of water to use.

If you’ve started wet felting recently and you’re feeling a bit lost about the next step in your ...

In the last couple of weeks, we’ve been talking about different ways to make a fine and flexible.

We started by using only Merino wool. In the next sample we worked with Merino wool mixed with viscose fiber. And today I’m going to make a sample that’s going to be useful to compare with the one we did last week, the one with viscose.

What I’m going to do is I’ll be using the same template, 4 g of Merino wool, plus a piece of chiffon silk.

We’ll start by felting the sample and, when it’s ready, we’ll see how it compares to the previous two.

Make sure you stay until the end to be able to see the differences between the 3 samples. And, if you haven’t yet, go and watch the previous videos:

• How to avoid stiff felt
• A detailed tutorial on how to make fine and flexible felt
• A second method to make fine and flexible felt

This was a very complete series, and we’ve covered not only how to make a fine and flexible felt, but also how to add viscose fiber to your wool and, actually, how t...

In the last video, we had a look at how we can create a fine and flexible felt using only Merino wool. And today we’re going to see what happens when we add viscose fiber to our fine Merino.

For our experiment to make sense, we’re going to use the same 30cm x 30cm template and we’re also going to use 6g of fiber.

If you can remember, in the last video we used 6g of Merino to create our sample. And what we’re going to do today is use 6g of fiber again, but we’re going to have 4g of wool and 2g of viscose. Ok?

If you’d like to do this sample with me, get your materials, and just follow the instructions in the video.

Be sure to check out the differences between the two samples: the one made with only Merino, and the one where I added the viscose.

And if you’re not very familiar with the type of layout I use in this video (chevron layout), you can download a PDF with all the details about all the main layouts used in wet felting here.

I’ll see you next week, when we go through the th...

Last week we spoke about a couple of misconceptions and some tips to avoid making your felt too stiff. If you haven’t read that blog post, I recommend you start there, since it’s part of a video series I’m recording for you on this topic.

And if you’re stuck in your felting journey and don’t know what to do next, I’ve created a guide to help you. You can download it here.

Today we’re going to see how we can apply last week’s tips in a practical way. So, we’ll be making a piece of flat felt. In other words, a sample.

So, get some merino wool and let’s do this. All you need to do is follow the instructions in the video.

Enjoy!

P.S.: Make sure you come back next week, since we’ll go on diving deep into this topic.

Have you ever had your felt become too stiff? Have you wondered why that happens? Have you tried making it thinner, but ended up with a lot of holes? These are common issues that many felt makers face. Let’s have a look at how to solve that, so that you never have to waste all those beautiful materials again.

I find there are many misconceptions about how to avoid making your felt too stiff. So, to start, I want to have a look at some of the most common ones.

Misconception #1 – There’s a certain number of layers I have to use for a particular item

You see, the thing is that it’s not about the layers. Please don’t ask how many layers are needed for a piece! Someone else’s layers may be much thicker or thinner than yours. So, what you need to know is how much wool to use. You don’t believe me? Then, try this:

• On a 25 cm square (or 10-inch square), lay out 4g divided into 4 layers. Then felt it.
• Next, do the same, but with 12g. So, on a 25 cm square, lay out 12g divided into 4 l
...