The Dodo Blog

If you’ve been in my felting world for some time, you’ve heard me talking about this book for sure. It’s one of my absolute favorites in my collection.

If you’ve just recently discovered my blog, and you’re as obsessed about felting books as I am, there’s still time to add it to your Christmas presents wish list :)

I’m talking about “How I Felt”, a book about the work of the late Christine Birkle.

There are many felt makers I admire. But after over 20 years of looking at other artists’ work, Christine Birkle is still number one for me.

She founded the label HUT UP in Berlin in the 90s and was an absolute pioneer of modern wet felting. She has created many of the designs that inspired much of what is currently around in our field.

I was extremely lucky to have come across her work in Berlin in the early 2000s and have spent many hours admiring her pieces live in her shop in Berlin.

I’ve always been fascinated by...

"Filzen: Alte Tradition, Modernes Handwerk" (German version)

"Felt: New Directions for an Ancient Craft" (English version)

by Gunilla Paetau Sjöberg

This might be the best book about wet felting I have. And I do have many

It’s over 20 years old, it doesn’t have amazing photos and it has a lot of text. So, it might not be the first book to grab your attention when you look at my bookshelf.

I have it in German, but there’s also an English version.

So then, what makes it so special?

I think it’s the most complete wet felting book I’ve ever seen. I could call it a felting encyclopedia.

Let’s have a look inside, so that you can see what I mean.

It starts with an incredibly complete History of felt and it covers different felting traditions found in Europe and Asia: from hat making in Hungary and shepherd coats in Turkey, to the felt masks worn by the Vikings, and socks and shoes made in Sweden, Norway, and Finland.

It then dives into felting...

Did you learn to felt 3D objects by laying out the wool around the whole resist? I did. And so did most felt makers. And it’s probably the easiest method to follow when you’re starting out and still don’t feel confident enough to try a more complex layout method. It works perfectly for round vessels for example.

But here’s an issue that showed up for me when I was only working with “closed” felt pieces: how do I add handles to a bag when I have a closed felt shape? That was a tricky one to solve…

This was the moment I decided it was time to try felting around a resist without closing the felt. And that’s when I finally found the solution to adding perfect handles to my bags!

But, in this process, I discovered something else. I found out that the edges of my felt looked waaaay better than when I had to cut them and heal the cuts.

How many times have you cut your felt, tried to heal the cut, and one (or more) of these things happened?...

If you’ve been felting for some time, and you also use the pieces you felt, I’m sure you’ve already had this problem.

No matter how carefully you lay your wool or how resistant your piece has been felted, if you’re using it often, sooner or later its surface will be worn-out. And this is even more obvious if the piece has a pattern.

That’s normal. It’s just the way wool is.

That’s exactly what happened to this bag, that I’ve been using on a daily basis for the last 2 years.

But it’s a bag I really enjoy, so I decided to repair it. Now, as you know, it’s extremely difficult to make new fiber attach to the wool that’s already been densely felted.

Still, there is a solution, and that’s what I’ll be showing you in this video.

Hope you enjoy it!

P.S.: Do you have other ideas on how to repair felt? If so, you’re welcome to share them in the comments below.