The Dodo Blog

You plan the piece you want to make.

You draw and cut the resist.

You lay your wool.

Everything is going great, but when you start fulling, your felt just seems to be stuck. Somehow the wool just doesn’t seem to become compact. In fact, nothing seems to happen.

You’ve been felting for hours and you feel tired. What started out as fun is now getting on your nerves. So, you decide to stop.

But then you ask yourself:

WHAT HAPPENS TO MY PROJECT IF I STOP NOW?

IS MY PIECE RUINED?

SHOULD I JUST LEAVE IT ON THE TABLE LIKE THIS? (I ACTUALLY NEED THE TABLE!)

I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT WENT WRONG!

Do you recognize the scenario? It’s happened to me dozens of times. The difference when it happens now is that I know exactly what to do.

So – because I suspect it’s happened to you too – I wanted to bring you a couple of tips today on what to do.

Let’s start with “what went wrong”

Well, felting is a physical but also a chemical process. That...

As I have been talking about for some time, I’m working on a masterclass about hats.

Deciding what hats to teach about was a hard task. It’s a topic that really allows you to explore your creativity. There’s no end to what you can do with felted hats. But I decided to go for the classics. I bet I’ll come back to the hats subject to explore it further, but the classics are a great way to start. They give you the basics that you can build upon later.

So, that means I’ve been working on the following hat types: the beret (of course), the cloche (also fundamental), the fedora (an imperative), the bowler and the floppy wide brim hat. I’m really excited about this masterclass and I’m having trouble keeping quiet about this

So, I wanted to show you some photos of the finished pieces.

One pattern, three hats

The Fedora

The Cloche

The Bowler

I’ve already filmed the part of the...

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...

So, you’d like to learn how to felt hats for your kids Then this is the right workshop for you.

After this workshop, you’ll be able to customize the hats by changing the size and the color. And, once you get the hang of it, you can also make them in any shape you want.

It gives you the instructions for 6 different head sizes, from 33 cm (newborn) to 51 cm.

This is an intermediate level workshop, so you should have some experience and feel confident with the wool already.

You’ll be felting around a resist, and the project should take you about 3 to 4 hours to complete.

You’ll need the usual equipment to wet felt, plus a white wool batt (around 100 grams), a white and a yellow wool top (around 50 grams each).

With this workshop you’ll get 8 downloadable high-definition videos, and 2 PDFs, all of which you can save in your computer, and return to any time you want.

You’ll learn:

1. How to make the resist for the right size
2. Which is the best material...

Hello!

A couple of weeks ago, while I was teaching a workshop about hats in Lisbon, I promised to make a short PDF on how to determine the size of a resist for a felted hat, because that kind of information is easy to forget after some time.

I ended up getting carried away and making a video on the subject. So I wanted to share it with you as well. It’s a very short video workshop, that shows you how to make a resist in the right size for a wet felted cloche – in 3 easy steps:

1. Measure the head
2. Determine the shrinkage of the wool
3. Draw the pattern and transfer it to the material for the resist.

If you’re looking for more details on how to determine the wool shrinkage, check out the video I made on it. And there’s also a lot more on the possible materials for a resist on another short online workshop.

I hope you enjoy these and share them with your creative friends!

You’ll probably be busy with all the preparations for Christmas and New Year’s...