The How To Series

Wet Felting - Recycling Wool Left Overs

If you’ve been felting for some time, you’re bound to have wool leftovers from older projects. Whether some of your items didn’t turn out the way you’d planned or you just have little pieces from shapes you’ve cut out of a felt sheet, there are always bits of wool you don’t know how to reuse.
I’m always thinking about ways to reuse precious materials, and wool does fall into that category. So, I’d like to show you what happens to the wool rests that I collect, and encourage you to do the same.

Making A Sample To Determine The Shrinkage

How do you determine the shrinkage for a wet felting project? It’s actually very easy. You should make a sample, and measure it before and after felting. There are 3 factors to take into account though:

1. Use the same type (or types) of wool for your sample and project, since not all wool types have the same shrinkage.

2. Use the same number of layers and equally thick ones for your sample and project, since the thickness of the layers influences the shrinkage.

3. Felt the sample and your project to the same degree, since the more you felt, the more the piece will shrink.

Felt Hat Tutorial - Making A Resist For Felting

To wet felt a hat you will need to work with a resist. But, because wool shrinks when felted, your resist will have to be bigger than what you want your end result to be. So, let me show you how to make a resist in the right size for a wet felted hat - in 3 easy steps.
Part 1: Measure the head
Part 2: Determine the shrinkage of the wool
Part 3: Draw the pattern and transfer it to the material for the resist

3D Felting - Making A Resist

In wet felting, if you’re planning to make a 3D object with no seams (like a hat, bag or slippers), you’ll have to work with a resist.
If you want to work on a project that’s felted around a resist, you might be wondering how to get the right size, since wool shrinks up to 40% when felted. And you might be asking yourself what material you should make it with? Does this even matter? Well, it does. And I’ll show you why in this video.

Making Pre-Felt

If you’re planning to make play food, like fruits and vegetables, or even felt flowers, you’ll be needing leaves of some sort.
To make any kind of leaves, I always have a big supply of sheets of pre-felt in several different green tones.
I make them and store them, so they’re ready for my new projects. And that’s exactly what I’m going to show you how to do in this video.

How To Hold Synthetic Decor With Nuno Felt

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.

Soap In Wet Felting - How To Know If It's Enough 

One of the questions I'm asked most often in my live classes is "is this enough soap?" Felters who aren't very experienced are often unsure about how much soap to apply to their wool fibers. But there are a couple of clues that can help you avoid drowning your project in foam. And that's what I'll go into in this video.