Therefore, the piece you knit or crochet will be much bigger than your felted piece will ultimately be. How much does it shrink? It depends since there are so many factors that go into the process — how hot your water is, how hard your water is, how much the item is agitated, the amount and kind of soap you use, what color the yarn is really, it's a fact! You can felt your piece more or less. If you felt it just a little maybe by taking it out of your machine after half a cycle , you will still have stitch definition.
Only some mammal hair is naturally scaly enough to felt without a lot of work or a chemical additive. The scales on wool, and other animal fibers like alpaca and cashmere, are naturally long and pointy, and can even resemble thorns. These thorny scales, when at rest, lie fairly close to the surface. When wool is agitated, or wet, the scales flare out from the surface. This quality is what makes wool warm even when wet; a wool sweater in the rain tends to get a little fluffier, and can absorb water without feeling wet.
Compare it to a cotton sweater, which absorbs water and gets smoother and flatter, with more space between the strands. This is because cotton fiber is smooth and relatively flat, spiraling to make a semi-hollow core. Great for towels but not for standing on the moor in a cold drizzle. It's also interesting that only fiber from a healthy animal has these properties. A sick sheep will have degraded or badly formed fleece, that will resist felting and dyeing.
How to felt wool The ingredients: agitation , moisture , heat. The more of these ingredients you use, the better. Start with feltable fiber. Wool works really well, other animal fibers like mohair and alpaca can be feltable. Try a swatch first before embarking on a big project.
Some fibers are too slippery to felt easily. Others have been treated to resist felting or colour absorption. Watch out for "superwash," "washable," or white yarns. If knitting before felting, try using larger needles than usual.
I've found that any wool item will felt eventually, but a looser knit does seem to be more successful. Anything you felt will shrink, so account for that in your planning. Needle felting Uses Agitation. Start with clean, carded, unspun fleece roving , and stab repeatedly. Okay, it's not quite that simple. You must stab it with a felting needle.
A felting needle has a hooked surface that teases out the scales on the wool so that they hook on to each other. So all you out there who were wondering why the heck I was going on and on about spinning last week. There is a method to my madness. If you are making a felted project, the first thing you need to ask is: did the fiber come from an animal?
If it did, then it might felt. When you dunk wool into hot water and swish it around, these scales open up, sort of like lots of little umbrellas opening up all along the length of the fiber. When they open up, the scales catch onto nearby scales and grab on. The more fibers you have, and the more you rub the fibers around, the more scales there are to catch onto each other. The fibers get all tangled up, and more scales grab tight, until you have felt.
So if you know more than I do, please chime in here! Some wools have smaller scales, some have larger scales. All of those little details will affect the degree to which the wool felts. Also: The way in which a particular fiber is processed and dyed affects felting.
Did you know that a white yarn may felt differently than a colored yarn of the same type and brand? This is because the dyes can smooth down, or raise up, the little scales on the colored yarns. Under a microscope, animal fibers look a bit like closed scales on a pinecone; the wet felting process causes those fiber scales to open up, and agitating them by hand causes them to mat and tangle together.
Test felting a knitted or crocheted swatch before making the full garment is the best way to make sure the fabric will felt the way you intend. Felting shrinks the material, usually more in height than in width, so check your pattern's instructions regarding size before and after felting very carefully. Felting will not work unless the yarn you use is made with percent animal fiber , and has not been treated to make it washable. Yarns labelled " superwash wool " will not felt.
After you've made your sample swatch it's time to get the felting started! All you need is some hot water and agitation that's you! For small projects like a swatch , you can hand felt in a clean sink. If you have a bigger project, you might want to use a bucket or washbasin. You can also use a bathtub, though it requires a lot of water. Wearing rubber gloves not only protects your hands while you do this, but it can also add an extra bit of roughness.
Gloves with slightly textured palms are the most helpful. After a couple of minutes of swishing and flipping your swatch, pull it out. Gently press out some of the water. Spread it on a towel and examine your progress. The picture below was taken after about five minutes. The swatch is already beginning to get fuzzy; it's harder to see the space between stitches.
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