How To: Hand Felt Your Projects

Felting (or “fulling” as it’s correctly known) is the process of using heat, agitation and water to break down the fibres in your yarn so they bind together to create a solid fabric where the stitches are no longer obvious. It’s a great way to add some extra interest to a project.

Felting can be done either by hand or by washing machine (post on that to come in the next couple of weeks), although it’s more time consuming by hand, it’s more suited for smaller items or projects that you want to keep a close eye on to make sure they don’t get felted more than you desire. I’m going to show you two methods, it’s best to experiment with what works out best for you.

Things to remember before felting

• Your yarn must be at least 80% wool, preferably 100%, felting takes advantage of wool’s natural make up (if not sheared sheep would “felt” over time!), man made fibres and cotton or bamboo isn’t going to work here, so make sure of this before you start knitting or crocheting your project to felt.
• Felting will shrink your final piece, to what extent depends on the extent of your felting, the yarn used and what you’re actually working on, but doing a test swatch of a set size in your chosen wool and then using it to practice should give you a clearer idea.
• Watch for colours running, as you’ll see later on, make sure your colours are fairly colourfast and stable, the heat and water will cause some yarns to leak dye - again this can be tested in your swatch.
• Felting makes the fabric very strong and dense and stops any stretching - this makes it great for handbags but not so suited to your lacey little tank top.
• In my experience hand felting a crocheted project seems to take a lot more work and a lot more time than felting a knitted project, just to give you the heads up when it feels like you’ve been doing it for half an hour and still nothing is happening!

Tutorial behind the jump —>

You will need

• Rubber gloves
• Dish washing liquid (Trix, Fairy Liquid, Dawn, any will do)
• A shallow pan
• Something to work the yarn with (I use a potato masher!)
• Your project!
• Some spare time - this isn’t something that can be done quickly!

Method One - Rub It Real Good!

For this you’re going to want to place your project in a sink, run some VERY hot water over it (this is where the rubber gloves come into play) and squirt a bit of dish washing liquid onto it. Pick it up and rub-a-dub-dub work the fibres with your fingers to break them down, I find that using rubber gloves with non-slip grips makes this process faster as there’s more for the wool to work against. As soon as your project shows even the slightest hint of cooling down, run it under the hot water again and add a bit more dish liquid, and just keep on going. I really recommend putting on some good music before you start as you’ll be there a while, I promise though, the finished result is worth it!

Method Two - The Bunny Boiler

Grab your shallow pan and fill it with a couple of inches of water, put it on the stove and set it to boil, add your project and a drizzle of dishwashing liquid and start working it with the masher, and keep on going! Keep boiling and mashing until your project is felted to perfection This was the stage that my pot holder decided to leech dye into the water and turn my lovely cream yarn a dull pink, the rubbing method showed no dye movement at all so I would conclude that it was the boiling water that did this, again, it’s something you have to check with your swatch.

If you wish to felt it additionally after this then a trip in the tumble dryer on a high heat will do it, but keep an eye on it for over-felting.