What is felt and how do you make it?

Felt, is a non woven material, generally made from sheep wool, but it can be made from other fibers. It’s pretty water proof and burn proof.

One can make felt from wool with soap and water. OR, you can stay dry and stab it about a million times with very, very sharp barbed needles.

Today, I have pictures of wet felting.

Take patches/strips/blobs of clean wool, form them into a long rope like thing, and you have roving, among other names. The blue and the green in the picture are examples of roving. See also the red and the gold roving.

Tear bits of that roving off and layer them over each other like shingles, See the big gold hair blob in the picture.

Then add water, soap and lots of elbow grease. See the picture with the dark spots on the gold blob of hair. After a lot of rubbing, the wool fibers attach to each other. It matts, just like dog hair or some cat fur. Think of the sheep you may have seen in a field, They are not cute and cuddly. Rather, they are filthy and somewhat matted.

Once the wool comes together you shape it. Sometimes you shape during the rubbing process. In the pictures, you’ll see a hat. It’s called a bycocket hat and was popular during the middle ages.

Come see all these things in person and consider taking a class.

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Gene and Art

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