Now that I’ve experimented a bit with felting, I don’t know why I was so nervous to try it before!
I found a copy of the book Felted Crochet at the library. It outlines the basics of both felting by hand and felting in a washing machine. The book includes a wide variety of projects to crochet and then felt. I decided to try both types of felting. First, I’m hand felting with a small project in my bathroom sink, and next I’m trying a slightly bigger project in the washing machine.
Hand Felting the Bowl
Searching through my yarn stash, I found a bit of Patons Merino left over from a custom order a while back. I’ve heard that it’s a good yarn for felting.
I didn’t use a pattern here. I just worked single crochets in the round like I was starting a hat, and continued to form the bowl shape until I ran out of yarn. Then, with the hottest water out of the bathroom tap and a bottle of liquid dish soap, I rubbed and scrubbed and agitated for minutes at a time. I shocked it with cold water every few minutes to lock the fibers together and check the progress of the felting.
What a hot and tiring task! It’s so satisfying though, because you can actually see and feel the transformation of the item in your hands. This is good for smaller items, but I don’t know if anything bigger than this bowl would have been doable in my small sink.
Machine Felting the Slippers
This slippers pattern came from the Felted Crochet book. It’s crocheted with 2 strands of worsted weight wool and 1 strand of eyelash-type nylon together. The pattern was so simple, and these things worked up so fast. Into the washer they went…
I took the very simple approach of just tossing the slippers into the washer with a pair of jeans. After a full cycle, there was some felting going on, but not enough for my liking. I got impatient. I tossed them in the dryer on a gentle cycle to speed up the shrinking process. Later, I realized that I should have thrown them in alone, rather than with half a load of dry laundry. The eyelash yarn sort of matted into the wool. The slippers were not nearly as fluffy as the pictures suggested they should be. They still turned out just fine: warm and soft. The good thing about these slippers is that if they’re too big for the recipient, she can just wet them, throw them in the dryer, and shrink them to fit (blocking them by wearing them just after they come out).
My second attempt at the pattern with some different yarn turned out just like I’d hoped. Once they’d felted down as much as they would in the washing machine, I also threw these ones in the dryer to get them to shrink a bit more. I was a little crunched for time, and I knew they had to shrink down quite a bit for the recipient’s small feet.
The wool is a deep turquoise and the eyelash yarn is solid black. The felting worked much better this time and the slippers stayed fuzzy rather than matted. I think it’s because I used polyester for the fuzzy part rather than the super soft nylon I used the first time.
She loved them! So did the rest of the family. I may have to make a whole bunch next time…
I’m not sure which method I prefer, by hand or by washing machine. I think it depends on what I’m working on and the size of the project. When I use the washer again, I’ll felt more than one project at a time and use either a pillowcase or a lingerie bag to hold each item.
Have you felted any of your crochet or knit projects (on purpose, or accidentally)? Tell us about it in the comments!
