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All ison
Holland writes:
'I've done a small amount of felting, the felt
balls I made for the caterpillar (see
how he was made) were very easy and great fun
for the children. There was no pressure, just grab a handful
of tops, shape them into a rough ball, add a little soapy
water and roll.
The Santa (see
how he was made) was a little more difficult. He was made through
trial and error but gave a satisfying result. I guessed the
amount of fibre, bundled it into little packages and then let
the washing machine do the rest!
I've always been put off by the apparent
exertion that feltmaking appears to need. A few times I've
begun a felted piece and then walked away from it, the results
not being as fast as I would like. When Susan bought in the
prefelt fabrics and then the felting mats I thought I would
give it another go.
As the time of testing is late November, I
decided to make a snowman. I had intended to make the
snowman into a puppet but he went horribly wrong! However,
the exercise was worthwhile as I got to use and test the
bamboo mat, prefelt fabrics and bubble wrap.'
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Here are my findings:
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The
bamboo mat made light work of the fulling (stiffening) process. Wrapping it around a
rolling pin and rolling it back and forth over a tea
towel worked best.
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I initially placed my
prefelt fabric
directly onto the mat but after the first rolling, I
found that the fabric had attached itself. I was
able to pull it off quite easily although this would
have been more difficult if I had left it until the end.
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Putting a layer of bubble wrap between
the prefelt fabric and the bamboo mat stopped the fabric
from sticking to the mat and helped to keep the
components of the snowman together.
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Rotating the pieces encourages shrinkage
in all directions.
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The snowman consists of two layers of
undyed prefelt and a hat cut out from the black prefelt.
I sprayed each of these, front and back, with soapy
water. I placed a piece of bubble wrap, slightly smaller than
the body, between the two layers to create a void.
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Conclusion
The prefelt did not shrink as much as I
had expected but the pieces did felt themselves together
quite readily. The resultant fabric is very soft and
dense. Adding additional layers of prefelt would
create a stiffer fabric which would probably support the
snowman's top-heavy head. Using the piece of bubble
wrap inside the snowman's body worked well as a resist and
would work equally well for use in 3d wet felting.
Used with upbeat music playing in the
background, the bamboo mat made light work of the
feltmaking process. I highly recommend that it is
used in conjunction with a rolling pin.
Experiment with the technique:
Here is something else I tried, a
simple and fun project The black prefelt
makes a good background for the swirls of
brightly
coloured wool tops.
Browse the
Felt Making section to see
more felting products or visit the
Book
Shop to see
books about Felt Making to
learn more about the craft
Allison designs and sets the FIBRECRAFTS catalogue, creates
the email newsletter, feeds the web site and
photographs the stock.
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