ADVENTURES IN WOOL FELTING

Here's my stash of home-felted wool, so far. I have learned so much, especially from my on-line friends. There's a treasure trove of collective information about this at the Wooly Buddies yahoo group.
1. When thrifting for wool, pants and skirts will yield more wool than blazers, that contain so much tailoring.
2. You do need to soak it in the hottest of water so if you have a front loader, use a tub.
3. Stir it in the tub with either JetDry, or Tide without bleach. Both are known to be excellent at loosening the fibers. Others say any laundy detergent/soap works.
4. I found it helpful to wash it first, then do the soak thing, then wash again in the machine, and then dry on hot. Once dry, dry on hot a bit more.
5. This really isn't "wool felting" but everyone calls it that. It is "wool fulling" because the fabric was woven when I started. Wool felting is starting with wool from the sheep, and felting it. No weaving. Who knew?
6. This has been really interesting and fun! And I have a nice, soft, fluffy stash of wool to use for needle keeps, applique, etc. The possibilities are endless as to what you can do with it.

FELTING WOOL FOR APPLIQUE

Felted wool is so very expensive, but so nice. I've heard you can felt your own, so I gave it a try. I pulled a pair of off-white wool pants from my donate bag and cut them apart. I washed the resulting fabric on high, and dried it on high. Not quite good enough. I have a front-loader, and I think it needs to soak. So I then soaked the wool fabric from the pants in a hot tub of water, and stirred with a wooden spoon. After the water cooled on it's own, I again ran it through my washer on hot and high, and high in the dryer. Voila! Really nice felted wool.

So then I pulled two wool blazers from my donation bag. Nice buttons to harvest there too! Then I went thrifting. What fun! I didn't care the size or condition of the garment. Just the color and quality of the wool. I found these four blazers. They are getting felted tomorrow, and I'll let you know the result. For very few dollars, I expect to have some nice wool felt. Now I'm on the look-out for some green wool thrift items, for stems and leaves.

Oooh, also found a really nice pair of silk ladies slacks. $6. Didn't buy them, but if they are still there I might. That's a lot of silk, and I have been collecting silk ties too. Oh, the possibilities. So many projects, so little time.