Things I Learned Felting Sweaters.

I’m prepping for the next Church of Craft meeting at the moment. I can’t reveal the project we’ll be doing quite yet, but I will say it involves felted sweaters. So, I’ve just felted a pile of thrifted sweaters in my washer and dryer, and learned some interesting things in the process. Thought I’d pass them along:

Fiber is important. Natually, you need wool to make felt. (Pun intended?) Mohair and cashmere also felt up nicely. I’ve read a lot of stuff around the web that says any sweater with at least 50% wool can be felted. But I picked up an 80% wool/20% nylon sweater, and I wasn’t too happy with the results. It took an additional trip through my washer and dryer in order to felt properly, and now it’s scratchier than the all-wool sweaters. For the record, the 75% wool/25% cashmere sweater I felted came out much thicker and stiffer in texture than the all-wool ones.

Watch for moth holes! I thought I was scoring big when I got a 100% wool sweater with a few little moth holes for a dollar. Little did I know that the felting process would enlarge those holes, and reveal many more. That sweater is flippin’ perforated! Ah well, it’s an opportunity to try out that sweater-embroidery technique in Craftivity.

Lint, Linty Lint-Lint-Lint. Who knew? It gets everywhere. I had to wipe bits of felt out of my washing machine afterward. And I found it helpful to stop my dryer every 30 minutes or so and clean out the big honkin’ glob in the lint-trap. Once the sweaters were dry, I ran a lint-roller over them to pick up the blobs that were still clinging.

Interestingly, the wool/cashmere sweater picked up a lot of pilling on its surface. I think this happened because I felted it twice (since the wool/nylon one needed another go, I tossed them all back in). Next time, I’d felt this blend only one time — it did beautifully, and actually looked a little worse after the second wash. But, removing the pilling is easy — just get a pumice stone, like the ones you buy in drugstores to grind the callouses off your heels. It’ll also pull off pills.

Tiny patterns may not survive. One of my sweaters had a lovely, delicate heathered pattern of violet and green. I thought it would look great felted, but the felting process blurred a lot of the pattern out. Now it’s a fairly uniform purple. Not the end of the world, just interesting.

. . . All that said, this felting thing is fun, and I can’t wait to start stitching up my pile of soft, fuzzy fabric!

Read more about felting here and here.