hanna birke

felting for a jacket

Summer ... not enough hours in the day to do all the things I want.  

But I've been getting a few things ready for winter projects and winter wear.  I would like to sew a white felt jacket this winter and as I prefer to felt outdoors making the felt for the jacket is a summer project.

I've just finished 5 mornings of felting to produce 6 pieces of felt which should be enough for a jacket.  

The top photo to shows how few supplies are needed for felt.  Some bubble wrap, a dowel, rubber gloves, soap, water, roving and a surface to work on.  Pretty basic stuff.

Instructions for felting can be found anywhere so I won't list them here. Experience teaches though so here are a few things I've found helpful.  I was taught to use nylon and bamboo matting instead of bubble wrap for felting but bubble wrap is much easier and cleaner to use. 

I was also taught to use almost boiling water and to use soap sparingly.  But I prefer to use a lot of soap and to use lukewarm and cold water.  My favorite soap to use is Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap.  I dilute it and then use it liberally.  The felting books say more soap does not lead to faster felting and less rolling and pounding but I disagree.  Use lots of soap and the felting goes faster.

Also many people say you need to use hot or boiling water to felt but in my experience really hot water gives the fibers a brittle or itchier feeling.  Merino roving will felt with warm or even cold water and you'll have a softer fabric in the end.  

I prefer my felt pieces to be soft felted and even a bit sheer in places - some of these pieces still have a few holes or thin spots in them - that's by design.  Once I start assembling the jacket I will reinforce the felt pieces with some hand sewn running stitch in the cream-colored DMC thread in the photo .

I had the felting supplies but wasn't sure whether I would get to this - then one morning last week I woke up and thought - today's the day to start.  When I checked Flickr that morning I found Kat had posted this photo the same day.  Looks just like my felt does.    

I have some dyeing to show you and even a bit of knitting.  Hopefully I'll get to those posts soon.

hats!

I've wanted to make a felt hat since last summer when I did the Nuno Felting workshop.  This week I collected my hand felting equipment and went at it to produce two hats.  The orange one in the photo above and the blue cloche in the photo below.

If you're in a summer knitting slump a hat or other Nuno Felted item is a great idea.  No knitting involved and ohlala in half a day you have an FO.  

One word of caution - with hats correct size is an issue.  My felting book said to make a hat cut yourself a bubble wrap template by measuring around your head (22 inches in my case) and dividing this number in half (11 inches) add this to your 22 inches and then divide by 2 (33/2 = 16.5).  This gives the width of your bubble wrap template.  To get the length of your bubble wrap template measure from your crown to your mid ear (9 inches) and divide this number in half (4.5) and add this to the first measurement and divide by 2 (13.5/2 = 6.75). 

I wouldn't recommend this method.  My experience is that a template of this size will result in a hat that is far too big in circumference and not nearly deep enough.  I ended up using a bubble wrap template 12 inches wide and 14 inches long and rounded at the top.  The template could have even been a bit narrower.

I don't know why but I found that even though I laid out my roving slivers horizontally and vertically, I got a lot of shrinkage lengthwise and no shrinkage width or circumference wise.  Similar to my experience when I felt knit pieces. 

I love my hats but I want to experiment with more modern shapes as these seem very 1980's to me - so - you guessed it - I ordered more roving.  In case you think I've given up knitting I haven't.  I still knit every day.  But it feels like my rows are being sucked into some summer black knitting hole - I knit but my pieces don't seem to get longer.  Tomorrow I'm going to give it some concentrated effort to see if I can't make more progress.