Becka’s Project Journal

I had a comment with lots of questions about felting and so I thought I would just answer in a post and share with everyone.

I love all of your crafts but I am really interested in wet felting slippers and am wondering if you could recommend a place to purchase good roving to use?

In Minneapolis, you want to go to the Fiber Studio.  Pam, the owner, is super nice and she also sells on etsy and mail orders.  Maybe more important than where you get your wool, is what kind of roving you get.  I recommend Corriedale for beginners.  Corriedale is the kind of sheep that the wool comes from, it’s not a brand name or company.  Corriedale is a nice soft fiber, but it is a little coarser than merino and it is much easier to felt if you are just starting out.  It is what I use with all of the kids & beginner classes that I teach because it is so reliable.  Make sure that your fiber does not say “superwash” or “washable”.  Those are treated so that they will not felt.

Also, how many ounces does it take to do a pair of slippers?

That’s a little hard to say, because it depends on what you are doing – how thick they are, how big you are making them (kids or adults, short or bootie style).  I would guess that somewhere between 3-4 oz would probably be enough.

I just tried my first pair and it was a disaster. Not all of the wool I used felted.

I am so sorry!  You might have had a mix of wools that didn’t all felt the same.  When you start out, I would try to make sure you have all the same kind of wool – different colors are fine, but get all Corriedale or all merino.  I taught a class once with some beautiful mystery fiber – all but one color in the mix felted really well and the navy blue didn’t felt at all.  It was really discouraging and my students were patient but frustrated.

I did one color for the inside and another for the top and the top just fell off when I tried to remove it from the resist!

I am guessing this is because your piece started to felt before it was completely assembled.  This is really common in my beginner classes, so don’t feel bad!  Two things are probably happening:

1.  When you first start assembling your slippers (or any other felt shape) you have to handle the wool really gently.  You can wrap it around your resist, get it wet, add layers etc, but you don’t want to do anything to agitate it until you are completely done building up the layers.  Agitating would be anything that involves squishing, patting, rubbing, kneading, or smooshing the wool.  If you have agitated the bottom part of your slippers so that they have started to felt and then you try to add another layer on top, they will not “stick” together no matter what you do.  What happens when you are felting is that the individual fibers shrink, curl up and lock together.  Once that “felting” has started, there is nothing for the next new layer of fibers to grab on to because everything has already grabbed on to something else.  The way to fix this is to make sure that you have every layer and all the parts of the slipper completely assembled around the resist before you do any agitating.  You will want to pat and rub the fibers in to place, resist the urge!

2.  If you add your layers of wool too much at a time, sometimes it doesn’t want to be friends with the other wool.  Thin layers are the key.  Add a thin layer of wool, add a mist of soapy water.  Repeat many many times.  Thin layers means that you should be able to see through it.  Spread the dry fibers out so they are like a thin sheet before you add them to your slipper.

For more great step-by-step help, check out this book:

Feltmaking by Chad Alice Hagen

Chad is a fantastic teacher and she knows her stuff.  This is my “go to” book for wet felting.  She has a lot of steps (like making your olive oil soap solution) so it seems a little involved, but trust me.  Follow her instructions the first few times until your fingers learn what they are doing, then you can start to experiment.  The olive oil soap “slime” is worth every minute of the effort, especially if you are making something big.

Hope that helps!

What you will need:  scraps of fabric about 4 inches square (almost anything will work), scrap of batting , pencil, buttons, sewing needle, thread, sewing machine, iron, blank cards, scraps of colored card stock, double-stick tape or glue stick.

Start with your fabric (a piece for the front and a piece for the back) and batting.  I have a plain tiger print (left) and I made a quick little piece of crazy patchwork by pulling some scraps out of my bin and stitching them together (middle) and a piece of cotton quilt batting (right).  Felt or a scrap of polar fleece would work fine for batting too.  (The photo doesn’t show the backing pieces.)

Draw and cut out a heart from scrap paper to make yourself a pattern.  If you like slightly lop-sided hearts like I do, get your favorite kid or husband to draw it for you.   Size depends on how big the card is that you are making.  My hearts are about 3 inches tall.   Put the pattern on the wrong side of your back fabric piece and trace with a pencil.

Stack up your fabric pieces in this order from top to bottom:

• Back fabric (wrong side/traced side up)
• Front fabric (right side/pretty side up)
• Batting

Stitch all the way around the heart, following your pencil line.  (I hear you.  Somebody said, “But you need to leave an opening to turn it right side out.”  Nope.  Just trust me, we get to that next.)

Trim away the extra fabric, leaving about a 1/8 inch seam allowance.  Clip the dip at the top of the heart and trim off a little at the tip, to help it turn a little neater.  You can clip the curves too if you want to.

Now, how to turn it right side out?

Pinch the layers with your fingertips and pull them apart so that you have just the center of the backing fabric.  With a sharp pair of little scissors or a seam ripper, make a little slash through just that backing fabric. Don’t go all the way to the stitching line but keep it in the center.

Why not leave an opening in the stitching?  I like how this way you get a really nice smooth stitched edge all the way around (no hand sewing), plus this backing part of your heart will be stitched to the card, so it doesn’t show.

Use the slash you made to turn the heart right side out.  With a chopstick, gently smooth it out then bring your heart over to the ironing board and give it a good dose of steam.  (We’re looking at the back in this photo.)

Now, quilt it!  Stitch about 1/4 inch from the edge all the way around the heart.  Do a second border of stitching or some doodles in the center of you like.  I like to press it again after this step.

Now it’s time to assemble the cards.  Choose a quilted heart, a button and a scrap of card stock.  I used some recycled card stock from a holiday project.  Using embroidery thread, stitch through the heart and button to attach them to the card stock scrap. I like to make mine off-centered. Tie a knot on the back to hold everything in place.

There are two quilted hearts stitched to their card stock scraps.  Now to finish them up.  Use double-stick tape or glue to attach your quilted heart/colored card to a plain card.  Write a message if you want to or leave it blank.

Happy sewing!

Stacking Fabric Blocks by Oh Fransson!

Inkle looms are a little picky about what makes good warp. Whatever you use it has to be smooth.

Good warp:
I often use something called “rug warp”. That’s pictured on the left. I can get it at the Weavers Guild of MN, which is located in the Textile Center. Super convenient. It is strong, ultra smooth and comes in all kinds of colors. About $4.50 for a spool.
I have also used perle cotton 3/2 weight. Again carried at the Weavers Guild. You can get it at craft stores and use the little skeins. Have done that in a pinch, but it is more expensive that way. Perle cotton has beautiful shine.
Embroidery Floss. Works great. The little skeins don’t go very far, but everyone seems to have them lying around.
Bamboo/Tencel yarn. I made a couple of scarves on the inkle with blends of bamboo and tencel. Nice drape, really pretty result.

Bad warp:
Anything with fuzz. I have tried sock yarn. It works ok, but due to the way you move the threads as you weave, any little fuzzy bits that stick out get tangled together and you do a lot of picking fuzz out of your weaving and prying things apart. Some experimenting with sock yarns might get you the perfect thing. Merino yarn is a disaster. I tried a single ply lace weight and it just plain didn’t work. Wrong kind of yarn for this kind of loom.

Probably good:
I haven’t tried but I imagine that cotton yarns would work great, smooth nylon ribbon yarns too.

I had several comments from my last giveaway asking for help with inkle looms. So here is the start to a series all about what I know! First things first, we need to start with vocabulary. Weavers have all kinds of strange words to describe the parts of looms.

Inkle looms are small tabletop looms used to make long narrow bands – up to 4 inches wide, 9 feet long. Mine comes from Beka Inc and I love it. I am the keeper of 18 of these for the kids programs at the Textile Center and these ones are durable!

Shed – the opening that you pass the shuttle through when you are weaving. On an inkle loom, you move one set of strings up and down, creating the shed.

Heddles – hold down every other thread. On an inkle, one set of threads stays in place, one set moves up and down.

Warp – the long threads that you put on the loom. Inkles make a “warp-faced” weave, which means you only see the warp threads in the finished weaving. This inkle has a continuous warp, which means it is one big loop, with all of the separate colors tied to one another.

Tension Bar – this is the only moving piece on this loom. It can be loosened and tightened to adjust the tension in your weaving.

Weft – The thread that you weave back and forth through the warp. You carry it on a shuttle. It passes through the shed. On an inkle, this thread hardly shows in your finished piece.

Shuttle – a thread holder for your weft thread. You also use the shuttle to press or beat the threads tightly together as you weave.

It was a weekend for an experiment. I bought a nice merino wool scarf at a holiday sale. It is plain peacock blue, which is a lovely color, but it seemed to need a little something. I thought about shibori dyeing it, but I am a little over shibori right now. So I went and got a bottle of discharge paste. What’s that? It’s like bleach in that it will take the color out of almost any natural fiber, but it is not as nasty to work with. Bleach will also liquify wool and silk, which is not usually an effect you want. I have heard about discharge paste, but never used it, so here goes the experiment.

I first cut a freezer paper stencil of a dragon. (love dragons) I was inspired by a medieval dingbats font. I redrew this guy and simplified him a bit to make a better stencil.

Here’s the stencil partly cut. I folded my paper in half and cut two at once so I would get a mirror image.

Then I ironed it on to the scarf. (If you want a good tutorial about freezer paper stencil, just google. There are a bunch). Next I painted on my discharge paste. It is roughly the consistency of egg whites and smells like old tuna. (No kidding.) Not seriously objectionable, but not so charming, shall we say?

The key is to make sure it soaks in to the fibers. This picture has it all painted on (although you can’t tell). The magic doesn’t happen until after it has dried and you iron it.

So, stay tuned for tomorrow for the results!

Weaving a coaster
An absolutely lovely tutorial featuring the weaving project I did at family day at the Sun Valley Center. What a nice compliment! Thank you!