Making Felt

Last weekend I spent making felt.

It's been in preparation since the Autumn. I've been experimenting with natural dyes - pomegranates, fig leaves, onion skins, cochineal - all ingredients which I can find locally.

Experiments on cotton were very disappointing so I switched to wool.

In November, whilst in Ireland, I picked up two fleeces; one from Evelyn Shannon and a beautiful Jacob's fleece from her neighbour in County Wicklow.

Here's the wool. It's quite dirty and just working out how to wash it took a lot of experiments. The trick is to take out enough of the grease and dirt so that it'll dye well, but not too much otherwise it feels like a pan scourer!

So having done lots of experiments , including little bits of felt, I decided to really try and ''produce'' some.

It took three days.

Friday evening I made the sandwiches - layers of wool running in different directions. I put four layers and as my wool isn't carded I teased it out bit by bit. Even though it was washed  a fair bit of dirt still fell out. But it was worth it as the finished results were scrumptious.

 Two pieces had Jacob's wool, white and dark on the top and the other has wool in various shades of pink, all from cochineal.

Saturday I started felting. Copious amounts of hot water with soap in. Possibly using too much water? Out on the terraza. It's really hard work not helped by a rabbit running around my feet and making me worry that he'd end up with soapy water in his eyes. I eventually shut him in his cage.

Most of the layers began to felt together so after a lot of rubbing I put them out and had a break.

In the end I didn't get back to them until Sunday. They now needed serious beating to finish the process. I rolled them up with bamboo mats and bubble wrap and rolled, and rolled, and rolled. Poured boiling water all over them and rolled, and rolled, and rolled. The bamboo mats fell apart so I started just using bubble wrap and suddenly everything began to felt together and shrink.

I was considering making felt cushions to sell but have decided that they would cost a small fortune because of the time and sheer hard work making felt entails.

I'm going to keep experimenting with the natural dyes and the wool but just for me.

Finished pieces out drying.

This weekend it's poured with rain and I've ended up back with the textiles I love -my own hand-dyed fabrics. I'm making a range of bags to sell - but that's the next blog.

And I now, finally, have loads of rainwater collected to use with my cochineal.