Practice Makes Perfect

Our first project is a practice one. Make a small piece, and use it to try out different fibers, learn the felting techniques, and see what you like and what you don't like. My practice piece looks like someone threw up on it, but I definitely know what I like and what I don't like:


I brought a couple of bins of fiber. On the right is a bag of blue locks. Above that is silk that I dyed. Right in the middle, at the bottom, is sari silk, which is basically a bunch of threads.



You need moreno.

The black stuff on the left is silk hankies.To its right is gold tussah silk. I thought I would like angelina, so there's coppery angelina and blue angelina.

So, I started with a piece of black silk gauze, then a layer of black moreno fiber, and then I put different types of fiber and the silk on top of that. I know, it's ugly. I'm not trying to win an award for this, I just want to see how different materials felt.

See those little white pieces? Those are to help you tell if you've fulled enough. I've put tulle on top of the whole thing, then I'll add warm soapy water, then I'll pat it down and make sure everything is wet.

I call this the "assault phase." The wet fiber is between two pieces of plastic. Roll it up inside the bamboo mat, and then roll and roll and roll until it turns into felt.

The result.

I concluded that I didn't like the angelina. It didn't felt in very well. So, I'll take my angelina and use that in my spinning. I use a lot of angelina that way. I didn't like the dark blue silk. I liked the light maroon silk, the deep blue green sari silk, the gold tussah silk, and the hot pink angora. I also felted in some dark blue green moreno and some gold moreno, and I didn't like that. The tussah silk was all shiny, which was nice.