What is wool felting?
Felting is a simple process of separating, tangling, and relocking animal fibers found in items such as yarn or wool while wool is a magical fiber that has tiny scales that help it to stick together. The felting needles are a special kind of needle that has tiny barbs on the end. The barbs are going in one direction and when the needle is stabbed into the wool the barbs pull the wool in, but not back out again.There are several methods to agitate and tangle animal fibers into felt such as wet felting, needle felting, nuna felting, and knit felting.
Wet felting
Wet felting can be broken down into three basic steps—getting the fibers wet, agitating the fibers, and shaping the completed project.
Needle felting
This is the method does not require wetting the fibers beforehand. Needle felting simply hooks onto fibers with specially placed barbs and forces them to tangled.
Nuno felting
Nuno felting is the art of wet felting over another type of fabric. This technique begins very much like wet felting, except with an extra layer of fabric between the fibers through and around which the fibers will felt.
Felting Application
Here only shows some example about felting:
Examples
In-class demo
Materials needed for felting:
1. Wool
2. Felting needles
3. Soap
4. Hot water
5. Sponge
How does a ball felting works?
1. Take a small wad of wool and wrap lengths of wool around it tightly till the size you want
2. Wet the ball with hot and soapy water
3. Roll the ball without squeezing
4. You can add the design for example to make strips into the ball
5. Roll the ball in your palms with presure
6. Wash the soap away in cool water and let it dry
For this piece, I just wanted to try out the different color of wool working together. At first, I choose and place the different color of wool. After that I wetted the wool with soapy water. I still can add more layers by using the felting needles so a I think that this technique is very cool and flexible as you can make anything you want.
Yeah! This is what I had done!
More wet felting playing with colors!
This are small examples show that how felting can use in interior design.
What is appliqué?
Appliqué is the process of stitching a small layer of fabric, usually in a unique shape, onto a larger base fabric. It’s a great way to personalize your project while also adding unique color, texture, pattern. Basically you just can do anything you want on the fabric, it does not have the limitation of the types of fabrics, color and types of threads or even the pattern of stitching.
Examples
In-class demo
Try out!
