Felting, or felting from wool: what does a beginner need to know?

Felting is a kind of needlework, in which craftswomen create a variety of products from wool: toys, shoes, clothes, decorative panels and even carpets. Under their hands the material comes to life and turns into objects that warm, entertain, delight the eye ... There is a legend that the very first felted carpet was created on Noah's Ark. Anyway now felting is still a popular, fascinating and inexpensive kind of needlework.

Types of felting

Needlewomen choose one of the types of felting or skillfully combine them all:

1. Wet felting is carried out with the help of soap solution and a special technique of rubbing wool. With its help, flat cloths are obtained for making carpets, panels, bags, articles of clothing.

2. Dry felting involves the use of a special needle, with the help of which pierce the wool. Allows you to get voluminous products, such as souvenirs, decor or toys.

Often craftswomen in creating their masterpieces use both techniques and get a truly unique, beautiful products.

What kind of wool is needed for felting?

On a side note! Felting is possible due to the special structure of wool. The hairs have a scaly structure, so they adhere well to each other, i.e. they fall off. For this reason, only natural material is used in the work:

• sheep's wool (the most common material);
• cashmere - mountain goat wool (very warm and absolutely hypoallergenic);
• Angora rabbit wool (especially soft);
  Angora goat fleece and mohair (the strongest, with a characteristic luster), etc.
  In the sale of wool can be found in the form of carding or combed tape. Let's consider their features:
  Rowing tape (another name - tops) - wool for felting, the fibers of which are arranged in long ribbons. It is suitable for both dry and wet felting. To begin work, the fibers in the ribbon must be carefully mixed up. In non-tangled form, such wool is used, for example, for dolls' hair or imitation of long wool on animal figures.

Cardoche - in essence, this is woolen wool. You can say that it is already prepared wool. It is not pre-treated, the fibers in it are tangled. It is best suited for dry felting.
On a side note! To get carding can be independently. To do this, you will need a combing tape and 2 animal combs (it will replace the hand carder). With the help of combs and tangle the wool. However, note that the homemade carding will be thin, since the thickness of the fibers in the tape, as a rule, is no more than 20 microns. How will this affect the work? The product will take longer to pile.

A little about the thickness of wool and what does it affect?

Wool for felting has different thicknesses:

Fine wool has a fiber thickness of no more than 19-25 microns (a term such as "wool fineness" is used). It consists of down fibers. It is suitable for fine finishing work and the manufacture of all kinds of products.

Semifine has 25-29 microns. It consists of coarsened down. It is used for finishing works, for making decor, bags, slippers. Its peculiarity is that it is linty and prickly, so it is not recommended to felts scarves, items of clothing.

Semi-coarse - 31-40 microns. It consists of coarser wool fibers. It is used for felting felted boots, toys, stylized under the olden days.

Coarse wool - from 40 microns. It is used for felting carpets.

Important! Beginners in felting should choose wool with fineness not more than 18-24 microns. It is suitable for mastering the technique of both wet and dry felting. Beginners can make their first bags, mittens, slippers, panels, toys and decorative items with it. It should be remembered: the thinner the wool, the more it gives shrinkage. Therefore, it is worth stocking up on a large volume of material. There is also another correlation: the thinner the wool, the better it is suitable for dry felting.