How Wet Felting Works

Video Transcript

"First, before we get started, I'd like to talk a little bit about how wet felting works. There's a lot of types of crafts out there that are calling themselves felting right now. So I want to clarify a little bit about what we're doing and what we're not doing. There's needle felting out there right now which is actually a mechanical tangling of the fibers with a needle tool that's used. That actually comes from an industrial process that creates a felt out of any fiber. So they typically use shredded waste fabric. Scraps from jeans and upholstery and things like that. So we're not doing needle felting today. We're also not doing the type of felting that people refer to where you knit first and then you throw your knitting in the washer and dryer and full it. People call that knitted felt or felted knitting. Technically that's not felting at all because all you're doing is fulling and shrinking your knitting so we're actually going to be creating felt from scratch. The traditional way that's probably been done for up to five thousand years. The way that works is you have individual fibers of wool. And this particular roping is about 3 inches long. And you can see each individual fiber. It is short. And we want to arrange all these fibers in an even sheet. When you buy a bat it's great because they're already arranged for you in a sheet so you don't really have to do a lot with it. For the roping we're going to have to lay those out and make this type of an arrangement. But once you add the hot soapy water the soap acts as a lubricant and a wetting agent so that really helps the water get into the surface of the wool thoroughly. And the hot soap also helps the fibers swell up. And there's a special characteristic on the surface of the wool that allows it to stick together and make felt."