Blog

I want to make some fine wet felt samples. I have successfully made two large fine merino and silk wet felted wraps, but I am not sure that they have the optimum felt thickness. This is why I am doing these experiments.

I am going to make white samples. As I think about this I am reminded of the first blog I wrote ‘ White out ‘ I was just starting on an online felting course and I wanted to record my adventures. I was a novice felter and blogger and I lost my white felt in a sea of soap on my white table. You can read it here

I have a grey table now so that problem will not reoccur!

My large wraps were made with wool layout densities of 4 and 5 mg/cm2. Beautifully thin but hard to layout and prone to thin spots. My new samples will be made with layout densities of 5, 6, 8 and 10 mg/cm2. Each 30 cm x 30 cm sample requires 4.5g, 5.4g, 7.2g and 9 g of fine merino fibre.

I laid out each sample with two layers. The two fine samples took almost twice as long to layout as the thicker ones.

I felted all the samples to prefelt stage and then dried them. My assessment at this stage is that at 5mg/cm2 , although the prefelt is very flexible it contains lots of thin patches. At twice as thick, 10 mg/cm2, there are no thin patches but the prefelt is less flexible.

I added some plant dyed silk to each sample and rolled them together to attach the silk firmly.

I then felted each piece until it had shrunk by 50% which was slightly more than I was intending.

Subjective analysis of my samples

I think the 5mg/cm2 sample is too thin and the 10mg /cm2 sample has become so thick it has lost the flexibility I need. Choosing between 6 and 8 mg/cm2 is harder, but I think I prefer the 6mg/cm2. It feels nice and robust and is still really flexible.

This is my chosen density for the next wrap I will make. Overall the wrap will use 90g of fibre.