This will be a quickie explanation - feel free to ask questions and I'll try to answer them.

There are actually two basic forms of felting - dry and wet, with variations for both.

Dry felting is done with barbed needles - either one or two at a time by hand, which is one of the things I do. The water rabbit I made for Sondra is needle-felted. You take wool roving (and other fibers) and poke them over and over with the barbed needles and the fibers migrate and mesh together. You can actually needle felt a lot of different fibers, not just wool, and not just roving. I've seen some very cool things done using canvas as a base and all kinds of fabric scraps and fibers needled onto it. And using hand needles, you can make some neat 3-D things. I did a lady bug pin for my sister-in-law last year. (I'll add it to the gallery) There are felting machines - both home use (look like a sewing machine, but there's no thread, just a group of felting needles) and commercially - this is how the felt you buy in stores is generally made. (Just found out that Kunin will be using 100% post-consumer recycled soda bottles for their felts...)

Wet felting is a bit more complicated. There's true wet felting where you take roving and layer it and then wet it with soapy water and roll it around to agitate it and it turns into felt. I've never had much luck with this.

Then there is "fulling" where you take a wool fabric and expose it to hot water and agitation and it shrinks up and becomes felt. You can do this with woven fabric. (The better wool felts that you can buy are done this way). I've done this with recycled wool clothing - as long as it is 100% wool and isn't washable, it should felt. The baby booties in the gallery are done with a wool scarf I bought from a military surplus company.

Or you can do it with knitted or crocheted fabric. If you've ever washed a wool sweater in hot water by mistake, you've done this! I've been knitting wool "yardage" on my knitting machine and then felting it by throwing it in the washer with hot water.

Different things felt differently. Some sheep produce a fleece that doesn't felt well. Some blends will felt (like the soy and wool), some will felt in a sort of odd way (like the bamboo and wool where the wool felted around the bamboo...) and some just will not felt (silk and wool - silk seems to inhibit felting, no matter how little of it there is.)

The whole idea of fulling in particular is to produce a thicker fabric which doesn't fray when you cut it. It's warmer than unfelted wool and it's also more water-proof.

That's the quickie run-down!

Wow Patty ... such awesome information you've provided here. It's so interesting to find out how these projects you've been creating come to be. I'd love to try this ... and eventually I will but right now my roof has issues yet again ... so we're working on that for now.

Oh and BTW ... I think we have some of those yummy "fulling" type sweaters in my DD's wardrobe now that she does her own laundry at college ... she says they're even warmer now than they were when she started ... the only problem is they seem to get smaller with every washing ... . Silly kid, maybe she should get in to felting.

- she could make some great purses and pillows and hats and such out of those sweaters that have gone too far!

Thanks for all the info Patty. It is great to find out a bit more about it all. I think I have felted myself and not realised it - a bit like your DD Tania.