Monday 5 October 2015

Felting

On Friday in the textile workshop I did Felting. Felt is a textile that is produced by matting, condensing and pressing fibres together. Felt can be made of natural fibres such as wool or synthetic fibres such as acrylic, in my textile workshop I used wool.
 
 
The first step to felting is getting the equipment, this includes; a towel, bubble wrap, a piece of netting and cotton and a bottle of soapy water. The next step is picking out the colour wool you want to use. to start off with I used the original colour wool which is an off white. I didn't go straight into using a brighter colour as I wanted to get use to the process of felting beforehand. After choosing the colour I pulled pieces of the wool and placed them horizontal across the bubble warp I then repeated this vertically over the wool which was already placed down. I did this till it was roughly A4 size and to the thickness I wanted it to be.






After removing the netting I slowly began to roll the wool up in the bubble wrap making sure as I did this that the wet felt was not creasing. For approximately 4 minutes I had to roll the felt back and forwards making sure I used pressure. Doing this compresses the wool fibres and causes them to stick together.
 

 
Once the first for minutes of rolling the wool had passed I unrolled the bubble wrap and the felt had already began to stick together. I then rotated the felt clockwise and added more warm soapy water and repeated the same process as before. Overall I rolled the felt in the bubble wrap for 16 minutes. Throughout this process the felt shrinks and to make sure that all the wool fibres are compressed together I rubbed my finger in circular motions over the wool and if the wool was not stuck down it had to be rolled again, luckily my felt stuck together so I then had to go forward with the next step.
 


After I was happy with the way my felt looked and made sure it was not going to come apart I rolled it up in a piece of cotton. I then boiled a kettle and placed the rolled up felt in a bowl and waited for the kettle to boil. once the kettle had boiled I poured in into the bowl and times 1 minute on the clock. after the one minute was up I rinsed the boiling rolled up felt under cold water until it was cool. I did this process to make the wool shrink even more and make any unknown loose wool fibres sick together. 


Once the rolled up wool was cool enough to handle I squeezed out the water and unrolled the felt. I was very pleased with the outcome and placed it on the drying rack to dry.