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In my last post, I talked about my first felting experiments with small knitted pieces that I hand felted.  In this post, I’ll talk a little about my first washing machine felted project, also knitted, as well as a few crochet felted pieces I’ve done.

Felted Market Bag in Jane Davis’ Knit It, Felt It

I’ve mentioned in a couple of posts about the wonderful little yarn store, Aloha Yarn, that’s about 5 minutes from my house.  It’s here that I’ve received so much information on felting from the proprietor, Nanea.  She has a wonderful selection of yarns for felting, among other things.  I selected some Plymouth Outback, a cool, variegated wool, for my first big felting project, a “lunch bag” that I found in the book, Knit It, Felt It.  The bag was pretty easy to make and was my first time knitting in the round.

Felting in the Washing Machine

No way was I going to hand wash this one.  In the washing machine it went.  Here’s how it turned out.  Not perfectly, but pretty good for my first felting in the washing machine.  I had a problem with stretching at the top of the bag and discovered later that I could have basted the opening with some cotton cord to keep it from stretching.  So I’ll remember that next time.  I learned this from the book, Felted Crochet, by Jane Davis (see column on the right).  I think I may have also stretched the fabric as I was checking it in the washing machine to see how much it felted.  I actually felted this one twice in the machine to see if I could get some more shrinkage.  It’s a little larger than the dimensions called for in the pattern.  I think I’m going to cut open the sides of the bag, remove some of the fabric, and graft the ends back together, so the bag will  be a little better proportioned.

Felting Crocheted Pieces

I couldn’t wait to try out felting with crocheted pieces.  After all, this is a blog about crocheting  primarily, and I don’t want to disappoint.  I had some of the Plymouth Outback left over, so I crocheted some small pieces and turned them into a camera case for my new digital camera and another little purse whose function I haven’t determined yet.

The smaller purse with the button is my camera case, done in single crochet.  The larger purse is double crocheted.  You can see the stitch definition more in that one.  My goal is to get as much of the stitch definition out of the fabric as possible, so more experiments are in order.One thing I discovered so far is that crochet doesn’t shrink as much as knitting, probably because crocheted stitches are denser than knitted ones.  I will definitely be doing more felting with crocheted pieces.

My next post will be about Aloha Yarn.  I want y’all to see what a great store it is.  Hopefully, it won’t takke me three weeks to write.  So stay tuned.

I’m not sure what this flower is called.  Any one know what it is??

UPDATE 7-4-11:  Sorry, couldn’t find the photo of the flower that was in my yard, but I did find this substitute (thanks to sylvar)

FELTING EXPERIMENT UPDATE! (9-6-07)

I wasn’t sure if I should do a new post or create an “update” in the original post,  but I wanted to describe the steps I took to make the felted bag a little more uniform in shape.

I finally got the nerve to cut out a little wedge on both sides of the bag because it had stretched so much when I originally felted it, and I wanted to get rid of some of the excess fabric.  After cutting out the wedge, I grafted the to ends together, using the original yarn.  And I also ran a basting thread around the top edge and drew up the slack in the fabric to create a better top edge.  Then I threw it back in the washing machine to re-felt.

And oh did it felt!  What I realized AFTER I took it out is that it didn’t need to stay in the water as long as it did the first time I felt it.  So it’s about 1.5 inches shorter than what the pattern calls for, but it  turned out fairly well, I think.  The fabric is definitely denser this time around, so it’s a sturdy little bag now.

(UPDATE 7-4-11: You’ll just have to take my word for it because the photo is lost to posterity <sigh>)