Felting

The translation of this great introduction into felt-making by Ane from Anes Form is long overdue. But it's here now and you can use it to make other things not related to Easter. How about a hat to keep you warm this winter or come December you could make some Christmas baubles.

In order to felt wool three criteria need to be fulfilled: heat, water and movement. This is the reason you will find your favorite shirt come out of the washing machine in a size that would fit a nine-year-old, while it has become thick and hard. In this situation felting might not appear as something you would like to experience again, but don't let this put you off. This process can be used to create the most amazing things. In fact only your imagination limits you, since the thickness of the material can be varied infinitely and thus create an infinite number of beautiful items.

The actual felting process is simple - the problem is to make the wool felt in the shape you need! This requires some practice, but if you note down what happens to the wool during the felting process you will soon get a hang of it. However, I recommend attending a crash course, so as not to lose heart completely. Many aspects are difficult to explain and it is something one learns best by trial and error or watching someone else do it.

There are three different methods depending on what you want to achieve. You can felt a solid, hollow or flat piece, and the flat method is really just a simplification of the hollow felting method. As Easter is approaching, I plan to incorporate these three methods in an Easter hen and it's eggs. The solid method is used for the eggs and the hollow is used for the chicken. I recommend that you begin by making a flat piece of felt first to get a hang of it and then felt the solid eggs in the end, when you have mastered the other two methods. The hollow filter method is often used when making hats, shoes, mittens, etc.

During the the felting process your subject will shrink. Think about it when you prepare the dry wool, which therefore must be larger than the finished article. For shoes and similar items you need to make a felted sample to get the right size. I have written a bit more about this at the end of the tutorial.

You need:

• Wool (wool tops)


• Green or brown soap


• Warm water (not warmer than you can still keep your hands comfortably in it)


• Dishcloths and possibley a towel


• Felting needle (a special needle with barbs, are sold in hobby-shops and by most carded wool traders)


• A table top that can withstand water, with an edge or the second drain option

Solid felting / the eggs

Take a suitable piece of wool top, and tie a firm knot in the middle of it. Let the wool top run around the knot, while keeping the oval shape of the egg. Remember not to twist the wool, as it will just become harder to felt. When you get to the last little bit of wool, you can pull the fibers out and let them lie around the egg so that you do not see the transition and the wool then sticks to itself. Now you should have an oval shape which is relatively firm.

Now you make the soapy water. The warm water mixed with an appropriate amount of soap. The water must feel slightly greasy when you rub your hands in it. If you have overdosed, wool can take longer to felt. If you underdosed the wool will create a halo on the object you are felting. Experiment!

Put the egg into the water and take it in your hand, making small movements on the ball which gently affect the wool. Throughout the process the ball stays under water. After a time you will notice that the ball will have a firmer shape and the more firm the egg appears, the harder you can work on it. And finally: Voila! Your first felted egg is ready to be embroidered.

Flat felting / hollow felting / hen

Before you begin your hen project I recommend trying to make a flat piece of felt. This gives you a feeling of flat felted objects before you begin with the larger project. Put your wool into a relatively thick layer so you can not feel the table through the layer. It should be equally thick all over and needs no trimmed edges.

Make some more soapy water as above and this time pour the water over your layer of wool. Pour the water out over your hand and then onto the wool, thus avoiding making a hard beam of water making holes in your woolen layer. The wool must be drenched, push a little cautiously to make sure that there are no air bubbles in the wool. During the process you can reheat the water if it gets too cold.

Now put your hands onto the wool and start moving them gently in small circles until the wool begins to felt. When you feel that the surface begins to close together, you may be more rough and when it emerges as a sturdy piece of fabric you can throw the felt down onto the table to make the process to go faster. You should now have created a coherent piece of fabric, and when you have it is time to move on to the chicken.

Draw a bird on your plastic piece (bubble wrap is excellent), and cut it out.

Now make two identical layers of wool tops of a suitable thickness, make sure that the pieces are five to seven centimeters larger than your plastic hen shape. Put one in a dry place, the other on your felt table with the plastic hen shape on top.

Put your finger on the edge of the plastic and pour a bit of water over the plastic. This will run off the plastic and give you a silhouette of the drawn hen. Now take the plastic away and make the hen wet in the same way that you did with your flat felt piece above. The result should be a very wet hen with a dry aura.

Put the plastic hen back on top again and bend the dry wool aura in over the plastic.

Pick up the second dry wool layer and place it on top of the wet plastic hen. Bend the dry layers aura in under the wet hen and wrap it tightly but make sure to maintain the hen shape.


Time to felt! Make the whole hen wet with soapy water. Be careful in the beginning, but as before, the more firm the surface is, the harder you can work on it. Remember to get around the whole object, also at the edges.

Once the felt on one side is firm enough and you can lift your hen easily without wool slipping, you can turn it over and repeat the process on the opposite side of the hen.

Now cut open the hen. This is done simply by letting it lie on the table when you cut. The wool inside the hen has not felted yet, so be a little careful. Take the plastic hen out and let your hand slip into the cavity, while the hen stays flat on the table.

When the hen begins to feel firm and the surface is properly sealed, you can begin to throw it onto the table so that it felts faster. Remember however to smooth it out often and throw it at different angles, otherwise you lose your nice hen form. When you think it is felted through and through, lay it out flat and fill it out with wool to make it round and hen-shaped. Trim the bottom edge so that it is neat. You can either sew the bottom up or sew a small piece of fabric in as an inner pocket for the Easter eggs. Let it dry. Once this is done, it is time to finalize it, by making a comb, eyes, and a beak. This is best done with needle felting.



Help and additional tips:

• Wet felt can be stored for up to a week in the fridge if you are not ready to use it right away. Put it in a plastic bag with a knot in and the water which naturally comes with your project when it is lifted into the bag.


• Felt-test: if you need to do something which must have a specific size you are best off doing a filter sample first. Place a suitable layer of lets say 10 x 10 centimeters, which you then felt. When it is done and dry, you measure your end result size, which helps you to figure out how big your plastic template needs to be to get a specific finished size. Different wools have different shrinking percentages, therefore you should always make a new sample for each new type of wool you are using.


• Holes in the felt can be addressed by adding a thicker layer of wool top. If a hole occurs, stop the process, put dry wool on top of the hole and let the fibers spread over a larger area. You can try to use a felting needle to get the new wool to stick as it is difficult to felt wet and dry wool together.


• If your wool begins to wrinkle or small waves appear on your yet to be felted wool, you have probably been too hard or working too much in one direction. If this occurs, work along them and not across them, as this will just make the waves larger.


• It is never too late! Wool is a great medium and failed projects can always be used for something other than what was intended.

The images in this post are copyright of Ane from Anes Form . If you wish to use the images please request permission from Ane.

The Nomadic Origin of Felt

By Ane Løser
Translated by Eddie Roued-Cunliffe

Humans are not known to have traveled alone through history but have instead been accompanied by loyal animal friends standing by our side. In exchange for protection and cover they have given us warmth and sustenance. The sheep is one of these comrades who has not just given us meat, milk and cheese, but also a fur that is useful in a variety of ways. The qualities of wool itself must wait to be covered another time as it would make for a long and interesting article in itself. However, one must admit that few materials have as many abilities as wool. It is simply a fantastic material. So the sheep deserve a thank you for this.

This article will on the other hand focus on one of the oldest processes known to humans. Felting: the process of using water, heat and movement to create a tightly felted weave. We do not know where felt originated but the process is old, probably older than spinning and is likely to have originated in a time where humans were still dressed in skin.

One of the many legends about how felt came about comes from the story of Noah's Ark from the Old Testament. Noah lined the ark with wool before the flood to avoid the animals being hurt during the voyage across the seas. After the dove brought back the olive branch and all the animals were safely on solid ground again, Noah went back into the ark. In there he saw that the animals had processed the wool with their claws and hooves and the humidity of their breath, and the wool had become felted pieces of fabric that Noah could use to make clothes for his family.

The oldest discoveries, Scythians and the Pazyryk grave
The oldest traces of domestic sheep goes back to 7000 BCE (9000 years ago). There may very well have been domesticated sheep before this time but we have no archaeological finds to support this. How the felting process was actually discovered noone knows either, but it is my belief that we were taught by the sheep themselves, as their backsides are often covered with the finest felt created naturally by a combination of the sheep own body heat, urine and malted wool.

The oldest texts that mention the craft of felting are from China, but there is reason to believe that felting originated as a process in the area stretching from Western China to the Southern Russian plains in connection with the Scythian culture. Felted material protects against sun and the cold and can be used for a lot of different things such as tents, clothing, saddles and covers for horses. In these regions felt was given a magic and even a religious meaning. If for example you wanted to do something good for another person or protect them against bad luck, you would place them on a white felt rug. Another example could be making dolls of felt that protected the household and livestock against evil and brought them luck.

The Scythians are one of the first known nomadic people and around year 700 BCE the Chinese called the region where they roamed, felt-land. Herodotus (Greece c. 500 CE) describes traveling caravans as felt tents on wheels. During excavations of the prince grave of Pazyryk in the Altai Mountains from the year 300 BCE, about 2500 beautiful felt pieces were discovered. Most of these had been preserved well because of the permafrost in the area. The material consisted of tents, socks, ritual dolls, head decorations for horses, felt saddles with inlaid gold leaf and much more. From this material we see that the people who created these things in the cold maintains area were real artists that knew their craft to perfection. With abilities this advanced at this time, the technique of felting must have been around for quite a while in this region. Even today both Inner and Outer Mongolian tribes use felt tents, the so-called "Ger". "Yurt" which is the word mostly used for these tents is actually just the spot on which the "Ger" was erected. Today both the wooden frame and the felt cover is likely to be factory produced.

China: Middle Ages and manufacture
When felting via the Scythians became known in China, the empire did not count it for much. As the material became better known and the quality improved it was carried into the emperors palace as large carpets with silk embroidery and was thus elevated from being an everyday object to something luxurious. Many hundred years later China was in the forefront of felt manufacturing and in 1262 CE employed 29,000 people in this sector, which is quite a few when you put it into perspective of the time. In China felting became even more luxurious, not just by adding embroidery to it but also by lining it with silk which strengthened the material and gave an even more beautiful result.

Felt and freedom in the Antique
In my part of the world, Europe, felt was first mentioned in literature in Homer's Illiad (which is thought to have been written around 600 BCE). Here Odysseus wears a helmet of skin covered with felt. Later in the Roman empire felt became a sign of freedom. If a Roman slave was freed he was shaved and given a special felted cap, a pilleum libertatis, that showed his new status. Pilleum means felt cap and libertatis means freedom, so the cap was simply a felted freedom cap.

The oldest known image of the felting process comes from the town of Pompeii, settled in the 7th century BCE and covered in ashes from the volcano Vesuvius in 79 CE. In this great trade center c. 15-20,000 people were engaged in the textile industry, which covered felters, weavers and fullers. Fullers are also thought to have had great influence in the town's political life.

Discoveries from Northern Europe
Northern Europe does not have many discoveries of felt objects in archaeology because of soil conditions which degrade wool quite easily. But there are some. From Hordaland in Norway we have the oldest find, two felt fragments from the 6th century CE wrapped around a couple of burned bones in a bronze urn. The most noticeable discovery is a felt mask found in one of the ships from Haithabu's harbour (Slesvig, Germany). This mask was kept so well-preserved because before it went down with the ship it had been prepared with tar. This half-mask is brown (dyed with walnut), has pointed ears and looks most of all like a bull with a hole for the nose and two holes 6 cm apart for the eyes. The distance between the eyes fit the proportions of a human which can indicate that the mask was worn by a human, maybe as a part of a ritual.

From these latest centuries not much felt has survived either. Sweden, where there has been no archaeological discovery of felt yet, has on the other hand an unbroken, very living tradition of felting (mostly in the northern regions) which we do not find further south. Even so, in Denmark a special discovery from the 19th century shows that felt is used and at that for one of the most important things in a Samsø fisherman's life. The discovery from Samsø (a Danish island) consists of a felted bag for filtering the fisherman's snaps.

References:
Damgaard, A. 1994. Filt, Kunst, Teknik, Historie. Hovedland. (ISBN: 9788777391859)

Ågren, K. 1977. Tovning: om at lave filt af uld til sokker, vanter, huer og mange andre ting. Thaning og Appel. (ISBN: 9788741360829

Østergaard, E. 2003. Som syet til Jorden. Århus Universitetsforlag: Århus (ISBN: 9788772889344)