Monday, August 31, 2015

Wet Felting

Twice now I have taken a class on wet felting taught by Tone Haugen-Cogburn. Tone, a member of my quilt guild, has become a friend. Her quilts are always favorites of mine. She is an art quilter and extremely talented. She is originally from Norway and is skilled at many crafts. The first wet felting class was about a year ago. It was for people who had never wet felted before. I really enjoyed the class. Here is a picture of what we did in the first class.
This class was for making felted bags. When you wet felt, you take wool roving (fleece from a sheep that has been sheared, combed and cleaned) and pull small parts off of it.
You stack the wool in layers. You wet it with water and soap (we used Joy) and then you agitate it. You rub it, through it, generally rough it up. The strands stick together and become a felted material. 
Here is what we made Saturday.
The orange piece is a mug rug. I was not happy with the way it turned out. The second piece is a small bag. I like it. When you make a bag, you actually make a pod and cut away the part you don't want. That is the third frame. You can use the left overs to make some thing else. The last picture is my big bag. It is made with five different wools. We used merino wool which felts well.

I want to continue playing with this. It is an easy crafts and so much fun.