Feltability

Background of Felting

Felting probably originated among Mongolian sheep herding people, perhaps more than a thousand years ago. However, we can easily "reinvent" felting ourselves. I happened to have made a wool pillow and found six months later that the wool had turned to felt - the surface had bonded together into a nice strong wool "skin". Felt is just the material formed when wool mats tightly and shrinks together.

Wool and other animal fibers have protein cores, which is what makes them so delicious to moths. The proteins act as an internal "glue" which will tend to bond together at any opportunity. Such opportunities arise when they are exposed to 1) friction, 2) hot, soapy water and friction and 3) the jabbing action of specialized felting needles. The third method is usually the fastest and the most specialized.

Most of my creatures, ornaments, wearables, and so on are made by accumulating layers. The wool is held together in a basic shape, jabbed until it holds its form, then more wool is added... Often several such pieces, legs, a body, a head and neck, for instance, are then joined together in a final piece with everything jabbed together with additional wool "mortar" to fill in and cover over seams. Wool can be endlessly added, and even taken away (cut off) to make adjustments. Energy and patience are the only limitations!

Bio

I began felting when my 19-year-old was a toddler, ordering a felting book and some craft wool from a doll making supplier. After making purses and slippers for a while, I realized I could make some much cooler things: I revisited my childhood love of drawing horses and wet felted my first, blobby white horse. After years of struggling with this process, I had basically given it up until needle felting came along. I have been able to remake most of the blobbies into much more refined forms! For these past three years, I have experimented with equine forms, and have also a great interest in mythological images.

I welcome feedback, suggestions, advice, criticisms, pointed wit and barbed witticisms, questions, and other felting conversations.

Advice of the day: cayenne pepper stops the bleeding of accidental punctures from the felting needles.