Felt was discovered because people riding horseback atop of animal pelts found that after a while of time the pelts or wool became felted. This felt took a long time to make and they sought a quicker way to emulate this interesting new material.

You will need

• Un-spun wool
• Carders (optional)
• A sheet of fabric double the size of the felt you want to make
• Soap
• Rubber gloves

You can make felt by two methods.

First Method - Using carders

• You need to separate out strands of wool and align them. Hold one carder¹ in your left hand (Handle at the top paddle bit at the bottom so the nails face upwards) and the un-spun wool in your right. Now whack the carder with the wool ² and pull downwards so strands of wool are caught in the carder.

• When you have a fair amount of wool collected (it should cover the whole carder) take the second carder in your right hand and stroke downwards combing the wool so it forms fibres aligned in one direction – up and down.

• Pick up the wool off the carder and place it on your sheet of fabric.

• Start the process over again laying the next piece to one of the sides of the piece you already laid down, overlapping them slightly as you do so. Repeat this again and again until you have a big wooly mat the size you want your finished piece to be with all the fibres aligned in the vertical direction.

Make three layers ilke this ³ One layer vertical the next horizontal and the final top layer vertical again. This creates the warp and the weave that fabrics need to give them strength.

Second method - Using your fingers.

• Pick off small sections of the wool and straighten them out so they are aligned in one direction as much as possible.

• Lay these sections down on your fabric slightly overlapping each of the consecutive pieces of wool.

• And repeat.

• This method will give you the oh so cool messy look. It might take longer but you won’t have to buy carders.

Next Step

When you've finished that take out your bottle of suds and squeeze some over the wool. Fold over the fabric that you laid the wool over in half so that it makes a sandwich with the wool in the middle, fold the edges of the fabric over to completely surround the wool. Take your boiling water and pour over the wool so that the whole thing is wet. Now you have to work all the soap in and make sure it gets to all the wool, you also need to massage the wool to make it felt. Keep working at the wool with your hands massaging over all the wool, kneading it and pushing it in all directions . This is the important bit that makes the wool fibres felt together, carry this on for five minutes or so making sure that you turn the whole thing over and do the other side as well.

Next take your wool and plunge it into very hot water (this makes the fibres expand) then plunge into cold water ⁴. Wash off the soap, squeeze out the water.

Now remove the fabric from around the felt. The felt will still be quite loose at the moment, to make it more rigid continue to scruch and manipulate the felt, rolling, balling, squashing all help to make it into a stronger fabric ⁵

Basically what you are doing when you make felt is exactly the thing you don’t do to your favorite jumper in the wash ⁶. Treat the wool badly, plunge it in and out of hot and cold water again and again, shout at it, kick it around.

There are many variations on how to make felt, it is a very adaptable material. Above is one method which works but you should experiment when making it. You can make spider web thin felt or inch thick mats. You could make a pocket effect by placing a sheet of plastic in between layers of fibres before you start to felt. Using this method you could make gloves, purses, pockets, hats etc.