Don't Fear the Felt, Part 3

When Cat talks, knitters listen.

After my last post, Cat Bordhi chimed into the comments with a suggestion to try felting in the washing machine. Apparently, my 12% / 25% shrinkage rate is less than one should expect from machine felting. Since this is my first felting project, the perspective of experienced people counts for a lot. So I took a break from slipper-making to run a few tests.

But here's the rub: I have a front-loader, which is not great for felting. Still, I wanted to see what I'd get with the tools that were readily available.

(edit) Results from my little n=3 experiment supported what I thought I'd find: front-loaders are not great tools for making felt. Ok, what now? For the time being, my knitting activities are restricted to my daughter's naptime, so that doesn't lend itself well to finding a top-loader outside the home. That's ok. I'm still curious to see where felting by hand will take me. (/edit)

I made 4 identical swatches on size 8 needles (Cascade 220), and tried different ways of felting. Just for curiosity's sake, let’s take a look at the fabrics.

View from the front:

Top row: felted in warm wash; felted by hand in hot water.
Bottom row: felted in hot wash; not felted (control subject).

Shrinkage rates were (in width/length):
Warm: 8% / 25%
Hot: 5% / 19%
Hand: 11% / 28%

Here's a closer look:

Warm

This one turned out really uneven. Admittedly, this may be because it went in with a full load of laundry.

Hot
This one turned out pretty even (this time I put it in with just a pair of jeans), but it really didn’t shrink all that much.

By Hand
Notice how, in comparison to the other 2 felted swatches, this is the only one that really looks like felt. You don’t see the stitches like you do in the others. It feels a lot stiffer, too. The edges on this one are not as even as the machine-felted pieces, but a) I quite like the irregularities, and b) I bet you could even out the edges with a little fussing (stretching, blocking, whatever).

Also, this is the only swatch that turned out completely flat. This is a big selling point with me.

View from back:

(edit) I’ve come away from this little experiment feeling a greater appreciation for hand-felting. Granted, this is within the context of not having easy access to a top-loader, but still, I feel like there’s something really satisfying about being able to experience this amazing transformation right in my hands. (/edit)

I’ll continue with iterations 3 and 4 in the next post. (Sneak peek: I’ve actually already completed 3 and am working on 4, and I suspect the next post will conclude this series.)

Don't Fear the Felt, part 2

So continues the saga of my first felting project... (for part 1, go here)

I am making decent progress on the felted duck slippers. This post documents the development of iteration #2. Sizes and gauge are identical to those of the first felting post. Please forgive the variable lighting in the photos.

I think I've got the basic construction down, now I just have to figure out the shaping & sizing for an adult. The felting process shrinks the length by 25% but the width only 12%, so I'll have to figure out new dimensions for these. The test booties look satisfyingly duck-like, but I suspect they'd be pretty hard to walk in.

1. Fresh off the needles.
In this version, I started working back-and-forth at the point where Duck instructs you to start increasing for the instep stitches. This yields a larger opening than in the original pattern, which is important in this case since the felt will not stretch to fit over the foot. I did not pick up sts around the opening to knit the leg -- I moved this step to after the felting process.



2. Just after felting. Note how in this version, the opening is almost half as long as the foot. It was a lot smaller in the first one I made!



3. Picking up sts around the rim with a crochet hook (this was a HUGE pain. I'll come up with an easier way for the final pattern).


One of the things I'm fussing with here is, I don't want to have a ridge on the inside of the knitted cuff that will rub against the wearer's ankle. This is why you see in the picture above that I pulled loops out of both sides -- I later put the inside loops on one needle and the outside loops on another, and then pulled a loop of working yarn through both the inside & outside loops. This way, the picked-up sts were centered over the rim. But it was a huge pain to get the tension right. There are definitely easier ways to do this, and I am now messing around to find the way I like best.


4. With knitted cuff. The cuff started out with 51 sts, decreased sharply up the instep (dec 2 every row for 6 rows), then a few more rows in pattern before binding off.





5. Comparison to the first iteration (which was knitted whole, and then felted)



More to come...

Don't Fear the Felt

This is the first in what I expect to be a short series of blog posts documenting my first felting project.

I've been resisting felt for years now. I always told myself it was because I simply loved the soft & flexible feel of knitted fabric, but really I think it's because it's just plain scary to take something I've worked on for many hours and subject it to an irreversible transformation that might well ruin it.

Recently I reminded myself that I used to make pottery, and no matter how many glaze tests you do, you really never know what you're going to get until, two days after the firing, you un-brick the door. And yes, sometimes the piece you spent weeks on is ruined, and you run for the hammer in tears. But sometimes the little tea bowl you made in 5 minutes is nothing short of a gift from the kiln gods.

So, after doing some reading, testing, and murming of a few incantations to gather up all my courage, I turned this...



Into this.



(For anyone reading this who is waiting for the adult version of the duck sock, you now see my diabolical plan in progress. For grown-up ducks, I am going to make felted slippers!)

Here are a few shots to show scale.

Left to right: Duck socks, Blue-Footed Booby socks, felt test sock.




The orange test sock was knitted with Cascade 220 (color #2436) on size 8 needles, following the Blue-Footed Booby (i.e., toddler Duck) pattern. I felted it simply by agitating by hand in the bathroom sink. It took some elbow grease, but otherwise wasn't too difficult to get an evenly worked result. It took me about 10 minutes. It shrank about 25% in length and 12% in width.

I have to say, I'm pretty tickled with the way the result looks. But... well, it doesn't really function all that well. Since felt doesn't stretch, I can barely get this thing onto my daughter's foot, and once it's on, it flops around like a clown shoe (and she made it clear immediately that she did NOT like that).

I've got the next iteration in progress on the needles, and planning to try out some different ways of opening at the instep.

More to come later...