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CHA Coolness Continues: Artfelt

Diane Gilleland, contributor

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The Artfelt booth at CHA was a riot of color. Aren't those scarves beautiful?

Diane Gilleland

Here's a scarf in progress: The roving is being tacked to the paper backing with a felting needle.

Diane Gilleland

The Arftelt system makes all kinds of felted projects. These are a few of the kits available at their website.     

Photos courtesy of Artfelt

Here's a piece that was felted onto woven fabric instead of backing paper. After felting, the fabric bunches up interestingly.

Diane Gilleland

The Artfelt booth at CHA was a riot of color. Aren't those scarves beautiful?

Photo: Diane Gilleland

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Here's another really interesting crafty product I saw at CHA: Artfelt! It's a simplified approach to felt-making that has loads of creative possibilities.

The process looks like this: You begin with a sheet of Artfelt Paper, which is a fibrous material. Then, using a needle-felting needle, you loosely punch some wool roving into this paper. Your punches tack the roving to the paper loosely.

Next, your finished piece goes into the washer and dryer. The roving will felt and the backing material will shrink, creating a solid felted piece.

What really makes all this sing is ArtFelt's pencil roving, which comes in a tasty array of colors. It's pulled into strands so that you can easily lay it out in patterns on the backing. As you can see in the photos above, this lets you make gorgeous felted pieces easily.

Not only can you use this system to felt on the backing paper, you can also felt onto woven fabrics. The wash-and-dry process will rumple the fabric side up interestingly, as a contrast to the smooth felted side.

Check out the Artfelt website for a step-by-step photo tutorial of the process and a peek at all their fabulous roving colors. You can get the individual supplies, or check out lots of interesting kits. And then tell me you aren't dying to get felting.

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Comments (2)

Sister_Diane writes: Roving_Redux, many thanks for posting that clarification!
Posted: 1:05 pm on March 5th

Roving_Redux writes: I just wanted to comment that there is a bit of misinformation in the description of this craft process. Artfelt DOES NOT require using a washing machine!!!

After creating your design on the artfelt paper, you saturate your piece with water, rolled it up with plastic (no roving or paper touching itself or anything else), and put the whole thing in a knee high stocking or secure it with rubber bands before putting it IN THE DRYER.

The piece is only felted for 10 to 30 minutes and comes out of the dryer still WET. It is the agitation of the dryer that felts the roving, not the heat.

Also, the paper is the same on both sides and has no "right" side.
Posted: 3:05 pm on March 4th

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