How to machine felt a knitted bag

August 25th, 2009 in knitting

createdandfelted, member

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Bags before felting.

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My knitted and felted bags are fulled or boil washed to change the knitting into felt.

Most importantly close felting with no stitches showing will only work if you use pure wool,

If you are unsure if your chosen yarn will felt, take a few yards of the yarn, wet it with a little hand soap and rub in your hands vigorously, it should start to felt together quite quickly.

This style of felting requires a few trial runs as each washing machine produces a different felt effect as will each yarn, but fear not your work will not be ruined!

You can re- felt as often as you want.

I use an ordinary domestic washing machine set to a hot wash.

The trick is to add tennis balls to the wash, As well as a couple of pairs of jeans.

Washing machines are designed not to damage clothes, quite the opposite of what is needed to make felt, so the extra items create the agitation needed to felt the fibers together.

My style of felting or fulling requires the bag to be about 2/3 longer and 1/3 as wide as the finished article.

This is only a rough guide as each wool behaves differently so I make trial pieces each time I use new wool

“When I demonstrate with my bags at craft shows folk are always amazed at just how big I need to knit a bag before felting it. I must admit that the first few patterns I designed seemed crazy to me too!”

I use 8mm needles and knit with 3 threads of 4 ply (fingering) yarn. I find this gives a much denser felt in which the stitches completely disappear.

“My aim is for the bag to be a sculptural piece, with no stitches, no seams, and just gorgeous tactile felt.”

Please do click and visit my blog where I chat more about how I felt bags.