Saturday, August 25, 2007

Felting and drying my bag

Day five: I finished the bag and it is, as usual, huge pre-felting. I felted the bag in my washer, set on the lowest water setting on hot along with a couple of tennis balls and an old pair of jeans for extra agitation. Always be sure to put the item to be felted into to a zippered pillowcase before felting because I've heard horror stories about washing machine repairs necessitated by using a washer for felting. Sometimes there is a lot of wool that ends up in the washer or in the bag. With this project, that didn't seem to be the case. I checked the bag after 5 minutes but it didn't seem quite done, so I washed it a total of about 9 minutes, then rinsed in the sink and rolled it in a towel to get out some of the water.

A kitchen bowl and plastic grocery bags work well to helping the bag keep its shape while it dries. This is called blocking. I am so happy to have this finished it time for my friend's birthday. I stayed up past midnight last night finishing the straps and this morning I knit a pocket that I sewed inside and attached the straps using Kirtchener stitch (see my earlier post about this.) Now it just needs to dry and have a button added.

3 comments:

Mia said...

Hello there,HomeMadeOriginals,
I just popped in first time (thanks for the link via flickr) and it is so great to see, how other knitter/felters get their products done. Your bag turned out to be wonderful as usual!

I will be visiting you here again!

Yours,
Mia

Sara Millis said...

Did you see this http://sarastexturecrafts.blogspot.com/2007/08/call-to-all-artists-and-crafters.html
would love to featur you properly... Sara x

Crafty Green Poet said...

I've enjoyed browsing your felt products. Very inspiring. I've just made my first felt, using my rabbit's shed fur, interesting experiment...