Friday, December 23, 2011

Chris Felt like Felting

In an effort to avoid Christmas baking and cooking and panic and stress.... I hauled out my collection of fleece, and tried to make my first pair of wet felted slippers! I sketched a boot shape and mirrored it on bubble wrap....
then layered merino fleece in several colours and different directions under the boot resist. I wet it down with hot soapy water, and laid down the boot. The I reversed the order of colours and laid the top side. After wetting everything and making sure the outside edges were evenly wrapped around the bubble wrap, I added the yarn heart detail (I took a picture, then changed it to a finer mohair yarn because I wanted it more subtle)
Cover with more bubble wrap and roll up . Now roll for 10 minutes, unroll and reverse angle of roll. Repeat until you are really tired of rolling, then roll some more... It's that easy! When it was really solid, I carefully cut it in half, then took both boots to the sink for the hot bath, cold bath routine (alternate with agitation about 6 to 8 times, until the boot is approx small enough to fit your feet). Then after a bit of hand pulling and pressing and using your foot to mold it into shape, you can set it to dry.
Ta da. Next pair I will try to make the instep a bit narrower and the toe a bit wider, but all in all they are really cute!
I would also like to mention that it is really advantageous to sew a sole of ultra suede to the bottom of any felted slippers. One to help them NOT slip on the hardwood floors, and two, so that they last 20 times longer (plain ones run through the soles very quickly!)

Now back to our regularly scheduled stress....

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