I am having a hard time it seems. I hand dyed some wool roving, then spun it on my spindle. I made for a perfect oversized purse. Soooo, I knit it up, hemmed it together to make a purse, and I have been trying to felt it, but it really just isnt felting. Yeah, it shrunk the tinyest of bits, but I wanted it totaly felted, to where you cant even see the stitches. I have washed it in hot water about 12 times, and dryed in the dryer( with and without other grmanets) about the same amount of times. Can anyone tell me please what I am doing wrong? This is my first felting project,
ENN
your fiber may have been treated to be superwash. do you know if it was? or where it came from?
[COLOR=DarkOrchid][SIZE=3][FONT=Comic Sans MS]Did you knit it on larger than normally used for that size yarn needles? Fulling is helped along if the knit fabric is loose and holey to begin with. Some wools full easier, faster and more than others… :shrug:[/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR]
I bought the roving simply cleaned and undyed, and it was a tight knit, I used size 10 needles, but because it was my first hand spun, it was very thick and thin,kwim? I bought it from an etsy shop a while back called maine woods and fibers. It really is nice wool. I almost wonder if I didnt do some sort of damage when I dyed it? Would that make it so it wouldnt felt. But the mention of the looseness of the knit, I wonder if that is what is wrong. hmmmm, I think Im gonna go knit a small swatch really loose and see if I can get it to felt from the same batch as the purse I am making.
Thanks!
ENN
p.s. sorry, I have a tendency to ramble and think out loud, ok well type out loud,lol.
You may have used too small a needle. The stitches need room to shrink into. If the fabric was really tight then there is not room of the stitches to shrink tino. I usually use 15s and higher. Another problem could be the temp of your hot water. It may not be hot enough. If you have a top loading machine, you could try pouring (carefully) hot water into water in the machine.
How did you swatch turn out?
Assuming that the wool isn’t superwash, another possibility is that the spun yarn may have alot of twist in it.
For a knitted object to felt, the wool fibers need to move around and both knitting tightly and spinning tightly keeps the fibers in place making felting harder. Most handspun yarn has more twist in it than millspun yarn, in fact many spinners, myself included, prefer to put in more twist because the yarn wears better. But if you’re intending to felt with the yarn, then the yarn should be low twist.
That’s not to say that you can’t felt with it, just that you’ll have to be agressive. If you have any old jeans, put those in the wash too. If that doesn’t work, then you can try hand felting it by rubbing the item together. I have a friend who felts by hand using a sponge with a scouring pad though I personally haven’t tried it.
I too am also interested in how the swatch fares.