Felting a fair isle item - anything I need to know?

Hey all,

I’m working on a purse to give as a gift, and I’d like to incorporate some fair isle patterns into the purse for interest. However, I haven’t done fair isle that often and so I didn’t know how often I need to wrap/anchor my stitches, and what to expect when I felt it down. Any tips and tricks I need to know?

There are several fair isle felted purses so I know it’s possible. The main thing to remember with making something for felting is that it must be done loosely and this applies to fair isle as well. It’s easy to get it too tight when doing it normally so make sure you use a large needle and strand loosely for felting otherwise it will bunch up as it shrinks/felts.

Thanks for the tips. I’ve already noticed a little bit of bunching on the practice swatch which I’m making. I still have a hard time keeping my tension even while I’m dealing with the two different colors.

I think my other question is about how often you should anchor a float as you’re knitting. I’m worried about what the floats do during felting, although it sounds like maybe the safest thing would be to make them very loose and anchor them down often?

I would anchor them every 5 sts or so, but I really doubt it’s that important with felting. They will be sort of ‘welded’ to the rest of the project and at any rate are inside the purse which will probably be lined anyway.

I just felted my practice swatch, and it actually looks a lot like it did before felting. I had a few rows that had gotten too tight and were puckered, and they’re puckered after felting as well, but nothing esle did. I had some very, very long floats that did not meld down, but nothing horrible happened.

Before felting the swatch was 7" tall x 5.5 " wide, and after felting it’s 6" tall x 5" wide, which seems about normal to me.

Thanks again for the help - when I do the ‘real’ purse I’ll be sure to tack down my floats every 5 stitches or so and I’ll try to keep it all nice and loose.

:thumbsup: Can’t wait to see it!

I’d love to see your felted purse. Good luck!:thumbsup: