Felted Sweater Tutorial Pt 2 - Buying and Felting your Sweaters

 

So you've been itching to make a recycled sweater blanket, but where do you start? (disclaimer: expect serious puns here people!)


what you've missed -
Pt 1 - Collecting your sweater stash

Getting hold of your clothing to felt.

Free option - Ask family, friends and neighbours if they've recently had a wool washing disaster and offer to take the offending article off their hands, you could even try posting on Freecycle.org, Kijiji or Craigslist. Who hasn't shrunk something by accident.

Charitable spending - Get your thrift on, my recommendation is Salvation Army (Among the highest % of profits go straight to charitable causes in comparison to Goodwill which is minimal)

 Check out your local thrift stores sweater section (then Scarves, Skirts and Dresses too).

 

 

Depending on the size of your blanket and the felted size of your garments, 4 or 5 sweaters should be adequate for a nice single sized lap blanket, obv. larger sizes require more wool garments.

Top Tips

• Check the label for wool content, the higher the better, 75% and up, anything else is unlikely to felt.
• It Must be Wool, that covers Angora, Cashmere, Mohair, Laine (French for Wool) any of these in a mix are fine too.
• Be sure to check for moth holes, holding garment up to the light will show any holes.
• To be extra safe you can throw the wool garments into a Freezer for 3 days to kill (hopefully) any moths. Leaving them out in the daylight will also deter moths.
• Check for softness, itchy garments produce itchy felt.

Have a ton of felted sweaters already for cutting? ok overachievers, take the day off and see me at the next tutorial. everyone else stay seated.

Getting felt up! - How to felt your Wool clothing

Wool + Heat + Moisture = Felty goodness

Brace yourself for a one step process... throw them in a hot wash with detergent. That's it easy huh?

Let's take a look at them, not sure if they've been felted already? snipping into the seam will let you know, if it unravels, throw it in again with a dryer ball to agitate it. Throwing the wet article in the Dryer can also speed up the process.

Non Felted Cashmere

Felted Wool

Have a close look at the stitching, if you can easily make out the V of the stitching (or other fancy stitches) then you may need to repeat the above process, if the surface looks fluffy and stitches are hard to depict then we're in business people.


A Woolly fact = Since Wool is a protein just like Human hair, washing it in your Shampoo can help to clean it and Conditioner will work as a Fabric softener.

Next up how to Cut and piece together your Felted Sweater pieces in Pt 3.

Next instalments:

Pt 3 - Piecing together your Blanket
Pt 4 - Finishing up your Blanket