At last I went and made it. I’ve been needing it for a while, but it wasn’t until I came across a book on felting at the library that I decided to go for it. I just wanted to try some felting techniques. I must say the book is delightfully informative and explains every technique on felting step by step. Check it out, it’s Felting -The complete guide, by Jane Davis.
So I found some 100% wool yarn leftovers and made a 25×26 cm square. I steam ironed it to make it stay flat while I worked on it, and added bits of wool fiber and angelina – I really wanted to experiment with mixing fibers on to the knit fabric and see how well they incorporated. I flat felted the fabric for quite a while.
It worked quite well. It didn’t shrink as much as I expected, becoming a 22×22 cm square after fulling. All the fibers stuck to the fabric beautifully, although the result was not so beautiful itself. It could have done with a lot more fiber in the decoration. The aim was to make it look like algae. It would have looked better with more short fibers added to the bottom, to create some sort of seabed. This could be done after the fulling with a felting needle, but I don’t have one, so I left it as it was. It looks poor, but since it’s a lazy-time/experimental project for myself, I don’t care much.
While the square dried, I prepared the inside with some cotton fabric and my machine. I used some satin I had to make the bias tape I’d use to line the edge of the pockets and to surround the whole piece. Then I sewed it to the outer piece and put the bias tape in place. Now, I don’t know what took me that I decided to to all the bias by hand. Usually, I machine sew the bias to the inside, turn and hand sew the other side with invisible stitches, so that it looks good. I don’t like to machine sew both sides at the same time because I usually get it wrong and I really dislike unpicking my tiny machine stitches several times until I get tired. I also just placed the side pieces on top of the rest and tried to tidy up everything like that. It would have looked much better by mitering the corners. But this pesky satin is very slippery! The solution: first, apply some light iron-on interfacing to the ever-moving fabric. It will become stable and much easier to manipulate. Then mark the folds with the iron -this will make it much easier to put everything in place and make the fabric do what you want it to do. Why didn’t I do it? Didn’t I tell you already? I didn’t feel like to!
Also, this is a roll and I wanted it flexible. But if you’re making a case instead (by folding the object in half instead of rolling it), it would pay to interface the inner fabric, to give the item more body and improve its handling and durability.
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This is a new way of felting I’ve not tried before. I’ve always deferred felting because we’re told to use a washing machine which I don’t have. Agitating in hot water in a pot also seemed too fiddly for me too … I first heard about felting from my husband who showed me a hat given to him by a friend from Kazakhstan. Because this was shaped, and also had embroidery and fur, it looked so nice … It wasn’t woven or knitted or anything, but was just wool beaten together till it felted into shape … sounds a bit like what you did by sticking fibres to the bottom of your felted knit fabric.