Attempting to felt a wool sweater did not go as planned. Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes.
What Is Felting?
Felting is when you wash a wool garment and the fibers meld together. It can produce a really cool look for knitted or crocheted items. I had thought about trying it for awhile, and had read some articles on it. It seemed simple enough.What I Did
When I decided to remake my Aran-style wool pullover into a purse, I thought about how it would look felted. Unfortunately, I thought about this AFTER I had cut the sweater in to. My "brilliant" plan was to try felting the sleeves to see if I liked the look of the wool. If I did, then I'd do the part I was using for the purse.
Let me remind you that this sweater was machine made, not hand knitted. Which means that it is made up of many small pieces of yarn, not one continuous one as in hand knitting. So I throw the piece in the washer with some towels and go do other stuff.
The Results
Return when load has finished to find-----a mess!!!! Bits of yarn were all through the washer, and what didn't come apart, was wadded up. No, I didn't take a picture. Fortunately, the trash can was nearby, and it was chucked in there.
If I had any sense (which is doubtful, sometimes), I could have tried sewing around the cut edge to better hold it together. Or, put it in a pillowcase, again to help keep it together. But no, I just threw it in.
Oh well. Lesson learned.
Next time, I'm going to follow these directions to felt a wool sweater and hope for better results.
