Cobweb Felting

We had a great time at the Kentucky Wool Festival this year. In the sheep & wool tent, we each demonstrate a fiber related skill - from carding, to spinning, knitting, weaving, and much more. My demonstration was wet felting. I have so much to learn about wet felting, but the basics of it are really simple: Wool + Soapy Water + Agitation = felt. I was motivated to try new projects while at the wool festival, so I made a little goal to experiment more with purses, and scarves using the wet felting technique.

I was particulary inspired by a small sample of merino that I wet felted at the festival. It felted with such thin layers and draped so nicely. I wanted to try this with our icelandic lamb roving. (after all, we get a good deal on icelandic wool.. a little grass, little hay in exchange for the wool, and not to mention, we have a good deal of it - especially now that it's shearing time!)

This is what came from that experiment -

This scarf was made by layering very thin layers of roving and felting using soap and water. The wool was from a moorit badgerface lamb. The scarf draped nicely, like I had hoped and was soft to the touch. There were a few places on the scarf that were very thin -almost holes, so I went on-line to research scarf making and was surprised to learn that this style of felting actually has it's own name- Cobweb Felting. It is intended to be very thin, sometimes with some holes even!

I am looking forward to felting more scarves using this method, and have ordered some dyes to experiment with hand dyeing the scarves also after they are made. There are just so many things that you can make with wool (and other natural fibers) and so many different techniques to try!