WET FELTING TUTORIAL!!

Hi again! I promised a step by step guide as to how I have done wet felting in my last post, so here it is! I got the original tutorial from this link here - http://rosiepink.typepad.co.uk/rosiepink/tutorial-wet-felt-making-for-beginners.html

Certain things I have done are slightly different to the above tutorial, but it's the same basic principles.

To start off, I gathered together different colours of felting wool ready for wet felting, a sushi mat, a sheet of bubble wrap (that is slightly bigger than the sushi mat), a sheet of sheer netting, a bar of olive soap and a spray bottle with warm water inside. Also say hello to James :) who is looking very happy in the back there :)

His blog is here - http://jamescarlisle.blogspot.co.uk/

Take a look at his stuff.. It's goooooood!

To start, I placed the sheet of bubble wrap (bubble side up) over the sushi mat and began laying out pieces of wool going from left to right and then right to left going back on itself.

Here is the first layer of the wool laid up. Because I want to try a mixture of colours for this sample, the next layer will be pink.

For the second layer, to ensure the wool's fiber's mesh together when the water is added, the wool is laid out vertically this time going up and down and then down and up while moving along the sheet.

 It will look this when the second layer is completed. 

 The previous steps should be repeated to create four layers of wool. I used purple for the third layer which ran horizontally, and then for the final layer pink which ran vertically.

To start the wet felting technique, I placed the sheer netting over the wool laying on the sushi mat and I then began to spray it with warm water.

The wool must be sprayed thoroughly to ensure the wool is completely damp. You don't need it to be totally saturated but it has to be rather damp for the technique to work! To mesh the wool together, I began rubbing my hand over the wet wool in a circular fashion making sure I covered every inch of the sheet. I did this for a few minutes.

 Afterwards, I took a bar of olive soap and rubbed it over the wet wool. I also did this for a few minutes and used my hand again to massage the wool to ensure all the layers merge together.

 Once it was all done, I was ready to see whether the technique had worked! I peeled the sheer netting carefully from the wool and removed the sheet of bubble wrap underneath and placed the wet sheet on top of the sushi mat.

To mesh the fibers of the wool together even more, I rolled up the sushi mat tightly and began rolling it back and for on the table vigorously for a couple of minutes.

 Then to remove all excess moisture from the wool, I drained it by squeezing the sushi mat tightly over a sink until most of the water was gone from the sheet of felt.

Here is the felted sheet once finished. It is slightly patchy in places but this was due to me not adding enough water at the start. This is something I will improve on next time!

Even though this sample didn't get used, it is always good to let the felt sheet dry out so I hung it up the wall to do that ;P

And that's pretty much wet felting! I know I could have done it ten times better but what can you do? I hope that with more practice, I will improve my wet felting skills :)

If anyone has any further questions about this, leave a comment :)