Topic
Angelina is a fine, glittering polyester fibre, and the heat-bondable kind fuses into sheets under an iron. Which type to buy, how to fuse it, and how to keep it from shedding out of wet and needle felted work.
5 min read Intermediate
How to needle felt a bird: the teardrop body every small bird shares, the markings that turn it into a cardinal, chickadee, bluebird or robin, wire legs, and felt bird ornaments that hang level.
7 min read Intermediate
A felt hat in a hot room sounds backwards until you understand what it is doing. Why wool is the only sensible fibre for it, the Russian banya and Finnish styles, how to choose one, and how to felt your own with real template sizes.
8 min read Intermediate
A felt beret and a knitted one behave nothing alike. What blocked wool felt does that knitting cannot, how to judge a good one, and how to get the shape back when it goes soft.
8 min read Intermediate
A handmade slipper wears out in one place and it is always the same place. Leather, suede, rubber, grip fabric and latex compared on cost and lifespan, then the cutting, the stitching and the ease problem that makes knitted soles pucker.
10 min read Intermediate
A 12 cm Santa needs a 5 cm beard. Scarlet wool that will not creep into the white, curls laid in at the root only, and the least face you can get away with.
15 min read Intermediate
Avocado stones give pink, not green. What separates dyeing from staining is the mordant, and what separates a colour that lasts from one that does not is knowing which plants were never going to hold.
8 min read Intermediate
A slipper for a 25 cm foot leaves the needles 37 cm long. Choosing yarn that will actually felt, swatching for your own shrinkage figure, and judging a free pattern before you cast on.
10 min read Intermediate
Crochet loses 20 to 30% in the wash where knitting loses 30 to 40%. Every measurement, hook size and cycle length on a crochet slipper follows from that one difference.
10 min read Intermediate
Wool takes acid dye because it is protein and cotton is not. The acid, the temperature and the timing all exist to make that bond happen evenly — and to stop the pot felting your fibre while it does.
10 min read Intermediate
A needle felted horse is decided on paper before any wool: legs as long as the body is deep. How to set that in wire, build the head and mane, and make a flat felt rocking horse or Dala horse ornament.
7 min read Intermediate
