Topic
Wool onto wool works beautifully. Wool onto cotton needs a trick, and wool onto a fleece jumper barely works at all. Which fabrics take needled fibre and why.
3 min read Intermediate
Felt is the best backing for bead embroidery there is — stable, unfraying and thick enough to bury a knot. The three stitches that hold beads, and how to finish the back.
4 min read Intermediate
Undercoat felts, guard hair does not, and the difference decides whether you get a keepsake or a bag of fluff. How to collect, wash and work with it.
4 min read Intermediate
Cat fur felts more readily than dog hair and gives you far less of it. What to make with the small amount you get, and the one safety point worth knowing.
4 min read Intermediate
A felting machine is a sewing machine with no thread and twelve barbed needles. What it does well, what it cannot do at all, and whether you need one.
4 min read Intermediate
Knit it huge and loose, wash it hot, and it becomes dense fabric that never frays. The rules for hitting a target size instead of a felted disappointment.
4 min read Intermediate
Felted slippers are made four different ways — knitted, crocheted, wet felted over a resist, or cut from an old jumper. Which one you should use depends on which craft you already have in your hands.
10 min read Intermediate
A simple felted bag pattern with the arithmetic explained, so you can size it to any yarn instead of hoping somebody else's gauge matches yours.
5 min read Intermediate
Several hundred felt balls, a strong thread and a long evening. How many balls a rug actually needs, how to string them, and how to stop it curling.
4 min read Intermediate
Onion skins give strong golds, ambers and rusts from something you throw away, and unusually among natural dyes they work without a mordant.
4 min read Intermediate
Dyeing your own fibre is cheaper than buying it dyed, gives colours nobody sells, and is easy to do badly — the one thing that ruins roving is agitation.
4 min read Intermediate
Dyeing a finished wool garment is the same chemistry as dyeing fibre, with one extra hazard — everything that makes the dye bond also makes wool felt.
7 min read Intermediate
