Picture Yourself Felting Your Knitting : Step-by-Step Instruction for Perfectly Felted Crafts

by White, Sarah E.

• ISBN13: 9781598634853
• ISBN10: 1598634852
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-01-18
• Publisher: Cengage Learning PTR

Summary

Get ready to bring a whole new dimension to your knitting with felting. "Picture Yourself Felting Your Knitting: Step-by-Step Instruction for Perfectly Felted Crafts" shows you how to conquer the basics of felting, a technique that involves purposely shrinking your knitting to create a firm fabric that can be turned into bags, hats, and other finished crafts. Following simple, step-by-step instructions accompanied by full-color images, you'll learn how to felt both by hand and by machine as you work through more than a dozen felting projects including blankets, bowls, pillows, and scarves. Once you have these easy felting techniques under your belt, you'll even learn how to create patterns for your own original felting projects. Helpful before-and-after pictures of knit and felted swatches help you see what a particular yarn will look like felted and a list of suppliers will help you find a variety of wonderful yarns to work with. Even if you're new to knitting, this book will show you how to knit and felt unique projects with ease. Prepare to get hooked on felting with "Picture Yourself Felting Your Knitting!"

Table of Contents

What is Felting?

Basic description, felting vs. fulling, why is felting so popular?

How Does Felting Work?

Why animal fiber felts, the mechanics of felting, sample swatches of many different kinds of fabrics felted

Felting by Hand

Why would you want to felt by hand?

Tools, step by step instructions, and a small project (maybe coasters) that can be felted by hand

Felting by Machine

Why use a washing machine to felt?

How to use the machine and keep it in good shape, plus an easy pattern (maybe a scarf) to felt by machine

Tips for Success Hints, tips, FAQs and troubleshooting the feltmaking process (how to keep small projects from disappearing, why you should never felt with white yarn, what to do if you've over-felted, etc), could also include a project at the end of this chapter

Felting Projects About 10+12 patterns ranging in difficulty and along the spectrum of things you might want to knit, possibilities include a belt, bowl, hat, poncho or small project for a doll or a child, envelope purse, coffee cozy, pillow, dog or cat bed, headband/earwarmer, felted flowers, tote bag, afghan, wine sack, placemats or a table runner, baby blanket, lunch bag/gift bag, necklace, poncho or wrap

You can really felt just about anything so there are many possibilities

I'd like to show a range of different projects including things for adults (men and women), children, home, pets, accessories, and so on

Could be more than 10, may depend on the deadline

Some projects could also be worked in different colors or with different yarns to show how changing materials changes the pattern

Needle Felting Needle felting is a good way to embellish felted projects, and this chapter will include step-by-step instructions, as well as a pattern to use the new skill (maybe a monogrammed pet bed) as well as ideas for other ways to use needle felting on projects discussed in chapter 6 (with pictures)

Other Ways to Felt (Optional)

Other methods of felting that don't involve knitting include wet felting (using raw wool to make felted items) and taking an existing wool sweater and shrinking it to make a bag or other project

This strays slightly from the point of the book, but could also be a fun way to illustrate different ways to felt (Felt Frenzy does this)

Your Own Felting Patterns How to pick a project, choose yarn, make a swatch and write and knit your own felting patterns, or convert an existing regular knitting pattern into a felting pattern (I can use another pattern or two here as examples)

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