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Fiber arts - How to Turn Wool into Art Dolls   by Debby McCandless

Learn a simple fiber arts technique and you can make fabulous art dolls. Show your unique personality to the world with handcrafted dolls made using wool.

What is this fiber arts technique? A creative process called dry felting or needle felting. You can make fun 3D sculptures with this method.

What is needed to make art dolls? You will need a felting needle, a foam pad, animal fiber, cloth covered floral wire, scissors, and a great idea.

Felting needles are special needles that have barbs on them. As you punch the fiber with the needle, the barbs tangle the fibers creating felt. You can make different shapes, put those shapes together, layer wool onto the shapes, and build your unique dolls. Felting needles come in different gauges and shapes. A general starting needle is a 36 gauge triangle needle.

You will need a dense foam pad. Styrofoam does not work. Your foam should be at least two inches deep. The foam pad is what you lay your work on to jab it with the needle. The foam pad protects you, or the table you are working on, and keeps the needle from hitting something hard and breaking.

Animal fiber such as sheeps' wool or alpaca fleece should be used. Coarser wool is harder to felt. Medium to fine wool felts great. The wool should be cleaned and carded before using.

A cloth covered floral wire is used as the skeleton or wire frame for your art doll. A wire frame is not absolutely necessary, but it does make your doll more pose-able and sturdy. The wool is wrapped and needled around the frame.

A small pair of scissors is used to trim felt. Once your art doll is made, you may want to lightly skim the surface with the scissors to clip off any stray fibers to make your handmade doll less hairy.

Great ideas are found all around you. Look at your life. What is your profession? What are your hobbies? Can you think of any unusual characters in your life? Would your uncles' quirks work great on a dragon? Start looking at everything in terms of a new character to make and you'll be surprised at the unique art dolls you can create with dry felting.

Learn the simple fiber arts technique of needle felting and use wool to visually communicate your unique personality to the world. You'll have fun and, if you want, you can sell your works of art, too.

About the Author

Visit http://www.owning-alpaca.com/alpaca-fiber.html for free needle felting projects and information. Debby McCandless raises alpacas and uses the fleece to needle felt three dimensional art dolls.

How many stitches should I add to a hat if I'm going to felt it afterwards?

I'm knitting a hat out of an alpaca/wool blend and I'm going to felt it afterwards. I've never felted before, but I know it makes the project shrink. I started it and instead of my usual 70 stitches, I made it 100.

The fabric will shrink a different amount, depending on the yarn itself, the color of the yarn, what chemicals it has been treated with, and the size of your stitches. It will shrink more in one direction than the other. Overall, on average, it will shrink by about 1/3, but you won't know for sure with the yarn and stitches you are using without first making a gauge block and felting (fulling) it.

You measure the gauge block and count the stitches and rows. Then you felt (full) it. Then you remeasure. Divide the width by the number of stitches you started with. That's your new gauge. Multiply it out so that you calculate how many stitches you need in that gauge to make 22" (or the circumference of your head). Remember that felted (fulled) fabric does not have much stretch to it. So, while you would typically make a knitted hat about 2" too small (called negative ease), you would make a felted (fulled) hat to match the actual dimensions of the head.

Checking my notes for a recent fulled iPad case, I see this is what happened with my swatch:

Gauge:
CO 20 size 10 needles, 20 rows Pattons Classic Wool 4 Medium
5" x 4" ==> 3 3/8" x 2 1/4" or
20 / 3.375 = 5.9 sts/in, round to 6 spi
20 / 2.25 = 8.9 row/in, round to 9 rpi

horizontal shrunk by 32.5% or 67.5% of original size
vertical shrunk by 43.75% or 56.25% of original size

If I were using that swatch to plan a hat, I would cast on 22" * 6spi = 132 stitches.

Remember also that when you are planning to felt (full) a knitted fabric, you need to knit that fabric on larger than usual needles. Usually 2-3 sizes larger than what you would ordinarily use for that thickness of yarn. Without the extra space within the stitch, from being knitted up larger than usual, you won't get enough agitation between the strands to felt well. A tightly knit fabric will not felt as well as a loosely knit one.

When you do run the project through the washing machine, run it through a hot water cycle with maximum agitation (either a power wash cycle or a white cycle, even if the felt isn't white), and a dash of detergent (just a bit). Put your project inside a pillow case and toss a few pairs of jeans into the wash to add agitation. Putting the project inside a pillow case, and securing it shut with a rubber band, will protect it from picking up denim colored pills from rubbing against the jeans.

Stop the machine every 5 minutes and check the project. The first few times you check, nothing will have happened. Then, very suddenly, it will start to shrink, and it will shrink rapidly. So once it starts, stop and check even more often. If you let it go too far (shrink too much), there is nothing you can do to unshrink it again. You can put a plastic bag, like a produce bag or plastic grocery bag on your head and try on the hat. Stop the process when it reaches the desired size. Rinse out the soap. Squeeze out the excess water, wrap it in a clean, white towel, and squeeze again. Stuff it with paper towels to hold its shape, or for a perfect fit, wear it, until it dries. You can wear it over the plastic to keep your head dry.