FeltisFun!

Felt comes in the most amazing variety of colours and is so versatile and easy to sew that it’s often the fabric of choice for beginner stitchers while those of us who’ve been stitching for quite a while love it too! It’s one of the earliest fibres known to man and there are many references to it in ancient texts.

To make felt you don’t need any complicated equipment or long processes, all you need is heat, water and pressure. The process of rolling, beating and agitating wool fibres together causes the scales on these fibres to hook onto each other forming a dense, tear- resistant sheet of fabric. It’s a very simple technique which is why historians and archaeologists assume that felt was the first woollen fabric - to get wool to the stage where it can be successfully woven into a textile takes quite a lot of effort.

There are a number of legends around the origin of felt, including the European tale of St Clement, a pilgrim who stuffed his shoes with loose woollen fleece to protect his feet on the long stony road, only to discover that the constant pressure and sweat transformed the wool into felt. There’s also a biblical version that tells of the floor of Noah’s Ark being transformed into felt carpet by the constant trampling of animal hairs shed by its occupants. In yet another story, a Persian shepherd accidentally creates felt by stamping on a sheep fleece in frustration.

Felt doesn’t fray as, unlike most fabrics, it isn’t woven but rather is produced by matting, condensing and pressing fibres together using heat, moisture and pressure. Felt can be made from wool, acrylic or a mixture of both fibres. It is commercially available in flat sheets of various sizes and by the yard. It comes in different densities, measured in millimetres. For most of my sewing projects, I tend to work with felt that is 1mm - 3mm thick.

As felt doesn’t fray it can be cut to any size and shape you need for your project. I like to draw around my template straight onto my felt using a temporary fabric marker pen, then remove any