1. Purchase way too many sweaters while on business trips and pay too much for them at Oregon thrift stores - for whatever reason Oregonians get rid of the most beautiful sweaters and Goodwill knows it and takes advantage of it.
2. Bring purchases into the house under the cover of dark so husband does not have direct proof of my craziness - but who am I kidding? I know he knows I have no self-control when it comes to wool.
3. Cut all of the sweaters apart - if I can bear it, I also have a number of "felters" that became "keepers". I cut the arms from the body, open up the arm seams, then cut the back from the front of the sweater along the existing seams. Remove all buttons and zippers for later use. Cutting the sweaters into flat single-ply pieces probably helps the wool felt more uniformly.
4. Wash like-colored sweaters together. It would probably be a good idea to wash angora sweaters in a pillowcase as these sweaters tend to pick up the stray lint bits from other sweaters and the lint bits can become permanently felted to the angora sweater pieces. Generally though I just select a low water level so the sweaters don't float, throw in a tennis ball for added friction (though I have read about using a pair of jeans for friction) and drizzle some laundry detergent in there too. I wash the sweater pieces with hot water (cold rinse) on the 10 minute wash cycle. Some sweaters need an addition cycle to felt properly and some never felt which is really disappointing.
5. Dry the sweater pieces in the dryer for about 20 - 30 minutes and then I usually hang them on a drying rack if they are still a little damp.
6. Sort pieces by color or design and try to cram this felted bounty into my workspace in the corner of our bedroom.
SOME NOTES ABOUT WOOL SWEATERS:
- 100% wool sweaters are probably the best bets for felting. A man-made fiber content of up to 20% generally works though (spandex, acrylic, nylon, etc.) if the remaining 80% is made of up the natural fibers angora, or lambswool/wool. I seem to have really good luck with Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Eddie Bauer sweaters, but you pay more for the label.
- I haven't had much luck with merino wool. It just seems too thin and tightly knit and the fibers must not move against one another well enough during the felting process to make a nice felted end product. I have a few of these sweaters in my "to felt" pile so I'll report back on those in a later post.
- Striped or patterned sweaters that have too many different colors/yarn types can give uneven felting results. Some of the yarns may not be wool (check the label) or just felt at a different rate. So you can end up with a band of design that is highly felted or conversely, not felted at all, and the rest of the sweater just the opposite. The worst experience I had with this was a merino wool men's sweater from Scotland with a block pattern. Each differently colored block felted to a different degree and the result was a completely unusable sweater. Live and learn.
- Cable knit patterns don't seem to be good choices for felting. The loosely knit yarn must really have a lot of room for moving against each other and the result is a very densely felted product. Maybe a shorter wash cycle would work, I'll have to investigate that.
- Cashmere won't felt but it does get even softer in the wash and is a real treat to have for a project where the edges will be finished (like in a quilt or stuffed object) so you don't have to worry about it raveling or fraying. Look for cashmere sweaters in with the shirts at Goodwill, they end up there more often than with the sweaters.
- The men's section at thrift stores is another place to look for sweaters. I don't have the best luck with men's sweaters. The color selection usually isn't what I'm interested in but if you can find a good looking sweater it is usually a better deal than the women's sweaters. Men's sweaters tend to be both larger and less expensive.
That is about all I can think of at the moment. I'll post more information as I go though.
