What is felt?
An ancient craft and its modern reincarnation
Felting is an ancient craft, one of the most ancient ways to make cloth from fibers. The resulting cloth is nonwoven.
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One of the most commonly used fibers is wool, but you can felt also man-made fibers derived from plants or plastic-based. You can also mix together different types of fibers, and felt into your fibers woven fabrics, paper, and different surprising objects, such as rocks or wood, even!
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Felt made from wool has some characteristics, such as being naturally water-repellant, very durable and antibacterial.
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How do you make felt?
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Fibers are agitated and persuaded to stick together with different techniques, falling into two main types:
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Wet felting and
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Dry felting.
The most used Dry felting technique uses needles and takes the name of Needle felting.
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Wet felting involves a careful positioning of the fibers in specific layouts that result in different characteristics of the finished cloth. In wet felting, water is used almost always with some soaping agent to start and accelerate the process of felting.
