Felt-tastic!

So I recently discovered the joy that is felting and made my husband some mittens the other night. I’ve seen Holly from Grovecraft’s funky mittens she makes out of recycled sweaters and I thought I’d try it too since I had a plethora of ugly wool sweaters taking up space in my closet.

These lovely skull & crossbone mittens were made by felting a 100% wool sweater in the washing machine by filling it with hot water and letting it agitate for about 20 minutes. I cheated and dried it in the dryer and then cut out my mitten pattern and simply sewed them together. Caleb (the hubby) requested a ‘flippy part’ so he could get his hands out, presumably for smoking, and so I just cut off the top part of the mitten and stitched it back on leaving an overlap so they would close nicely.

I took some roving (that’s the wooly poofy stuff you can get at most yarn stores, or on Etsy of course) and started forming the design and then just poked away with my felting needle.

For those of you just starting Betz White has a great tutorial and her little cupcake pincushions are super schnazzy. I want to get one of the Clover tools but I can’t seem to find one around here. I’ll probably have to order one.

Here’s another felty project which was much more work.

I knitted up the bag from the first Stitch N’ Bitch book and felted it in the wash again. Then I just did the design like the mittens felting around and around to make it soft and furry. Just how I like it!

As you can see it also doubles as an awesome hat. Or not.

I’m going to a Scraptastic retreat this weekend with some girls from work & since I have kind of rebelled against that particular craft but still wanted to partake in the fun times I think I’ll be doing some knitting and felting. I hope they don’t shun me, I know those people can be a ’scrappy’ bunch. Ha! Get it? I’m hilarious.

Have a great hump day!