Please bring:
*¾# raw fleece, of a breed that felts well. Tease this before coming, please. If you don't know how to tease wool, the Instructor is happy to send instruxions! Reach her at Ayala@FiberFanatics.com. If computer-impaired, 541.933.2775.
Also:
*A few ounces of wool in colors you like, plus bits of yarn, loosely spun or brushed is best. We'll be using these for laid-in decoration.
*Good scissors
*A cake of any soap
*A pint container for pouring water.
*A piece of thin plastic, about 2'x 2'.
*An old bath towel-borrow one from the family dog
*A 3x6x6" hunk of soft upholstery foam, or a soft carwash sponge from your supermarket's auto dept.

Workshop requires a few hotplates and some small saucepans for dyeing with 'food grade' dyes. Materials fee $5. Instructor will provide felting form, a 12"halffelt square, a felting needle, and paperwork. We'll make a c. 18"ruglet, thick & chewy with a laid-in design of thin felt which we'll be dyeing on location…

 

Please bring:
*¾# raw fleece, of a breed that felts well. Tease this before coming, please. If you don't know how to tease wool, the Instructor is happy to send instruxions! Ayala@FiberFanatics.com, or if you don't compute, 541.933.2775.
*KoolAid, or generic powdered drink mix: 1 pk each of 3 different colors. (KoolAid is the same color as the glass in the pitcher's hand.)
*Good scissors. MUST HAVE!
*A cake of any soap.
*A pint container for pouring water.
*A piece of thin plastic, about 2'x 2'.Could cut open a plastic bag for this…
*An old bath towel- borrow one from the family dog.

NOTE: wetness! Don't wear your fancy shoes!

Making Wool Roses

Rose Rug Instructions

The rug itself is a giant trivet as described in The Felting Needle, Further Fantasies-- please read over that section starting on page 57 so as to get the general idea-- but made to rug scale with a hoop of plastic 1" PVC pipe 10' long, bent in a circle and hitched together as you will-- masking tape, whittled "cork", etc.

Put a large sheet of thin plastic dropcloth over the hoop. This contains the water.

Now add quite a pile of teased raw wool. Mush it down with your hand to determine how thick the rug will be. It takes quite a bit for a thick rug.

Sprinkle down the wool a little with a squirt of dish detergent in a pitcher of hand-hot water. You want the wool damp enough to settle into the hoop, while the surface wool remains dry to best receive the design.

Those roses are pretty easy. My grandmother used to paint them looking like that by using oil paint applied thickly with a spatula... I use wool for paint, and yarn for 'pencil lines'-- not fussing over it, just laying the stuff down and letting it do what it will.

We all understand roses differently, so do allow yourself to create new varieties!

Dip a tuft of green wool in water. As you lift it out, it drips into a leaf shape.

When your rug is sufficiently overgrown with roses and vines and vegetation, sprinkle again with more warm soapy water-enough so that when you press down on the wool, a little water wells up around your hand.

Get your hand a little soapy (with a cake of any old soap) so that the wool won't stick to it, and mush the design down into the rug, jiggling a little and lifting your hand carefully afterwards so the design doesn't stick to it.

Sometimes it works best to lay the rest of the plastic dropcloth over the wool to keep it from shifting around too much during the beginning felting process.

Now work lightly over the whole rug surface until a 'skin' forms, from the scales on the wool fiber shafts beginning to lock together.

Then work deeper, till it's about half felted* and can be moved gingerly without destruction-- rinse in bathtub/washing machine, spin/drip dry.

SLEEP ON IT for a week or 2 (see Vol II chapter on Passive Felting...) The alternative is to continue the felting process at the asterisk, perhaps rolling the rug around a closet pole or 3" pvc pipe of suitable length, tying it in a few places and rocking it back and forth and rerolling in a different direction every 100 rocks or so.