More Felt Thoughts

Posted by Kate Pullen Jul 27, 2007

All that talk in my last Suite101 blog about felt following my review of Felt magazine, set me thinking again about what a wonderful material felt is! The history of felt has many versions. The one I particularly like how ancient civilizations would place slithers of fleece from sheep into sandals and footwear to cushion the feet whilst out roaming. A combination of the heat, dampness from the sweat and slightly alkaline nature of the wool made the pieces of fleece felt together.

Felt became an extremely important material, giving people clothes and shelter, in turn keeping them warm and dry. The Mongolian yurts were traditionally made from felt panels. There is an extremely interesting video on YouTube explaining the felting process that people would have used to create these large panels of felt.

Moving on to today, commercially produced felt provides a great material for all sorts of projects. Take a look at these cute felt baby shoes, or this great felt sewing book for just two examples of how it can be used.

Pure wool felt can be shaped after it has been sewn. Simply wet the felt with soapy water and gently mold it into shape, this can be useful when making items such as baby shoes.

There are many other ways that felt can be used. It is a great fabric to use with youngsters and handy for making those important ‘first projects’. The youngsters can concentrate on making stitches and not have to worry about the fabric unraveling, or stretching out of shape.