The Great Felting Experiment (from fibers)

I recently purchased beautiful Border Leicester fleece and thought I would try experimenting with felting from fibers. The objective was to create a mat of some sort. Just to be different, I thought I would try to make a circular shaped one. Here's how I did it.


A bamboo blind would have been better for fulling the fiber but since I didn't have one on hand, I used an old sheet of bubble wrap I had kept from our last move. I began by placing a layer of raw fleece haphazardly onto the bubble wrap - removing all vegetation from the fleece.


Then, I placed about 3 layers of combed fiber (border leicester) on top of the raw fleece over lapping each sections of combed fleece. Once completed, I sprayed with hot hot water and soap (I used Dawn dish soap) in preparation for fulling.

Rolling such a large piece proved easier than I had thought. As you can tell from the (third) picture, I should of placed additional raw fleece on the edge of the mat. The combed fleece flattened out like pizza dough which spread across the edge of the raw fleece. Not to worry, I added raw fleece to the edges on my second roll :c)

Finally, the finished experiment...