Felting Flowers Part 1

I took the plunge and crocheted flowers to felt. I have never felted anything before in my life, but have been very fascinated since I started crocheting again.

I  found these flowers in Nicky Epstein's Crocheted Flowers book. The pictures in her book are spectacular. I immediately fell in love with the book when I first ran across it in the book store.

The patterns in the book are written in the common word form. But there are diagrams to follow as well.

The patterns themselves were easy to follow but it has taken three good washings for the flowers to be felted to my preference. According to Epstein, that is the way to go.

Also according to Epstein, the yarn needs to be at least 50% wool to be feltable. That did not seem to be correct in the instance of one of the yarns I used called Amazing from Lion Brand. The 53% wool was not enough to beat the acrylic that was in it as well.

The other brand of yarn I used was Cascade 220. It was 100% wool and worked great for felting.

When felting anything, I have read, that it is important for the wool to be very agitated in the washing machine. I put some jeans in for more friction (thus adding more agitation).  I put my washing machine on Hot and turned it to Heavy Duty. Then I let it go for a normal cycle (wash, rinse and spin).

The results were good. They continued getting better with each cycle. After you are done felting your project you must allow it to air dry.

I look forward to putting these flowers together. One will be a pin and the other two will be display flowers.

Wait for my next post, so you can see how they turned out!