With the help of my friend Jen and these two cutie pies, I entered the world of felting this week.  I’ve been gathering some wool sweaters at the thrift store with this purpose in mind, and I was finally ready to begin!  We took the sweaters, some dish soap, two sweet toddlers and put them all in a hot bath together.  Ella and Lily definately got a kick out of being in the bath with all the wool, and stomped and splashed away.  Afterwards, I put the sweaters into the dryer (I think I’ll just line-dry them next time, since this was the second time all year I’ve used the dryer and it felt weird, plus I don’t think it was necessary).

When I first heard about felt, I thought it was nuts.  Shrink wool?  On purpose?

Consider me converted.  With $1 sweaters from the thrift store, some of which had holes or stains and weren’t great for wearing anymore (and one of Ben’s which had already accidentally been partially felted -sorry sweetie!), I was able to get over my inherent reaction to “wasting” wool.  The felt is so soft, super warm, and really fun to work with.  One of the best parts is that you don’t have to enclose seams, since there’s no fear of it unraveling.  Woo hoo!  Felting, and then sewing with the felt, is sort of like instant knitting.  Ok, not that I’m going to stop knitting, but it’s fun to get the quickness of sewing and the yumminess of wool.

Since I can’t convince Ella to wear socks in our house, resulting in mighty icy toes, my first project was these slippers, from Betz White’s Sewing Green.  She chose the colors, and this project was super easy and fast.  It was done, start to finish, in under an hour.  Ella has worn them non-stop, and I love their elf-ness.  I want some!

I was thinking about making her some felt mittens, too, since I’m trying to capitalize on her sudden ease in the outdoor winter world, but cold hands and feet have been bringing us inside after half an hour.  Then today, I lost one of her mittens, so it was settled.  To the cutting table (yay for my new big table in my new room!), and these sweet little mittens were born.  I just traced her mitten, with about a 1/2 in seam allowance all around, sewed the outline, flipped them, and sewed on the cuff.  I did the cuff seam on the outside, since I thought a seam right on her wrist might be irritating.  For the cuff, I used some felt that was stretchy, from a ribbed part of the red sweater.

Next up . . . a heart garland, inspired by Kyrie.

Now that I’m addicted, can you recommend any good felting books or projects?