TinkerAndPo!

Felted wool has been around for thousands of years. In Turkey, remnants of felted wool have been found dating back to 6500 BC!  It is the oldest fabric known to man.

What makes wool felt and why?  That’s what I hope to answer within this post!

Felted wool can be produced from the coat of a sheep, goat, rabbit or alpaca.  Like any hair, it has an outer protective layer called the cuticle.  This cuticle is what allows wool to mat together, or felt.

The cuticle is a layer of overlapping “scales” of protein that protects the inner core of the hair.  The smoother this cuticle lies, the shinier the hair.  If you’ve ever seen overprocessed bleached hair, it looks frizzy and dull.  This is the result of a damaged cuticle.  When the cuticle is damaged, the “scales” raise up and the hair loses it’s shine.

When the cuticle of wool is damaged and raised, and friction is added (such as the agitation in a washing machine), the individual hair fibers mat together, thus creating felted wool!  When I felt wool sweaters prior to using them at TinkerAndPo, I sometimes have to wash a sweater more than one time in order to create a felted fabric that is suitable for using as fingerless gloves.  The more times a wool sweater is washed, the tighter the wool will felt.

The properties of felted wool also vary depending on the type of wool used.  Merino wool, for instance, is generally more resistant to felting and must be washed three or four times before it felts up sufficiently.  Cashmere is the hardest to felt because the outer cuticle is incredibly smooth and strong.  Occasionally a sweater will be so resistant to felting that I just can’t get it to felt no matter what I try or how many times I wash it.

Look for a tutorial on sweater felting in an upcoming post of the TinkerAndPo blog!  You can learn how to create felted wool and use it for your own craft projects!