Thank you Toby. Don't hesitate to contact me if you have any problems. Cheers

That's fantastic Lisa. Glad you found my instructions useful. It's addictive, isn't it? 😀

Tracey Rudgene hello! Thanks for your lovely comments. This used to be a paid video but recently I released it for free viewing because my way of making felt has changed. Although my way of laying remains the same, since a back injury several years ago, I now roll using a wet felt rolling machine. My partner Philip invented it for me when I was struggling to roll by hand. It worked so well we decided to share it with other felt makers. You can use it whether you are a novice or more advanced felt maker. Look out for my videos where I am using The Gentle Roller. We also have a website gentleroller.com.au Happy felting 😊

Make sure you have all your supplies before starting! Lol I didn't and made quite a mess!

Thank you Kellie

@@jonicornell-mersilk my goodness thank you♥️♥️♥️

Thank you ❤

Good luck with your fabric. Thanks and cheers

Hi Camera Shy Coco, you can certainly control the shrinkage by working in the direction that you want the scarf to shrink. It's a matter of mastering the 'fulling' as it is called. When you're working a garment you want to have this control because you'll want certain areas to shrink and not others - you can shape by scrunching and folding. You can use both cotton muslin and even linens. There's a cotton called 'felter's gauze' which is very open weave. Have a look at felting suppliers like Dharma Trading, Beautiful Silks or KraftKolour. Most recently I've begun to use Margilan silk which is from Uzbekistan. It has a gorgeous sheen but it can be a bit pricey. Another carrier is paj silk or China silk - make sure it has a low momme. Be aware that the paj can be a little slippery. Choice of carrier depends on the effect you want - silk and cotton gauze don't tend to ruche. If you want a ruched look go for paj. Make a start. I find that the silk gauze just loves merino. :-)

Hi Janel in this particular video I haven’t laid the fibre in a circle (there is a video Ten Fabrics where I use circle motifs) and the wool tends to shrink in the direction it's laid. Glad you enjoy the videos. Have you seen the ones where I'm using The Gentle Roller?

That's the Ten Fabrics Gathering project. You ought to be able to watch them here. They are free to view now. Search Joni Cornell. If you have trouble finding them I can send you links but I will need your email address. Cheers Joan

They are called Ball brausers and can be purchased at fibre supply stores. Have a look on Etsy. Or try your local fibre store. Thanks for the thumbs up. 😃

@@jonicornell-mersilk Thanks!

My felting solution is a few squirts of shampoo in half a bucket of cool water. Thanks so much for your comment. 😃

Hi Shelby - the wooden roller is a foot massager. :-) Lots of felt makers adapt tools from their kitchen or laundry. The spray bulb, often caller a ball brause can be found at felt making/wool supplying outlets. Look on Etsy.

Hi Carolyn I wash the felting solution out and usually I also add some household vinegar to the final rinse to reestablish the pH of the fabric, as the most effective soaps for felting raises the pH to enable the wool fibres to open and mat. I will wash soiled felt in a wool detergent and usually by hand. Gently stretch it back into shape on a dry towel before rolling it up in the towel to remove excess moisture. Things like washing machine agitation or throwing in the dryer will definitely encourage more shrinkage. In fact some felt makers use a washing machine or dryer without heat to accelerate felting. I don't recommend those sorts of acceleration of the process.

The fabric doesn't unravel once you have it laminated with fibres. The wool will create its own selvage edge. Also, the selvages won't felt as well as the rest of the silk. If I plan not to cover the selvage with fibre, then I will leave them.

The brand is Hercules

Sure. You can use fibre on both sides. I suggest you lay your fibre first. Using some netting wet it slightly, (take netting off ) lay your carrier over the wool layer and lay the top of the fabric. Usually if I want a thicker scarf or fabric I lay two layers orthogonally one on top of the other. Christine White's book Uniquely Felt is great to have if you're a beginner. Cheers.

Hi Sarah The materials used in this scarf are no longer available as the place I bought it from has closed (the guys retired and folded their business). It’s a blend of tussah silk and fine merino. There are other suppliers - on Etsy for instance. I now use fibres from IxChel Yarns and Fibres because Charly McAfferty offers a luxury blend of wool and plant fibres, and sometimes also mixes rare fibres such as yak or cashmere. You can find Charly on Facebook. Every Friday Charly publishes a blog and you can purchase straight from the blog. You can also message her with special orders. She will tell you that she ‘loves to enable’. ixchelbunny.blogspot.com. I also like the colours and blends from WallaceandRigby on Etsy (managed by Tat Andrew). They are both suppliers in Melbourne, but they ship internationally. I used to get my solar pool bubble from a factory, and they used to give me offcuts or seconds. So usually I would get quite a bit whenever I went out and it’s been a while since I have tried to source it. I hurt my back several years ago and I now use a wet felt roller to make felt and I no longer roll on top of the pool bubble. My partner invented a roller to enable me to keep on felting and I was so impressed with it that I encouraged him to share it with other felt makers. You can find out more about the wet felt roller at www.gentleroller.com In terms of shrinkage - the more shrinkage the better the felt fabric. So, I make allowances in the size I begin with, depending on how much I want it to shrink. When I make a garment (because it’s going to be worn and needs to be sturdy) I work up to 4 times as large and aim for 75% shrinkage of the overall surface. As long as you know that if you want a softer fabric it will start to pill and go fluffy after being handled. But yes, you can omit the warm bath. I usually work cold unless it’s in the middle of winter and the water feels really cold at room temperature, when I will add some warm water. Nuno requires cold/cool water as you don’t want the fibres to felt on top of the fabric. With your soft toy fabric it sounds to me that you require a sturdy fabric - if so, I would calculate my starting size to be three or four times the size of the finished. For felting to occur you need to increase or decrease the pH of the wool fibre so that the scales open and can mat more easily with agitation - usually increasing the pH is easier. Thus, you ought to find a soap to make a felting solution that will increase the pH value. Find a shampoo with a greater pH than 7 or use olive oil soap (Marseille soap is great). The trouble with olive oil soap is that you need to grate it and dissolve it in your bucket of cold water. I find that it clogs up my ball spray. I usually wet down with shampoo and then use olive oil soap if the work requires soaping again. Then when you are rinsing the solution out you will settle the pH again by using the vinegar. That’s why the vinegar is used to re-establish the pH which you have altered with the felting solution. A good book to purchase is Jorie Johnson’s Felting and Wool Magic. She explains all this on pp.14-15 ‘The Nine Conditions of Felting’. I would also recommend finding a felt maker who offers workshops in your local area and getting started with someone there to guide you.

Joan Cornell ♥️🙏🦙🐛♥️

I'm assuming it's natural silk so you get the shrinkage?

Hi I wouldn't try Nuno with synthetic fabrics. Although you can add synthetic fabric as embellishment, you'll be asking for grief and frustration when you try and laminate wool fibres to it. You could use very light cotton voile or muslin, which work well as carrier fabrics. I actually love using cotton. Make sure that the weave is not too dense. Look for open weave. There's a felter ' s gauze which is great for Nuno. 😊

Hi! Well the effect would be different. I call this my painterly style. It is a light Nuno effect and the fibre blend of superfine merino and silk on silk gauze produces a delicate fabric. I use two orthogonal layers at different times depending on what type of fabric I want. That's what you ought to consider 'what type of fabric I want and how can I achieve it?'

@@jonicornell-mersilk

Deborah you are describing the herringbone layup, whereas I do tend to be more random - laying on the diagonal, horizontal and vertical. If your fibre is random dyed as the one I'm using here, it creates a more painterly effect. You can try small samples of different ways of laying to see how each felts - there's also laying one layer vertically and one horizontally over each other. Recently I saw one Slovenian feltmaker lay diagonally, and then lay one layer horizontally and one vertically (3 layers but she had no carrier fabric). This layup would produce more even shrinkage in all directions, as wool shrinks in the direction it is laid. Hope my explanation is not more confusing. There's no this way is right or better - only the effect you're after. So do experiment with laying up. Cheers

Hi Sophie, this is a blend of fine merino (probably 19 micron) and tussah silk, so it's very soft. I prefer the finer wools for garments and anything worn close to the skin. I use coarser wools, around 30 micron, for making bags because it needs to be harder wearing. The choice depends on what I'm making.

@@jonicornell-mersilk thank you very much for your quick reply, Joan! I will just start nuno felting, and your channel is really helpful, thank you for the great videos! Best regards!

No problem. Message back if you have any problems. 🙂

Hi Natalia, I'm glad you enjoyed the class. The mat is solar pool bubble and I got off cuts from a factory which makes the pool plastic. Cheers Joan

@@jonicornell-mersilk Thank you very much, your felting projects are incredible.

The blue bubble cover is solar pool cover. I hot it from a factory- offcuts and seconds. Lots of suppliers carry merino-silk mix. Fibres used were bought here. But the mix seems to have changed since I made the video. www.firsteditionfibres.com.au/randomdyed

You can add a dash of vinegar in the last rinse. The vinegar helps to bring down the pH (usually you would use a felting solution of 9-11 pH). The vinegar also acts like a fixative for unstable dyes.

Hello Yolanda the carrier fabric is silk Georgette.

Nevermind I found them! lol

It's called a ball brauser and you can get them from any felt supplier on Etsy.

It's laminated felt, also called Nuno. The wool is laid on gauze or fine silk fabric and the fibres are encouraged to migrate through the carrier fabric before shrinkage, so that the fabric also shrinks. You can get up to 50-75% shrinkage on overall size for a hardier wearing felt.

Hi Patricia, My wet felt rolling machine is the Gentle Roller. Philip invented it specifically for me, after I had a back injury and could no longer roll by hand. This video was made before my injury but I have always struggled with hand rolling. After I tested the 'prototype' wet felt roller it worked so well (to my surprise!!) that I encouraged Philip to try and put it into production and share it with other felt makers. We actually launched The Gentle Roller Co. on a crowd funding platform back in 2017 to gauge whether there would be enthusiasm for it. We have customers who use the Gentle Roller to make rugs. I could add you to the Gentle Roller Group on Facebook, so that you could become better acquainted with the roller and what our customers make using it. Just send me a request on Facebook. There's also our website where we have lots of videos showing different felted items, which you can check out www.gentleroller.com Occasionally we get one come up for re-sale but we're constantly upgrading the roller as we get customer/user feedback. Cheers

It's solar pool bubble. I used to get off-cuts from a factory. Cheers

I have used a merino alpaca silk blend in other work. You need to be sure all guard hairs are removed from the alpaca otherwise it will be hard to felt. Also, this a very fine scarf and your fibre ought to be no higher than 19 micron. Whenever I am unsure about a fibre I make a test piece around 50cm square.

Yes. That's right.

Hi Julie it's called silk Georgette, sometimes also referred to as silk gauze. Look for thin silk around 3 or 3.5 momme (a weight measure in silk similar to thread count in cotton sheeting).

Hi Jaclyn, if it's Alpaca it might be guard hairs which you could pluck with your fingers or shave after you finish felting and the piece is dry. These guard hairs tend not to felt it. Usually guard hairs are removed from the raw fleece. I have used an Alpaca, Merino-silk blend which has no guard hairs. Did you breed the Alpaca yourself?

@@jonicornell-mersilk Yes they are my alpacas; using the seconds that I cleaned and carded. That must be the case. I am new to this - and finding that some say the seconds / guard hairs are great for felting, and others say otherwise. I sold the firsts / blankets to a yarn spinner, our shearers said the firsts are usually too soft for felting. I wonder if the length of the guard hairs are the issue, because they do have more kink in the fibers. Anyhow, I went back and reworked the piece with more soap as I later read alpaca fleece needs more soap. While wet, it looked awesome and seemed to improve. As it dried, it all turned to soft puff and sheds right off. :( Though it is so soft and drapes so beautifully with the linen gauze that it could (have) made a wonderful throw. THANK YOU for your insight... I am going to test in the spring with the firsts.

Hi Sophie you can certainly rub to prefelt but it's an awful lot of rubbing and you wouldn't get the consistency that you do with rolling. Having said that there are a number of tools felt makers use - there's the Palm Washboard for instance. Some felt makers use an electric sander albeit you have to be very careful what type you use and not to have too much felting solution. (Search the internet for using a sander in felting). There's also a method of rolling into a bundle and throwing in the dryer on the airing cycle (no heat). Then there's the Gentle Roller wet felt rolling machine designed specifically for felt making. I hurt my back and was unable to felt. My partner thought he could invent something to help and surprisingly he managed to do just that.

@@jonicornell-mersilk Thank you so much, wow i didn't know your husband invented the gentle roller. What a beautiful act of devotion. I will probably try the dryer! May I ask you if it makes a difference when the carrier fabric is face up or face down, while trying to migrate the fibres? My intuition tells me to have the wool side close to the table, and the carrier close to my hands (before bundling)

@@sophievautour8573 yes keep wool side down. Cheers

@@jonicornell-mersilk cool. it's working!

No you can play around with motifs on a carrier fabric but you ought to aim for around 30% shrinkage. See my semi-circular wrap videos. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mLyfp5aQntzdpas.html

@@jonicornell-mersilk thankyou for your quick reply..I’m having a go at a scarf tomorrow 💖

You can always aim for more shrinkage on the width rather than the length too. Have fun Geri, Cheers

Silk gauze

I add water so it makes the surface slippery and I am able to glide my hands or felting tool. You must wet the surface of your project before putting on the plastic, which protects it while you rub or roll.

@Joan Cornell, where did you get that blue bumpy thing? What is it?! I'd love to have that for felting!!!

It's silk Georgette sometimes referred to as silk gauze. Around 3 momme.

Stacy caring for felted garments - a gentle hand wash in cool water using wool detergent. Squeeze water out when rinsing, rather than wring. Then stretch back into shape on a towel. You can also roll it up in the towel to take away moisture. I also like to give a light iron on silk setting, on the silk fabric side.

@@jonicornell-mersilk Thank you for your reply. I cannot wait to try and make these. My mom went to a workshop years ago and I cherish the scarf that she gave me. It looks like a lot of space is necessary... You're so talented!

@@stacymccarthy6292 thank you. Yes a good space is required for really large pieces or garments. Start small with a scarf. Some felters make small accessories or jewelry because they are restricted by space. But I have used a kitchen bench. You don't necessarily need a studio. I intend to launch an online workshop one of these days. In the meantime feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Cheers

@@jonicornell-mersilk I hope that you do. You have a very clear and helpful style.

No it's too thick. You can on cotton muslin. Margilan silk is also very good for felting.

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/i8p7abyWm7WlcZc.html kzfaq.info/get/bejne/Y7xneseUxMe6mHU.html kzfaq.info/get/bejne/o66lfctqsqvQXX0.html kzfaq.info/get/bejne/o9aqm9B-u63Uiok.html Here are the first four.

Hi Deborah, it's like a cross hatch method (in drawing). I came across it in Liz Houghton’s book Felting Fashion years ago. It's great for an even shrinkage. I can't seem to upload a photo here 😕 Can you contact me through Facebook Messenger and I'll send you a photo?

Not sure what you're referring to here (where on the video please?). One agitates the surface using soapy water. Sometimes I might use some soap on my hands. I try not to overwet the piece particularly at the start as the loose fibres can swim off the fabric. I also find that too sudsy is not ideal

When you have areas where the fibres are not migrating through the carrier fabric, it could probably use more soap. It may have enough moisture but isn't soapy or slippery enough to facilitate agitation.