Some things are hard to describe.

And now, I’m here to give you the low-down on the ins and outs of felt rock making. Extra tips above and beyond the video. And why you should try it. Because you want to know. No really, you do.

First Things First

Even though I’ve done a lot of wet felting in my day, I’d never made a felt rock before, and my FB friend Terry Pike had a great video on how to do that very thing–so the first thing I did was re-watch the video.

I already had a stash of wool roving, so I was psyched to use it because I’d had it a long time and we all feel bad when we buy art supplies we haven’t used. I even had a bit of yellow, red, and orange roving, which was great, because those were the color parameters for the International Day of Felt, 2009. I mean, if I’m gonna participate, I might as well follow the rules. (Here are my red and yellow rocks on the right in my garden.)

Bet You Can’t Make Just One

I’m going to assume that you’ve watched the video and I’m just going to add some handy tips, tricks, and thoughts to augment Terri’s wonderful directions. So here goes:

• I worried my glass bowl wasn’t tall enough, but it’s all I had and it was fine.

• You definitely need that towel. I’d put it under the bowl and maybe drape it over your legs.

• No long sleeves. The water runs down your arms and it’s kind of annoying.

• I used Murphy’s Oil Soap instead of dish soap because my favorite book on felting recommends it, and it’s my felting bible. (The book is called: New Directions for Felt, An Ancient Craft, by Gunilla Paetau Sjoberg and it’s out of print. Darn, because I love it.)

• Just dollop the soap into the water. No measuring necessary. The water should feel soapy–and the wool should feel kind of slippery when you’re squeezing the rock. I also recommend that you make the water as hot as you can stand it. And have some boiling on the stove as well, to add as the water in the bowl cools.

• I used too much wool for my initial rock and actually had to cut off some of the extra wool at the beginning. In fact, I kept cutting down on how much wool I used for each rock. The wool that you’re folding together as you wrap your rock is actually pretty thick, so too much overlap just makes it harder.

• On that same note, I began to add extra wool directly underneath my rock to balance out the thickness of the wool on the folded-together-side–it usually felt a bit too thin compared to the side where all the wool was bunching together.

• I found it easier to wrap my tulle very tightly around my rock as I dipped it into the hot soap water. This might be from my days of using panty hose to wrap felt vessels, but I found it easier.

• It can be a little hard, at first, to tell when you’re done. The felted wool feels like a bag around the rock for quite a while. You just need to keep squeezing. I tried to get rid of the tulle pretty quickly on my first rock or two, but I found it was really handy to use it for almost the entire felting/fulling process.

• The only stressful part is really at the beginning–getting your wool wrapped in the tulle and then getting the wool to felt in the bunched up areas. Also, it can take a little while to get rid of the wrinkles, but they do go away. You’ll start to think, crap, they’re never gonna go away, and that’s about when they do.

• I tried combining a couple of kinds of wool and I found that a little challenging. It’s doable, but a little harder, so I’d stick with one kind of wool at first.

• It’s slightly awkward at first to control the rock and the wool and the tulle, and you’ll feel like you’re not doing it right. But the awkwardness goes away as you do it–you get better at feeling your way along.

• Another great thing is you can felt your rock again later if you want. I felted two of them again/more the next day, and I thought it helped make the wool firmer.

• And if you do have a towel, you really can felt rocks front of the TV. In fact, it sort of helps stop you from wetting it too much.

• Definitely save your rubbing for the end. It’s way more squeezing than I would have thought. It feels like a bag around your rock for most of the process.

• Good exercise for your hands muscles–whew!

• Start with your smallest rock at first. It really is easier. You can get bigger as you get better at it.

Highlights

• Making your first felt rock you’ll find yourself thinking, Hmmm…is this fun? I’m not sure. Hmmm, is this working? I’m not sure. (More time passes as you continue to “pack the snowball”). Oh, how ’bout that… it’s starting to look better now. Is this fun? Yeah, kinda.  And by the fifth rock you’re like, okay, this is weirdly fun and I can’t stop.

• They get better looking as they dry. I don’t know why that is, but it’s true. So if you’re not sure what you think of it, just let it sit there on the window sill and dry out. You’ll like it better the next day.

• This makes you want to make more. So you do.

• It’s awesome that you can fix as you go–I had one rock where the wool didn’t felt together properly in the overlapping area, so I just got more wool and stuck it in the open area and kept squeezing. It felted the gap closed quite easily and you couldn’t tell. I also re-felted two of them the next day and they looked better. The wool is happy to shrink some more. So accommodating.

• It reminded me of gold leafing because when you learn to gold leaf, you pretty much want to cover everything in sight with it. You start scrounging around for things that would be cool to cover in leaf. Felting rocks is like that. You make one and you think–gimmee another one of those, I’m gonna try that again. And then another. Inexplicably satisfying.

• This project requires virtually no room. I have a big studio but I felted my rocks at the kitchen table. Even if you have NO space of your own to work, you can felt rocks. And when you felt rocks, you’re making cool things.

• You like to make cool things.

• An ounce of wool will make you a lot of felt rocks. So it’s inexpensive to try it, they look cool, and they’re fun to hold. Can’t beat it.

Ideas and Possibilities

They’re endless, as usual, but here’s a few ideas to kick around if you’re still looking for a reason to get started.

• This is a great project to do with kids. They might run out of steam at the end, but they won’t notice if their felt rock isn’t that felted.  And, if you need to, you can finish them easily enough later (if they’re “helping” you with your project, for instance, and you want them to look a certain way). So it has possibilities as a family project. And boys will also like it–which ain’t always the case with crafting activities. Felting is unisex! Who knew?

• Find a beautiful bowl. Fill it with felted rocks. Put it in your living room. Everyone will want to touch them. It could be a great graphic statement–make them all one color except for one, or make them a tonal range that goes with the rest of the room, or use “stone” colors–greys, and browns, and whites, and pale yellows. Just make a whole bunch, because they really hold their own when there’s a lot of them.

• See above for cool holiday present idea. For another arty person. (The same people who get your most beautiful holiday cards because they’ll appreciate it.)

• This is a great project for high school art teachers. It’s fun and cheap and everyone can contribute to one large piece. It’s a great way to teach about the power and possibilities of repetition and multiples in contemporary art to teenagers–the “why is one just kinda neat, but forty-five filling an aquarium (or something like that) so cool” kind of discussion. (Or, when does repetition make something more powerful, and when does it make something meaningless?) Great looking project to teach an interesting lesson.

• And it’s also a great introduction to an ancient craft for elementary school teachers as well. The kids can make a paper weight for Father’s Day. And you’ll have a cool display when you pile them all together for the Back to School night display case.

Did you make a felt rock(s)? Have I convinced you yet? What are you waiting for? Inquiring minds want to know!
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And hang onto your (wooly) hats, because that’s not all. October 3rd is the International Day of Felt and as a lapsed art felter, I decided I better participate.

And I think you should too! In case you’ve never felted before, my cunning plan is perfect for you too because it’s small, fun, and a great first time felting project.

Felt Rocks

Well, yes, felt does rock, but for the International Day of Felt, I’m going to actually felt some rocks.

I’ve done a lot of traditional wet felting in my day–which is the classic, ancient technique of wetting, rubbing and shocking wool batts until they begin to mesh together–and I love it.

But I’ve never made felt rocks before, and when I saw a huge pile at the Cooper Hewitt show, they were just so weirdly satisfying to look at and feel, I thought I had to make some myself. (I actually thought they were wool all the way through at the time, but they do, in fact, have rocks inside them.)

If it goes well, I’m thinking these might make wonderful holiday gifts (inexpensive, cool, and you know nobody is going to say, oh gee, I already have one of these…) So if you’ve been very good this year, you might get some rocks in your stocking!

A Great Video

Terry Pike, a friend from Facebook, is a felt artist in Florida who makes all kinds of felt projects. She has a site called Felting Lessons that is jam-packed with very thorough videos on several felting techniques–wet felting, nuno felting (LOVE this, I’m doing this next) as well as a GREAT video on creating felted rocks.

Watch Terri teach us how to felt rocks right here: (If you’re subscribing by email and don’t see the video below, you’ll have to visit the site to watch!)

She also offers tip sheets and supply lists to accompany each video which you might find helpful. Visit her site for more information or to watch other great felt-making technique videos.

Rock On

You might think you could just go in your backyard and pick up a few rocks, and be ready to felt. But if you live in a more urban setting, or all your rocks are very jaggy, or both (that’s me), you might actually wonder where you’re going to find the right kind of rocks to try this project.

Go to your local, full service garden store or nursery. Lowes or Home Depot might not cut it, but a place that offers landscaping services or pond making supplies, will probably have big bins of soft rocks that they sell by the pound. I just went to my favorite local nursery, picked out several stones I liked, had them weighed by a bored teenage boy, and I was off.

Wool Suppliers

When I was a poor art student, I bought my wool shorn straight off the sheep. It came in a huge trash bag from a sheep farmer and was very uh, pungent. I had to wash the dung out of it (that took forever) and then I had to card (comb) the fibers into batts using a hand cranked drum carding tool. Boy, was I in touch with my art materials.

Nowadays, it’s easier than ever to buy clean, dyed, carded wool roving online and start felting. Most art felters use Merino or Corriedale wool, and I’ve hunted around for a few online resources to help you get started. I haven’t ordered from them personally, but they all looked promising.

The Felted Ewe:

I personally love to use undyed wool roving because I love the range of white, silver, grey, brown and black that are the true colors from the sheep. The Felted Ewe has a nice range of undyed roving here:

http://www.thefeltedewe.com/naturals.html

But if you just love color, or want to participate in the International Day of Felt (in which case you’ll need yellow, orange and red roving because those are their color parameters this year); The Felted Ewe has a lot of color options here:

http://www.thefeltedewe.com/dyedroving1_15.html

Alpaca Direct:

This online retailer has quite a cool range of all different types of roving for knitting, spinning and felting. They sell Corriedale wool under a heading called “Colonial” –not sure why, but click here to check it out. (They also have merino if you prefer.)

Outback Fibers:

These guys actually combine merino and corriedale wool together into single batts—which are generally wider than roving. Take a look here and see what you think. I notice Terri recommends Outback Fibers as well on her site.

Here’s a few more wool roving sites she recommends:

• Copper Moose

• Woodland Woolworks

• Blue Goose Glen

So Are You In?

I’ve got my rocks from the nursery and I’ve got some wool roving socked away somewhere in my studio. I hereby pledge to make some felted rocks for the International Day of Felt and I will post my results here on Make Great Stuff for all to see.

How about you–are you ready to make a few felt rocks (or some other felt-y thing for that matter)?

Yes? Excellent–I will be on the lookout for great pics!

Not sure yet? Watch Terri’s video and see for yourself why you should give it a try.

Do you make felt? Do you have some favorite places to buy wool roving that you’d like to share? Are you going to try to make some felt rocks too?  Leave a comment–I’d love to hear!
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I loved the felt show at the Cooper Hewitt–it was a great mix of art, design and craft. Here’s a  fun 30 second intro video from the museum to give you a glimpse of the variety of work on display (loved the “Swing Low” cradle by Ulrick Peterson shown at the end of the video):

Show Highlights

I really loved the show because it  was a great example of the sophisticated uses of felt old and new–it was my first chance, for instance, to see a traditional felted shepard’s cloak (a kepenek) up close–they are supposed to be unsurpassed for warmth and waterproof-ness (is that a word?) and I love how it’s such a simple, ancient garment/sleeping bag/personal tent combination.

I have a soft spot for the traditional felting techniques and loved the  traditional Uzbek carpet and an Afghani saddle pad on display, as well as simple graphic carpet of shibori dyed yellow and green circles on a red ground called Mosen–here’s a little image on the right.

A satisfying pile of felt rocks by Stephanie Forsythe and Todd MacAllen were also on display–they had a few in the touchy-feely section at the end of the show and it sure felt like there was a rock inside, but they are supposed to be wool all the way through.

Christine Birkle designed a wonderful outfit (manufactured by Hut Up, Germany–they have a great site of all their felt, definitely check it out) on exhibit that was a great blend of old and new–a contemporary method  of felting the wool with silk, linen, and cotton and constructing the garments without sewing–using a very traditional technique in a fashionable way.

My favorite piece in the show was simply called Felt Molding by Kathryn Walter–thick, sculptural, and substantial, it was a fresh, fun send-up of traditional decorative trim we see so much of in wood and plaster–especially in the Andrew Carnegie mansion building itself (the site of the Cooper-Hewitt museum), a gorgeous, over the top expression of Georgian style architecture. I was pleased to find out this was the artist’s intent. Here’s a link to their Felt Studio and other wonderful felt products they offer: http://www.feltstudio.com/

Felting Videos

The Cooper-Hewitt also offered 3 great videos that give you a wonderful overview of how felt is made–one of the traditional felt process, one of the contemporary artist who created the “Palace Yurt” installation that filled an entire gallery room, and one of the industrial felting process. All three processes are in current practice on the planet right now, which is also cool. I’ll be writing posts on how to felt at home which draw on the traditional techniques the most, but I’d kill for the cool “felting machine” that Janice Arnold has to make her giant installation pieces. At some point I’ll try to get my husband to help me make a mini version. In the meantime, enjoy the videos, they are really worth watching.

The Palace Yurt Felt Artist:

Traditional Felt Making in Mongolia

Industrial Machine Felting (A Felt Company from Canada)

The show is open until September 7, 2009, so if you’re reading this post before then, definitely make the effort to go. It’s worth the trip.

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