A few days ago, on the Direct Dyeing post, Shana was asking whether the same method could be used to dye felt pieces. I hadn’t tried it, but I had a couple of white sample pieces of felt that I thought would be good to try it with, so I did that yesterday. The first piece I tried it with was a sample made from two layers of 23 micron merino with wisps of egyptian cotton top between the layers and on the top. It started out roughly 9 x 12.5 inches, and after steaming for 30 minutes, it was 7.5 x 11.5 inches. The interesting thing with this piece was how the cotton took the dye, in some parts where I’d used a colour made from two shades of dye, the cotton took just ones of the shades

The second sample piece was made from two layers of 18.5 micron merino with milk protein fibre tops between the layers and on top. This piece started out 7 x 14.5 inches and ended up 6.5 x 13 inches. Both pieces were soaked in water and vinegar before dyeing.

I probably should have rolled the pieces instead of folding, from the photos of the backs, it’s easy to see where they have been folded. They didn’t take the dyes as well as wool tops or silk does, and there was still dye in both pieces that had to be rinsed out. The results were interesting though, both pieces felt the same afterwards, they didn’t feel extra fulled or less soft. Thanks for the idea, Shana 🙂

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