Other Fibers
There are lots of different fabrics and fibres which, although they don’t felt on their own, work very well blended with wool or as a surface design incorporated into the felt.
Examples of fabrics which felt well are: Lightweight silks, organza and cotton scrim or cheesecloth. The structure of these fabrics, being lightweight and fairly open weave, means that the wool fibres can ‘push though’ and grip the fabric to felt it to the surface. The basic rule for whether a fabric will felt is to try blowing through it, if you can feel your breath, it’ll probably felt. Fabrics can also be ‘anchored down’ with wisps of wool over the top.
Silk gives us many different types of fabrics and a great number of Silk products from cocoons to silk top. For more info and photos, see the Silk page.
Like Silk, Soy and Milk are protein fibres, there are more photos and some info on the Protein Fibres page.
Cellulose Fibres are plant based, they can be produced directly from the plant by methods such as retting, or regenerated like Viscose and Rose. Have a look at the examples on the Cellulose Fibres page.
Synthetic Fibres are man made, most are very familiar like nylon or plastic, but there are also ‘faux’ fibres made to replicate animal fibres and quite common now is Ingeo made from corn sugars. For a few more commonly used man made fibres, have a look at the Synthetics page.
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I took my first class and made a scraf!. Thanks for the info on other fabrics to felt with, my skin doesn,t care for wool. Do the other fibers need an added steps to felt and can you make felt balls with them?
Hi Michelle,
What kind of wool have you been using? Finer micron wool is less ‘itchy/scratchy’ because it is finer and smoother, coarser wools have kinks and bends which poke the skin. You could also try other animal fibres, alpaca is very soft, yak and camel are more expensive, but softer than babies’ breath!
Embellishment fibres won’t felt on their own, they are a surface ‘decoration’, added to the layout or blended in to the animal fibre beforehand for a lighter felt.
I’ve never made felt balls, but I think using other fibres with them would be similar to flat or other 3d felt as in it depnds on the amount used.
I hope that helps.