Felting with the washer/dryer

A majority of the IDEEN design examples resulted from this easy but very effective technique.
For this pattern, a red pongè scarf, a cut to fit piece of black FLYFEL®-web and a couple of woolen threads are placed on a piece of bubble wrap and sprinkled with soapy water until the wool is well damped.
The stylized roses need a little felting preparatory work, so that the motive cannot move out of place during felting int the dryer. As soon as the woolen threads stick to the pongè silk by itself, cover with a second foil and roll up both sides to the middle. Fold in both ends so that the liquid stay inside the package and cannot leak during felting in the dryer. Wrap a towel around this roll and tie up but not too tightly.

Of course you can also just roll it up from one side but that means that the piece has to be opened after half of the time and rolled up from the other side. Because outside layer always gets warmer then the ones on the inside while in the dryer and therefore felt a lot faster.

 

 

When it comes to temperature and time settings no exact recommendations can be given. You should do your own test run because every dryer works differently. If the felting process is too long, the wool shrinks too much and can turn out to be hard and shabby. Best is to start with 10-12 minutes on the highest setting and to unwrap every couple of minutes to see how far the felting process has proceeded.

Only if the pattern is supposed to be exact, as with this graphical pattern, first felting with your hands is recommended to exclude any unwanted moving. In most cases it is enough to: layer, sprinkle with soapy water, roll up, tie up and let felt automatically in the dryer.

The felted piece should be ironed dry in order to receive a smooth woolen surface. If you want a plastic surface, as the crinkled pongè silk in the adjoining example, simply let the piece air dry or moisten again after ironing so that the silk can puff up again. The wool will maintain its smooth surface after it has been ironed dry once.