Felting crocheted items.

[Lady_Dulcinea]

I want to crochet myself a laptop bag and I think it's a good time to try to felt something. What I need to figure out is how big to make the bag before felting. Will I do that by just doing a test swatch and find the shrinkage rate? I'm guessing that will vary with different yarns. Also does longer time in the hot water mean more shrinking? I probably need to just go to Michaels and look in books, but if y'all can give me some initial guidance that would be great!

[Claire]

You know that you can only felt wool, right? Acrylic won't felt. 100% wool felts the best, but as long as you keep the wool content high a mix will probably felt fine too.

The only way you can know how big to make it is to do a test swatch (bigger is better for this), measure it, felt it, and then measure it again. That will tell you how much it will shrink in each direction.

Although heat does shrink wool, it's really the combination of heat, soap and *rubbing* that felts fabrics. In other words, the wool needs to be agitated so the little stickies in the wool start locking on to each other. That's why you not only want to felt in the washing machine, because of its agitation, but also dry the item in the dryer where the threads will also rub against each other in the presence of heat.

Here is a website (http://suzies-yarnie-stuff.blogspot.com/2006/01/how-to-felt-or-full.html) with instructions for felting. There are several books about felting crochet on Amazon. Here's one (http://www.amazon.com/Vogue-Knitting-Go-Felted-Crochet/dp/1933027401). You could probably make a list of these books and then ask your library if they would buy one.

[mull-berry-ish]

Here's a couple of felting websites that I've bookmarked. HTH

Making Handmade Felt (http://www.allfiberarts.com/library/felt/blfelt.htm)

Felting How-To (http://www.gfwsheep.com/felting/felt.html)