So, I spent a long time on the internet looking up wet felted mitten tutorials and bought some books and couldn't find a mitten tutorial, so I taught myself and decided to make a tutorial for everyone out here in craftster land.
Here is the final product, if you like them, read on!
another example
What you need
2-3 ounces of roving (I use merino or merino/silk blends)
Plastic
Pool noodle or something similar
Bubble wrap
Soap
Tulle or some similar type of netting
1. First thing to do is draw out your template on some plastic, for mitten I drew an oven mitt type shape to start that was approximately twice the size of the mittens. Just guestimate, they will change shape as you felt so it’s just a basis. Lay this plastic on top of your bubble wrap.
Once you have done this lay down the first layer of wool in one direction. Make the layer pretty thick so you almost can’t see the outline anymore
2. Lay down a second layer of wool, equally thick in the other direction,
3. Decorate your mittens if you like! Pieces of yarn, silk, or any other fabric embellishments! (this will be the side of the mittens that is ultimately showing on top of your hand)
4. Lay down your tulle and wet the mittens with water – I use a spray bottle but you don’t have too. I completely wet the project down before adding soap, and I use lye soap. However I have mixed dish soap with water and done it all at once at this step.
5. Use your soap and rub it over the tulle (if you didn’t pre-mix the soap and water)
It’ll look something like this
6. Now its time to hand felt a little bit. Gently rub with your hands in small circular motions, it’ll get really soapy now
I generally do this for about 5 minutes, until the felt seems like one solid (yet very flimsy) piece, Every minute or two lift the tulle off so that the tulle doesn’t felt into the wool!
7. Now it’s time to felt! Here you need your pool noodle. I also use cotton to cover the whole thing, it’s easier on my arms for the rolling part!
All rolled up
Now you are going to roll for awhile. I do 50 rolls one way, open the package up, move the pool noodle in a different direction, repeat, and do this for all 4 directions. You don’t want it to completely felt yet! Just a little bit.
8. Unroll and add a resist. The resist in this case is a piece of plastic the same size as your original mitten template. Lay the plastic mitt shape resist down on top of the partially felted wool.
9. Now flip the overhanging wool onto the top of the resist, you may have to cut the felted wool at the thumb joint
It will look like this
10. – Now repeat steps 1-9 for the top half of your mittens! Lay down more wool, wet it out, soap it, hand felt, and then do a little bit of felting. You should now have something that looks like this.
11. Now flip the over hangs over again and try to rub them a bit to start the felting process.
Now you should have something that looks like giant wet mittens, time to full the mittens. Repeat step 7. Except this time roll in each direction 100 times, flip the mittens over and roll in the 4 directions 100 times on the other side. Each time you unroll the package it’s a good idea to pull the tulle off, again so it doesn’t felt in. After this you should have official giant mittens!
12, Cut the bottom of the mittens open, remove the resist and turn the mittens inside out (now they will be right side out)
13. Now time to hand full! At this point I do everything by hand. Put the mittens on your hand and squeeze your hand a bunch so the thumb starts going in the direction you want, now time to hand roll. Fold the thumb to the inside of the mitt when you hand roll.
Roll on a towel, again, about 100 times in each direction, each time you unroll it, try it on, stretch it, squeeze it, make it fit! Then roll again
Basically at this point you just keep doing this until the mittens fit! You can make them fit perfectly by doing this. They will shrink a lot, if you over shrink them you can stretch them back to the size of your hand. Once they dry they will fit like so!
Enjoy! Please don’t hesistate if you have any questions or think anything could use further clarification!
Cheers,
Lise
