So, I saw a rug made from raw, un-dyed wool stuffing in a book called "Sweet Needle Felts", or something like that. In the book, the wool stuffing is needle felted inside embroidery hoops to get uniform circle shapes for the rug. The circles are then sewn together to make a rug.
Being too lazy to go searching for raw wool batting, I instead decided to try the same concept with wool quilt batting. Plus, the wool batting was on sale, soooo......
These are the materials I used:
1 yard wool batting
1 large piece of foam (like the kind you'd buy to make a cushion for a chair or sofa)
assorted roving wool
scraps of left-over yarn from my stash
1 felting needle
1 needle felting tool (the kind that holds 5 needles)
1 needle felting brush
I got about 1 yard of "sale" wool batting, folded it into fourths, and started cutting it into different shaped circles, using embroidery hoops at circle templates.
After I had all the circles cut out, I arranged them vaguely how I wanted the rug shaped.
Since each circle has four layers of wool batting, I stacked the layers in an alternating way
I don't have a picture of how I stacked them, but it was kind of like this:
layer
layer
layer
layer
layer
(I hope this makes sense...sometimes I fail big-time at explaining things.....)
I then began loosely binding them together by punching with the felting tool.
Sorry for the blurry picture
Then, I grabbed my colorful stash of roving wool and wool yarn
I tore off small chunks of one color at a time
And placed them on the wool batting and felted them down with the single needle, on top of the thick foam cushion.
I found that the single needle penetrated better to get the wool tacked down solidly through all the layers of wool batting.
After I had all design all felted onto the batting solidly, I used the multi-needle tool and the brush to re-felt the entire thing - to make the surface uniform and to ensure that everything was securely felted down.
Ta-da!
This is a to-scale picture.
It took about 1 week to make (probably 20 - 30 hours), and cost less then $20 (US) to make.
Not too bad, but I am hoping to find some kind of spray to protect it from getting too stained, since I'd like it to be a functional rug.
Suggestions?
It's interesting that the 4 layers of wool batting were so thick and fluffy - probably 4 inches before they were felted - and they actually felted down to a rug that is less than 1/2 inch thick. Wow!
Comments and criticism welcome - this is my first felted rug and my first tutorial. I apologize for any confusing explanations and all the fuzzy pictures! I'm still getting used to my new camera
Thanks for looking!
