Felt Up? A felt beads tutorial

Can you see how snow white my hands are?  That's because I took it into my head that what I needed more than anything else was a bit of colour in my life so I hit my bag of Merino tops to make a wet felt bead bracelet.

Materials

A selection of complementary Merino Tops

Soap or washing up liquid

Hand warm water

Hand cream

Mattress needle

Shirring Elastic Thread

OK, hands up who is wondering what exactly Merino tops are?  Well this is what they look like,  you will remember that Merino is a variety of sheep that comes originally from Australia by way of the US and has very soft wool.  The top is the washed, dyed and carded (carding the process by which the wool fibres are teased apart and made ready for spinning) wool which is sold from a number of places.  A quick google will bring up a number of suppliers like the Handweavers Gallery and Studio or Wingham Wool who can supply you with these.

So select the colour of beads that you want to work with and open up the tops.

Tease the top into two and gently pull off about 4" of fibre.

Now there are various methods of rolling a ball, you can tease the fibres in half again vertically.  Roll one strip up like a Swiss roll, take the other strip and do the same again over your existing Swiss but rolling over so that you cover the open ends.  However, I am a simple soul and so I simply start to roll up the fibre into a ball.  Remember you will lose at least 25% of the size in shrinkage.

Now take a smidge of soap in your hands and some warm water and start to roll your felt ball.  It will feel like a soggy cotton wool ball and you will think that the ball will not come together but keep on rolling it between your palms as it becomes harder and denser and occasionally pass your hands under a hand hot stream of water.  

Once you have a passably sized bead, you can add some further fibres to make a bead that looks like mosaic, you could choose fibres from the other tops or add silk fibres too.  Remember that the new fibres will only hold if you matte them into the existing felt bead.

You will feel that the ball has become really solid, you need to shock the felt, firstly by using hot water and then follow this up with cold water and continue to rinse the bead until all the soap has dissipated.  You now need to let the bead dry out... I leave mine to dry on a sunny window sill.


When you have finished making the number of beads that you need, get out your hand cream, you will certainly have clean hands so use the hand cream to keep them soft too!

Once the beads have dried out, you need to string them up.

Use a mattress needle, which is a wicked looking implement originally used for sewing mattress buttons to the top and the bottom of mattresses.  The needle is strong enough to pierce through the dense fibre of your bead.  

Set out your beads in the pattern that works best.  I have used shirring elastic doubled up to string the beads together so I do not have to use findings to fasten the bracelet.  

When you tie the two ends together, push the knot into the bead to hide it and make the bracelet look neat.

And here is the finished item all ready for Handmade Monday, so please go over to Wendy's Blog to see what everyone else has been up to over the past week.  


However, if you also want to see a blog with some amazing wet felting work, take a look at Rosie Pink's blog, the work that they do is fantastic.


And now for the really shrivelled hands as I make the accompanying necklace... pass me the hand cream!