Goodwill is considering organizing crafting and repurposing classes in northern New England and we would love to hear your feedback: would you be interested in taking a class? Do you sew, knit, felt, or make crafts? Would you be interested in teaching a class? Please fill out the poll to the right and let us know! You can reach us at info@goodwillnne.org.
I’m sure many of you have heard of felting: the phenomenon of creating a new, sturdy fabric out of wool. Felt is warm, water-resistant, and durable. Felting is nothing new, but it has recently been rediscovered as a resource for people who want to make quick and easy crafting projects.
We featured a felting project from Susan of the Maine Etsy team back in December, but I’ve received requests for additional project ideas. I’ve thinking about felting quite a bit lately (I think mostly because knitting has fallen to the wayside) and I found a number of sites with tutorials and easy projects for beginners.
The First Step: Felting the Wool
How do you felt wool? I’m sure many of you have accidentally put your favorite wool sweater in the wash and it came out looking something like this:
That’s really all you have to do! Check out this tutorial on Crafting a Green World for some great tips.
Easy Felting Projects
Instructables.com has a pretty easy tutorial for making a felted bag. You can ignore the first knitting step and find a wool sweater at Goodwill in your favorite color and pattern.
I started knitting an iPod cozy, but after seeing this felted cozy, I think I might switch and try this instead. It is easier to make and the water-resistant qualities of felt make it more appealing to protect the iPod. I also found this post helpful for making iPod cozies, though it gives options for making them out of other material besides felt.
Hats make for a very easy felting project and people love receiving them as gifts, too. I found this site that features some hats for inspiration. According to a tutorial on Threadbanger, simply “cut up a couple rectangles and sew them together to get a hat shape with ears, then embellish however you want…”
Threadbanger also features a variety of other projects that are a bit more challenging, but exciting, nonetheless. I really want to make these beverage cozys!
And because I find this completely amazing, check out this felted typewriter! Take a look at other felted projects blueblythemonster makes.
Thanks for reading and remember to take our poll on the right hand side of the blog!
Whoa! That felted typewriter is awesome! -the DCGF
I couldn’t vote in the poll (wouldn’t let me select button) but I’d be interested. My kids and I like crafting and sewing and although haven’t done much teaching in that area, we love recycling-type projects so we’d be up for seeing if we could help out with the project (as a family-friendly parent/older child kinda thing). I also know 4-H clubs in Cumberland County (contact Cooperative Extension office (www.umext.maine.edu/CumberlandCounty/default.htm) are quite crafty so might be a good option to explore for kid-friendly project teachers for younger kids too.
Hi Wendy–I fixed the poll, sorry about that! Thanks for the comment and I’ll be sure to let you know about any classes we plan–it would be great to have you involved!
I would be interested in doing someting like this around Kalamazoo Goodwill. Is there anything like this available?
Hi Dorothy,
Try contacting the Kalamazoo Goodwill. Their website is http://www.goodwillswmi.org/.