Felted Crochet Bowls

So here are the results of the crochet bowls I made with the Feltable wool that I talked about here.

I made up the orange/yellow round bowl first and then the wider mouth blue/green one. I'm really happy with the results of the felting and wanted to talk about it a bit :)

The rounder bowl went through the wash three times ( if I remember correctly ) I have a front load machine that heats the water itself. I can not manually adjust the water level. The second and third times a couple of pairs of outgrown kids jeans went in with the bowl and both washes were 2 + hours at 90deg. Each wash cycle it went through did improve the felting.

The shrinkage was significant so I decided to try and hand felt this one and see if it made a difference.

I went through various warm hand washes creating friction by rubbing and using a small amount of water with detergent. the fabric was becoming more felted each time and the shrinkage was significantly less than when using the machine method. However as I am impatient, once my knuckles were blistering from the wet wool friction I threw it into the hot wash cycle I mentioned above to finish it off. It then shrank in line with the size reduction of the other bowl. I understand there will be shrinkage as a part of the felting process but did not expect it to be this much.

The experimentation was lots of Fun and I am really happy with the results, I'd like to try again and persist at a slower pace with the hand felting and see how the result might differ. I was wondering about the strength of the skin of the women from years gone by when hand washing was the norm, and feeling blessed to not have to deal with that.

For now I have two small colourful felted bowls, my fingers have healed and I still have lots of lovely bright wool to felt with. I will most certainly have another go at it.