I’m still quite new to the world of felting and wet felting, and I’m enjoying learning new techniques. I had tried making a small pouch over a fist-sized rock, and while that sort of worked, I started wondering if you could (if you should?) try wet-felting a small bowl over a tennis ball. Let’s find out, shall we?
I had also been thinking about using up some wool yarn I have in my stash as embellishment, so I chose this funky coloured Araucania Tierra Del Fuego I had originally picked up with the idea of crocheting some heat-proof mats for my glass-top stove. (Then I relaxed about the stove-top and just try to be careful when putting things on it.) And my darling friend Marla gave me some golden yellow fibre that harmonizes with it perfectly. Also shown: a bread bag, a bit of pantyhose, a small bowl and some bits shaved off of a bar of lavender olive oil soap.
I just received Natasha Smart’s Wet Felting book from the library, so I had her techniques in mind when I was figuring out how to approach this. She works off an inflatable (and importantly, deflatable) rubber ball quite a bit larger than a tennis ball, but I was following the same basic principles.
I briefly soaked the yarn in very hot soapy water with the hope that it would better adhere to the ball. (It sort of worked, except where gravity had other ideas.) I thought maybe the yarn would slip less during the felting period because of the friction of the tennis ball’s surface. (I was correct on that part, perhaps to a fault.)
Not shown, I then laid out shingles of fibre and dunked them in the soapy water before sticking them to the ball similar to papier-mâché. That did not work out quite so well. After trying to evenly place about 2/3 of the soppy, saggy clumps, I took the rest of the dry fibre and wrapped that more evenly across the sodden mass of fibre, wool and tennis ball. I soaped up my hands and very carefully started patting all around the ball to ensure it was evenly soaked and soapy, then squeezed the lot into the foot of an old piece of pantyhose.
My technique from that point was — eclectic, pretty much a mashup of every felting technique I’ve read about. I started gently, mindful that the fibres had to set. I squished, patted, and gently rolled between my palms for a few minutes that seemed like ages. I put a tea towel down and started rolling the lot under my palm without pressure at first, then getting more aggressive. After the first few minutes I found the loose knot I had tied in the pantyhose was in the way, so I untied it, checked for felting by pinching the fibres (not much progress yet), and rearranged the pantyhose to make sure they didn’t get felted in. Then I rolled some more on the counter, rolled more aggressively in the bread bag (still with the pantyhose in place), and spun everything around in my little bowl for a while. When I got bored of one motion (usually around the 2 minute mark) I would switch to another. I fended off my curiosity about my progress and my boredom with the felting for about 15 minutes, at which point the fibres were holding together well enough that I thought I could cut away from the resist.
I’d been concerned that the fibre would felt to the felt of the tennis ball, especially once I’d wondered “what is a tennis ball made of” enough to google it and found out it was felt. Hmmm, maybe should have wondered that before we started? But, it is apparently the non-sticking kind of felt, because I had no problem peeling the (very loosely felted) fibre back from the ball as I was cutting it off. It was at this point that I realized my vision of a set of two small felt bowls would actually be more like two tiny very shallow not really bowls.
It was also at this point that I realized that the yarn, which was really so loosely spun that it was more like pencil roving, was still not really adhering to the fibre very well. I turned each half inside out and put it back on the ball and then back inside the pantyhose and went through all the machinations of felting I’d tried the previous round – rubbing in the bread bag, rolling on a tea towel and spinning around inside the bowl for a bit. After another 10 minutes of that, the yarn had felted down much more, but a few stubborn pieces were still loose. Knowing there is more than one way to shear a sheep (is there, though?) I grabbed my felting needle and it STILL wanted to wiggle free in a few spots. Stubborn thing.
Having not quite thoroughly felted each piece but losing interest in the experiment, I worked on fulling the pieces a bit by throwing them onto the counter. And they immediately lost their tenuous bowl shape and became concave little disks. Hmmm. Maybe we are making coasters instead of bowls? It wouldn’t be the first time I changed the project goal mid-process to follow whatever direction my failed experiments were dictating.
I tried shaping them with my fingers, but eventually realized I had an excellent bowl-shaped mold right there in front of me. Also, rolling the ball around on the felted pieces inside the bowl did a much better and faster job of fulling than anything else I had been trying. I rolled both pieces for a few minutes, both on the yarn side and the not-yarn side, indecisive about which one would be the inside when the project was complete. At least it was looking somewhat less like a pair of coasters by this point. I used the small mason jar to build the sides up a bit more and give them at least a slightly curved bowl shape.
Thanks to the miracle of time-stamped photos on smartphones, I can tell you that this whole endeavour lasted about 90 minutes. I can also tell you that they are not thoroughly felted, but felted enough for this little experiment to be done. I think we can successfully conclude that yes, it is in fact possible to make very shallow, very small bowls by using a tennis ball as a resist. Although there are probably ways that are more elegant than mine. For the larger question of should you do so, or the alternate question of should you do so? Why not?
Now I’m wondering how the time and effort to make these little bowls, which admittedly look far inferior to the ones I had imagined at the outset, might compare to ones made by needle-felting? There is only one way to find out. Stay tuned for mini yellow felted bowls, the sequel!