by guest contributor Abi Solberg
I've seen felting like this before, but they've typically resulted in a little chachki animal - and since I have enough things in my apartment and no kids to take ownership of them, I've resigned to the understanding that needle felting would just simply not be part of my crafting life. I'm happy (this time) to be proven wrong!
This felting DIY cost me $15
What you will need:
- a wool sweater, I got mine at a local second-hand store for $6!
- a piece of felt. If you use a Joanne's coupon you can get enough to do 30 sweaters for $2.50
- a felting needle. These are special because they have a little lip type thing at the end that helps mesh the fibers together.
- a piece of foam
- tape
- a cookie cutter (I you don't have one already, there are bigger problems here!) you can get one for a dollar and so many places!
First you want to wash your sweater and hang dry it to make sure that nothing has shrunk or stretched. Once it is dry, put it on and mark where it falls on your elbow. Make sure the sleeves are aligned correctly and use the cookie cutter as a guide.
Once everything is marked and in place, take the sweater off and stick the piece of foam in the sleeve right at the elbow, making sure that the space you wish to felt is lying flat on the surface! Place the cookie cutter back in place and pull a small chunck of wool from your stash and lay it in your shape.
NOTE you will think you need more than you do, a little goes a very long way so start small and add later if you think it is necessary!
Then, just start stabbing it! I found it worked well to poke around the border first and work your way in but all you really have to make sure of is that you even poke the wool into the sweater. Also double check that everything is getting a basic even coverage and that no piece of felt has a lot of untouched surface space.
It should look significantly covered and poked. The felting needle has merged the fibers of the felt with the sweater. Place your hand in the sleeve, gently pulling the sweater from the foam piece, remove the piece and repeat all steps for the other elbow!
You can basically make any shape you want on any part of a wool sweater now that you have these basic steps down!
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This Banana Republic elbow patch sweater (pictured left) costs $49.99. Impulsesaving the $20.00 difference between buying and diy-ing may seem negligible but NOT SO! $20 a week means $1,040.00 over the year!
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