ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

I have planned to knit a very large jacket for the WoolOn Fashion Parade in New Zealand. Of course I am doing something I have never deliberately done before – creating a felted jacket.

I am planning on using Naturally Vero 100% wool yarns from New Zealand to be felted along with long sections of various faux fur fibres.

To do this and be certain that the resulting knitting will felt to a wearable size and the faux fur yarns were not to overwhelm the piece I had to knit sample pieces of a reasonable size and then felt them. The usual swatch size is not sufficient to test such a process for a large garment. Prior to the felting I measured each piece and then measured again to see the percentage of shrinkage with the felting process.

I did knit 3 sample pieces which I subsequently felted to test the process. Some sections were knitted in garter stitch, some in Stocking stitch and some areas were ribbed and shaped. Each piece was measured and then inserted in a zip up bag and felted in the washing machine. I didn’t add any washing soap or detergent to the water. I did keep checking the pieces and did not allow the machine to go into a rinse or spin cycle.

I set the machine for the lowest water level and the highest temperature and then watched/checked the process a lot. The machine I used heats the water – so one piece I added while the machine was filling. Not a good option I ended up adding very hot water using the electric jug to heat it as the felting process just didn’t start to happen and I am impatient. The other two pieces I added to the machine when the water was very hot.

The pieces were each contained in a zip up pillowcase hoping that would also contain any excess fibre that would be not good for the machine pump and it did work well.

This was an essential step when creating the jacket – as it is nigh impossible to safely remove a huge piece of felted knitting heavy with hot hot water out of a machine safely. The huge Duvet cover/bag we used was essential to get the piece out of the machine.

When my sample pieces were dry I rechecked the measurements and from that I extrapolated the size requirement for my jacket and then the stitches needed to meet the size and hoped the end result would be a wearable jacket.