the felting tests

So, last night I decided to try wet felting beads as was suggested to me on flicker as being much faster than needle felting them. Here are my oh so scientific results…

First, I just took a bit of roving & under hot water rubbed it into a ball, shocking it from time to time in cold water. This did felt pretty quickly but didn’t seem to create a nice solid ball, there were cracks in it. Then I needle felted the same amount of roving just a little bit to give it shape before rolling it into a ball under hot water. This worked beautifully, a nice tight round ball. On the next one, I added a little dish soap & it felted even faster & better. The three beads above are from roving. Then i decided to try it with yarn. I used a little nashua creative focus which is a chunky barely plied yarn. I needle felted it a little.

then into the sink & a little soap & there you go…

Next, I tried nashua julia which is a worsted weight (I think) plied yarn. Same thing needle felted it just a little.

then wet felted

Once again a beautiful result. Both yarns have a little mohair in them so the beads are a little hairy. I‘ll try some yarn tonight that doesn’t have any to see how it looks, but this is definitely the way I‘ll make beads in the future as these took almost no time at all. Also I found the water didn’t need to be that hot, I wasn’t wearing gloves (I didn’t have any) & used a water temperature I could stand. This morning, I had a row of pretty little beads all dry, solid & ready to use.