Dear Theresa,Some of those moth holes mentioned in the previous post were too bad to work around, so I decided to felt another batch of sweaters and see what I could do with them. Felting is quite easy if you use wool sweaters (acrylic, cotton, etc. won't felt) and a traditional washer (the water-saving vertical washer I have at home is too gentle on the clothes to provide enough agitation).
1. Put the sweaters into pillowcases, preferably with a zipper top. If you don't have a zipper top pillowcase, you can tie the case closed with butchers twine. This step is necessary as felting releases a lot of fuzz that can clog your washer and drain. The pillowcases trap that fuzz.
2. Set the washer to the hottest setting and the longest agitation time. Throw the sweaters in (soap isn't necessary) and set a timer for 5 minutes.
3. After 5 minutes is up, check on the sweaters and see how they're felting up. Every fiber is different so some will felt before the others. I had to wait 20 minutes for most of these sweaters, setting the clock and resetting the washing machine so it wouldn't go into the rinse mode and waste water.
4. I pulled the sweaters out as they seemed felted enough. Cashmere took the longest.
5. For the final step, I threw the sweaters into the dryer for more felting, making sure to put them in the pillowcases again. Most of them shrunk and tightened up quite well (cashmere the least), and I pulled them out before they got too small. This is all at your own judgment. Choose how felted you want them to be.
Notes: For one of my sweaters, I had some yarn that almost matched. Before felting, I stitched up all the moth holes. The felting process effectively hid where all the patches were. Now I can wear the sweater without any serious modifications. For some reason it didn't shrink much either! For the others, I'll have to get more creative in patching the holes or just use the wool for other projects.
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