Felting or Shrinking My Christmas Sweater

I really liked this sweater and still shrunk it on purpose.

As you can see some little moths must have found it while it sat months in a wicker basket in a dark closet. You can hunt thrift stores for wool sweaters if you’d like to try.

I was almost happy about the holes, having always wanting to try this form of felting. What I did was set the washer for the hottest setting with 2 hot rinses. Best to put it in a pillow case as it gets lots of “fur” balls. You want to add something else in the washer for two reasons. First you want something really knocking those fibers around in the washer. Someone suggested a sneaker, but I didn’t have one and so added pants. Second, who wants to waste hot water? There’s no rush, do it when you have to do laundry anyway, I did this over a period of time.

We both thought it needed to be a little "tighter" so I did a total of 3 washer & dryer cycles. You may only need two.

My first thought was to cut the end of the sleeve sew a quick hem and have a little bag. Getting ready to cut I noticed the sleeve trim did not shrink like the trim at the neckline.

In cutting the trim off I was messy with the darker wool pattern so I trimmed that off too.

I am happy with the felting but the bag idea is not looking as promising. The sleeve is tapered and the inside seam is really bulky. Think I need to cut another larger piece for a bag.

In order to use this piece I have cut off the tapered edge including the seam and will use it as a book cover. Will be sure to share pics of finished book with my next project with this wool.