My First Solo Wet Felted Wool Hat

After throughly enjoying learning how to wet felt wool 

using the Beth Beede ball technique 

in Heidi Paul's workshop

http://heidipaul.com/dbhp/heidi_paul.html

at wonderful Wayne Wichern's Studio

www.waynewichernmillinery.com/

I succeeded in finding/buying/creating all the necessary supplies to try wet felting solo!

Each ball of wool is just 1 ounce exactly

Four ounces of beautiful merino wool short fiber batt was purchased from

CurlyFurr at etsy

https://www.etsy.com/shop/CurlyFurr

The shop owner threw in a little pre felted wool to play around with 

and I spontaneously cut out a little smiley face.

This whole piece is only 1 ounce and needs to be separated into enough long sections to cover my 

bright pink gertie ball completely.

( Got my gertie ball from New England Felting www.feltingsupply.com/ )

Let the fun begin!

First color is carefully laid on ball in one dirction...

next 1 ounce layer is laid on in the opposite direction...

                          until all four of the one ounce wool balls has been placed on the ball.

Now it really gets fun trying to successfully stretch the top of nylons 

completely over the wool on the ball without messing up the wool

all by myself!

To felt wool very hot water is required,

and add a little Ivory soap to the water and then massage and agitate.

Check often to be sure wool is not felting to nylons! 

I am a little amazed that I actually succeeded in felting the wool!

It felt like a big soapy mess and I was sure when I removed the nylon that 

the wool would disintegrate and fall to pieces.

Obviously the wool is now removed from the ball 

and is the shape of a large oversized hat blank.

The wool still needs to be felted more and the felting will reduce it in size.

Rolling the wool in bamboo will help accelerate the felting.

Be sure to only roll the wool in the direction you want it to shrink.

I only rolled my wool side to side because I did not want to reduce the length.

When my new wet felted wool hat blank was the correct circumference for my head...

then I stretched it taut onto one of my wooden hat blocks.

I am a pretty big weakling so this is always a challenge.

Here is my securely anchored wet felted wool hat blank drying.

And this is my finished cloche style hat!

( I may still add a ribbon finish to the cut edge )

And the very first thing I had laid on the gertie ball was the smiley face,

having no idea if it would be visible on the inside of the hat.

Well, the face is still happy and so am I !!