Fall Felting Adventures

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Last Thanksgiving my mom brought me a magazine clipping with a picture of felted acorns.  A friend had given it to her and she wanted to know if we could make some of these for her for this year.  Luckily, we both remembered we wanted to do this and were on the lookout for acorn caps.

Tan Oak caps from our camping trip.

Mt. Madonna camping was the location where we hit the acorn cap jackpot.  The tan oaks there were very cooperative!

Earlier this fall I started up the dyepot and dyed a couple different fibers with chestnut dye.  I also added a little pumpkin orange for variation and depth of color.  The fibers I dyed were light brown CVM, natural cream colored targhee, and some natural Suffolk that was left from a quilt batt. I also got out my carding and felting stash.  (BTW, I made way more brown wool than needed for this project!  It actually takes very little!)

My embarrassingly large felting/carding stash!

We met at my house a couple weekends ago and did some wet felting!  What fun!  In my felting stash I have the remains of several sheer curtains and I cut out a couple squares of fabric about 6 inches by 6 inches.  We used these to contain the wool while shaping.  I had experimented with just rolling it in my hand, but that allowed to many lumps to form.  We needed the acorns to be smooth, not lumpy!  We rolled the wool and then wet it, wrapped it in the cloth and added a little dish soap and then just rubbed them in our hands.  It took a little while to get them to smooth out, but keeping the cloth tight helped.  Mom's hands are bigger and her acorns turned out longer than mine.  We had real acorns for models and some were longer than others, so this was realistic.

Acorns in progress getting tested for cap fit.

After making them, we rinsed out the soap, rolled them in a towel to dry and then put them on the rack in the dryer for a little more drying.  They weren't totally dry so Mom took hers home with some caps and I left mine drying on the kitchen table.  By the next day it was time to fit and glue the caps on. 

Fitting and gluing the tops.

They turned out great.  This is a pretty quick fall felting project with a big impact!  Perfect for gifts, too.

Finished product

 Do your part for world fleece and try this project!