How to preshrink your wool felts

If you are using Stick ‘n Stitch (which is magical BTW), then YES, you need to preshrink your wool or wool-blend felt by wetting it thoroughly and letting it air dry. (Instructions are also on page 2 of my patterns.) If you are not using the soak away stabilizer, no need to preshrink!

WHY: Wool felt shrinks in water. Even the blends! So if you do not preshrink, your lovely hand embroidered piece will unfortunately shrink when you soak away the stabilizer. After it dries, your stitches will look loose and the piece will no longer match up with the other unembroidered pieces. Yikes! Save yourself the heartbreak. Preshrinking is easy, and the felts air dry overnight.

EXCEPTION to preshrinking: Metallic or glitter felts, like the fantastic ones I get from Benzie. Those are wool felts coated on one side with plastic. I have found that even though they shrink on the wool felt sides, the coated side does not. They can look a little cupped after soaking, but that usually relaxes as you sew the pieces together. You can also give them a quick press, but ONLY from the wool felt side, never on the coated side.

MY PREFERRED METHOD:

SOAK: Use cool water, and submerge your felts. Separate bright colors and different color groups. For instance, if I have several similar shades of blue, I soak those together. Your goal is just to get them wet.

WOOL FELT BLENDS saturate almost immediately and can be removed as soon as they are.
100% WOOL FELTS resist the water by design, so give them a few minutes to soak. I gently roll them with my hands in the water to encourage them to get wet. You’ll notice pure wools might saturate (turn dark) only in spots, but it’s fine if they don’t fully saturate. As long as they get wet, you are good.

You may notice some minor dye transfer to the water. No big deal, a slight tinge of color is normal for some felts. Be sure to start with fresh water for each color.

BLOT: BE CAREFUL removing the wet felts from the water. Handle them gently. It is very easy to stretch them out of shape. Do not wring them out! As you remove each sheet, let the excess water run off and then blot it on a fluffy towel. You can lay another towel on top and blot, or you can gently roll the towel up, as shown. You might need a stack of towels.

Don’t skip blotting. Your felt will dry quicker, and if you hang it over rods there will be less dripping. Also, if the felt dye tends to run when wet, blotting will discourage that.

AIR DRY: Drape the blotted sheets over hangers, as shown, or just lay them flat on dry towels in a single layer. Whichever you prefer! NO TOUCHY: Make sure different colors are not touching each other while drying, as they might leave a stain. They will dry overnight.

PRESS, IF NEEDED: When your felts are completely dry, you are ready to get craftin’! If they look wrinkly, give them a quick press with your iron on the wool setting.

Happy mmmaking!