Most wet felting tutorials skip the part that makes or breaks the project: fiber selection, water temperature, layer thickness, and when to stop. This book covers all of it, in the order you need it.
Written by a fiber artist who spins, dyes, and felts using the same fleeces across all three disciplines, this is a technically grounded guide built for people who want to understand what they’re doing — not just follow steps and hope.
Inside — 10 chapters, 6 complete projects, 18 technique photos:
– Fiber science: why wool felts (the scale structure ratchet effect with 1,100–3,000 scales per inch), why superwash
wool never will no matter how long you try, and how to test an unknown fleece in 2 minutes before committing a full
project
– Breed guide with micron counts: Merino (17–24 microns, fastest, over-felts easily), Corriedale (26–31 microns, the
recommended beginner fiber), Romney, BFL, and coarser longwools — with honest guidance on speed, texture, and project fit
– The complete felting process with sensory cues at every stage — the pinch test at 3 stages of bonding, shrinkage
tracking from layout to finished size, and over-felting triage when you’ve gone too far
– Nuno felting on silk chiffon — fusing wool fibers through woven fabric for scarves and wraps with drape no other
technique can produce
– Resist felting for seamless 3D forms — vessels, bags, slippers, and hats made without seams or construction, using
nothing but wool, water, soap, and a plastic template
– Natural dyeing with 14 historically documented recipes from Ethel Mairet’s 1916 Vegetable Dyes — madder red, indigo
blue, onion skin yellow, walnut brown, logwood black — with exact measurements per pound of wool and mordanting
instructions
– Color and fiber blending including silk, alpaca (safe under 30%), gradients, pictorial felting, and mixed-media surfaces
– 6 complete projects with fiber weight, layout dimensions, and finished dimensions: coasters, a nuno scarf, a
resist-felted vessel, slippers, a wall hanging, and a felted hat
– Troubleshooting: thin spots, uneven shrinkage, over-felting, fiber that won’t bond, and what to do when a project
goes sideways
Fern Hollister has been working in fiber arts for over 12 years — spinning, natural dyeing, and wet felting with the same fleeces across all three disciplines. She is the author of Indigo Vat Dyeing for Beginners and Natural Dyeing for
Beginners. Her approach emphasizes understanding the fiber itself — its structure, its behavior, its limits — because that understanding is what makes every project after the first one better.
This book assumes you’ve handled fiber before — not that you’ve felted before. No fluff. No filler. Every paragraph teaches, proves, or moves you forward.
