Fun Knitting Ideas: Felting Decor
Bored and looking for fun knitting ideas? Look no further!
If you're always on the hunt for interesting knitting ideas, you should definitely try embroidering your work with felted yarn. Now, when we talk about felting for knitting, we usually mean throwing a finished work in a hot washing machine. In this case, we're talking about something completely different: felting individual strands as you work, using them to embroider a piece.
Getting started
The first thing you need is the piece you want to decorate. You'll also need some sort of yarn to decorate it with as well as a felting needle (a scary looking contraption, very sharp, with barbs all along it).
A word of warning about this particular activity: your fun knitting ideas become less fun when you stab yourself in the leg with a barbed piece of metal. So before you get started, either put something heavy (a sponge or cushion) between you and your work, or stretch it out somewhere you won't jab yourself when you push it through.
Next, decide on the design you want to create (again, think of this like embroidery: you're adding a design to a finished product, felted or otherwise). Once you've figured it out, lay the yarn over the area you're planning to work on.
Relieve your frustrations... carefully.
You're now going to start jabbing that scary barbed felting needle through the yarn and your finished work over and over again. But you're going to do it carefully, because it's a pretty thin needle and can easily break. Got that? Great. You're on your way to a job well done.
As with all unique knitting ideas, this one takes a little practice. Basically what you want to do is keep pushing the needle in and out of the yarn. The yarn will felt before your very eyes, becoming tangled and enmeshed with the finished work. It's completely normal to see fibers coming through on the reverse of your work.
Keep on doing this until you like what you see. The best way to proceed? Just keep moving stuff around. As one strand of yarn felts and works its way into the finished piece, shift the other pieces around so you have a steady, workable rhythm.
Knitting-and.com has a great illustrated set of instructions for felting knitting ideas, including this type of embroidery. Fortunately, while this sounds kind of complicated, it's actually pretty easy to get the hang of it. Have fun, and keep looking for new knitting ideas to stir things up!