Cozies and Clutches: Post-Felt

In the past I've felted a few rounds of cozies, three christmas stockings and a messenger bag. I would say that I'm far from perfecting my methods, but before this last batch I thought I was a lot closer to perfection than is true. I've read tips about checking the pieces throughout the felting process to ensure that over-felting does not occur, but I kinda thought that was silly. Or maybe I just thought that my washing machine wasn't intense enough to cause over-felting. I was wrong.

I'm pretty environmentally responsible. We reuse more than we don't, we recycle more than we trash. But water, water is my hot button topic. I HATE to waste water, I HATE it. So when I have things to felt, I try to save them up to do all at once to minimize the waste. And even then, I cut my usual 4-5 minute shower down to about 2 minutes as an extra gesture of conservation.

While environmentally responsible, it probably wasn't the best thing for my pieces. I checked the cozies after the first round of felting and they definitely needed more time. The mistake I made was not checking them during the second round. They shrank too much and the insides of them even started to attach to each other. I've fixed them all up (photo below) but I wish they were taller.

The clutches...I was totally freelancing the patterns and that wasn't the best idea either. The yarn was bulky and that worked a little differently than regular worsted. I think the flaps are a little short, but I'm going to work with them and see if the finished product is close to what I had in mind.

my cozie army...















all the clutches (the bottom one is more like a wallet or eyeglasses case)...




















the black clutch up close...