How to Revive a Pattern on a Felted Sweater...

The other day on Craft: there was a really good tutorial about how to felt a sweater so it can be used for your sewing projects. At the end it compared the before and after pics and you can see how the pattern of the sweater gets lost and fuzzy when felted... such a shame!

But I know a way you can revive colour patterns...

Here's a jumper I felted to make crazy patterned something. 

The dull fuzzy grey piece on the right is the front of a sweater and how it came out of the washing machine...

and the brighter piece on the left is the back of the same sweater after I revived the pattern. See how much lovelier?

And it's so easy to do...

The pattern becomes all dull and loses it's detail because a layer of 'fuzz' builds up on top of it as the sweater shrinks and felts. The pattern begins to reappear if you carefully shave off some of that fuzz.

I do this with a pair of scissors, opened wide and run along the knit with flat light pressure. Be really careful when you do this, you don't want to cut or catch the knit, just the fuzz and you definitely don't want to catch yourself! ouch!

I found it works best with tighter felted (more shrunk) wool, the thicker the better and has a colour pattern, and its always best to try it on a small corner before diving into the centre of your new found fabric. I've not tried it with a textured pattern like cable, but I'm guessing it won't work too well and would be easy to catch and tear with scissors.

So there is my little crafty tip...

Hope you find it helpful and have the loveliest brightest weekends!

xo

p.s. the needle felt birdie looking on in the second picture is from The Felt Menagerie and he wishes you a chirpy weekend too!