Felt a square

Felting your old knitted woollen garments will make a great wool blanket

For those those of you that don't knit, felting your old woolly clothes and making squares from them is a great substitute to make a wool blanket. What is felting?

We found three old jumpers (sweaters) and a very old woollen blanket in our local charity shop and made enough squares for a 40 square blanket.

If you chose to make a blanket for yourself, you could send the leftover squares to help make a wool blanket for a child or baby in Africa.

The advantage of these squares is that they are wool and so they will be extra warm. Please consider this before throwing away the scraps.

Click here for knitting and posting instructions.

Here are the felting instructions:

1. Put the garments in a very hot wash – 60 degrees celsius (140 degrees fahrenheit) with a good scoop of washing powder

2. After the wash, check the felting process. The garments should feel matted and you should not be able to see any holes through the fabric, as you usually can when holding a knitted garment up to the light. The final test is that the fabric will not fray when you cut it. Rewash if this process is not complete.

3. Place the garments in a dryer, if you have one to continue to assist the process

4. Cut a template out of a magazine (8 x 8" square or 20 x 20 cms)

5. When the garments are dry, place the template on the front of the garment nearest one of the seams and cut out a square

6. Keep placing the template as close to each cut-out square to maximise the number of squares you can cut out of each garment.

Note: because the fabric is felted, you can cut out in any direction, over seams and different patterns and include the ribbing and neckline.

Joining: we sent the squares for the blanket pictured here to South Africa and are waiting for the craft women from the Soweto Comfort Club to let us know how they accomplished joining the squares. To find out the results please subscribe to the Square Circle ezine.

If you have experience of joining felt squares, please let us know by filling in this form and we will publish your ideas in the next Square Circle ezine. Thank you.