Taken from Norse mythology, Yggdrasil,is the great Ash tree that holds together heaven, earth and the underworld. The branches are in the heavens, trunk in earth and the roots penetrate down to the underworld. Beneath the branches lived the three Norn maidens, who knew the past, present, and future. The Norn spun together the strands of peoples lives creating their fate. Their pets were two swans who engendered all of the swans in the world.
Yggdrasil, work in progress.
Equipment:
You will need a flat surface to work on, somewhere that you don't mind getting soaking wet. Hot water, soap, like Palmolive or olive oil based soap.
A fine bamboo blind or a mat.
Plastic sheeting or bubble wrap.
A towel
A plastic bottle with holes in the lid, like a salt shaker, which you can fill with very hot water and shake over the wool to be felted.
A piece of nylon net, like petticoat or curtain net, to hold the wool fibres in place while you agitate them with the hot water and soap
Felting needles to applique extra features on to the felted base.
Soap and water.
The method:
Lay the bamboo blind or mat on the table, cover this with a layer of plastic or bubble wrap. With two carding combs card sufficient wool to thickly cover the area you plan to felt. Pull out fine tufts of wool to lay parallel to each other, then criss cross with another layer and repeat until you have a good thick layer of about 2 inches of fine wool. Cover this with your piece of netting to keep the wool in place. Fill your plastic bottle with very hot water and sprinkle over the net until the wool is soaked. You can do this in sections if you are working on a large piece. When the wool is soaking, gently rub in the soap with gentle circular movements, pressing the fibres down and together. Lift the netting between applications of soap and water to ensure that you don't felt the net to the wool. Keep up the process of wetting and soaping until the wool begins to stick to itself, then turn the whole thing over and repeat the process on the other side.
At this point you can begin to add other colours of wool or other fabrics to the surface of your felt, in our example we added some thick pre felted pieces which were to become the trunk and branches of Yggdrasil the Ash Tree and some netting and fabric which became the cloaks of the three Norn maidens.
Now the felt is ready for the next stage, where the fabric is 'fulled', or agitated until it shrinks,it may shrink as much as 20%, but this process tightens up the fibres and links them together making the resulting cloth strong and firm. To do this, roll the felt up in the blind and bubble wrap and then roll vigorously, as though you were rolling out pastry. You will need to turn it over and repeat the process from all sides, continue until the felt is thick and robust, you can add more soap and hot water as you do this to ensure that the whole piece is strong and there are no holes.
When this is complete, you can gently rinse out the remaining soapy water and hang the felt up to dry. Additional decoration can be added by embroidery, applique, beads, or by 'dry felting' with a felting needle.
