Felting by ride-on mower!

I’ve been wanting to try felting this way for ages – inspired by the Mongolian method of pulling a rolled batt behind a pony across the Steppes.

If it works then I can combine felting with weekly lawn mowing…

I made up a large batt of wool -using wool batting x 3 layers

– well wetted with soapy water and rolled up between bubble wrap and bamboo blind. The roll was then wrapped in a length of heavy canvas and tied with baling twine.

It took a few failed attempts to work out how the make the towing contraption.

There is a steel tube and with an inner tube that is rolled up with the bubble wrap and bamboo blind. Heavy duty rope is attached to the inner tube; the rope is passed through green hose pipe that keeps the rope taut and less likely to sag and snarl.

This a rough and ready prototype and worth time to perfect. As you can see it works very well!

I rolled the batt for a total of 20 minutes – unwrapping and turning it half way through.

The felted fabric was quite ruched up during the rolling and well felted.

I fulled the felt by throwing it down on the stone path x 20 times (good exercise, bending at the knees!), followed by more fulling in a sink of hot water, moving the fabric for about 5 minutes – it did not take long.

Next, to create a very well fulled, stiff fabric I put the felt into the washing machine on a 30 degree C / 20 minute wash. The resulting fabric is just what I need and I have not had to used much physical energy to make it.

Definitely going to do some more of this!

– a deeply textured surface – ready for some experimentation….