Comments on: Whiptips – sewing felt

By: soozs

soozs — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 10:05:29 +0000

I use a regular needle and have sewn a looooot of felt on my ordinary machine. You may want to check the degree to which you are ‘felting’ the jumper. It is much harder to get through a really dense felt than a moderate one. I no longer bother to felt jumpers which started out life as very heavy jumpers, or to felt a jumper to the point of extreme density. I find with the very dense and thick felts the machine copes fine until you get to a junction with a few layers, then I have broken needles. Also, the finished item (mine are mostly toys) don’t turn as well when the felt is very dense, ie the seams don’t ‘open’ well. I now seek out fine jumpers for felting, or only moderately felt. If there is a lot of ’stretch’ still in the felt I also use a stretch stitch for sewing rather than straight. I’ve never had a problem with fraying, even on lightly felted items.

By: rfg

rfg — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 16:25:54 +0000

Good grief, clearly I don’t know what I’m talking about when it comes to sewing felt – sorry for any confusion! I must have misunderstood what my friends at Purl were suggesting. Good luck!

By: Mimi K

Mimi K — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 15:48:42 +0000

I sew with felted sweaters a lot and I second everything VioletRose said. Regular needle, long stitches. I use straight stitches if the sweater is truly felted. If is looks like it might unravel at all, then I use zigzag. I have a tough machine (Bernina 930) so maybe I’m spoiled. Besides that- be careful not to pull on the fabric while you are sewing- that could break needles. And, actually, sometimes I do break needles… but not enough to worry about and they are not that expensive.

By: AmyDe

AmyDe — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 15:11:09 +0000

lengthen your stitches

By: soph

soph — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 13:55:44 +0000

i’ve always used a standard needle – a 14 if i have one – and usually ease up on the top tension. a walking foot would be ideal to cope with the thickness, but i can’t think of a reason why you’d be getting broken needles – the fabric is usually dense, but not particularly tough.

By: Violetsrose

Violetsrose — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 09:40:05 +0000

You should just be able to use a regular needle

There is no way that a regular needle should needle felt – needle felting needles have little teeth along their edges to catch and pull the fibres – if your sewing machine needle has bits on it that are catching fibres then it needs changing pronto! – needles for sewing should be smooth

If the felt you are using is really dense and tough then a leather needle might help – these have an almost knife-like edge to help punch a hole through the textile you are sewing.

I would definitely use a longer stitch length than usual and go really slowly

By: rooruu

rooruu — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 03:22:43 +0000

I’d be sewing slowly, and with a longer stitch, and using a walking foot so the fabric travels evenly as you sew.

By: medea

medea — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 03:00:52 +0000

On the machine I would either sew the letters from an uncut piece of felt onto the fabric and then cut around the sewn edges, I would baste the letters to the surface before sewing them on with the machine or I would stick interfacing on the letter and fuse it onto the surface and then cut so the letters don´t bunch up and end up crooked.

By: Guin

Guin — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 02:57:04 +0000

Hi,
I’ve been sewing felted sweaters on my machine with no trouble. I have just my regular needle in, but I set my machine to a zig-zag stitch or I set it to a wider-than-usual straight stitch. My tension isn’t very…tense, so that might have something to do with it.

By: emilydimovgottshall

emilydimovgottshall — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 02:55:48 +0000

I’ve sewn felted wool from sweaters and just have the needle from my standard sewing machine. I do fiddle a lot w/tensions, however. just my opinion, however.