Felted Flower Pin

I had never attempted felting, and never really felt (get it) the need to- but the Flower Pins in the Domiknitrix book were to darn cute. I don’t have a link to the pattern, but here’s a link to the site- Domiknitrix

I chose to knit a rose and used a Super Kid Mohair from Filatura Cervinia in dark purple and the leaves were a multicolor with more green in it than other colors so I think they had the fall leaves look.

Each rose needs about 9 petals and 3 leaves. It was an easy pattern and since I was felting them a few mistakes here and there weren’t even noticeable. If you can increase and decrease you’re set.

The yarn and needles I used left a really loose knit (I used the needle size recommended for the yarn, US size 7), that did tighten up a bit after I washed them, but I think next time I would use a smaller needle size.

To felt I just put the petals in a garment bag and washed them in hot water, making sure not to let them go through the spin cycle. Even just washing them I had some issues with the petals folding in half and sticking together. Next time I think I would use safety pins to pin them to the garment bag so they stay flat and don’t felt themselves into a ball.

I also dried them on high heat to get them to shrink up more but it didn’t help as much as I had hoped.

To form the flower I started by rolling the middle petal and sewing it, then added petals one by one and sewing them to look the way I wanted. All in all a successful felting project- but I’m not going to quit my day job and do it professionally. ;)