Making a wool pressing mat
 

Has anybody made a wool pressing mat? I have a wool blanket and am thinking of making my own. I know I need to felt it first. I have a couple of questions.

How thick did you make it?

Did you layer the blanket or just use one?

Did you use batting with it?

What kind of wood did you use?

I'm not sure if your wool blanket will really felt enough to be like a wool pressing mat. I just bought one and it's fairly thick and felted really well. I have an old wool blanket that I use to press large pieces. I toss it over my cutting table and just press on it. It's a very old blanket and I'm sure has been washed many, many times, but it hasn't really felted that much.

The mats are very solid, nothing like the wool blankets. But the wool blanket will be good on an ironing surface if folded in layers.

My mother used an old wool blanket, what she did was put a couple layers on the ironing board and then put a light cover over it to hold it in place. I have a wool lined ironing board cover, but the cotton cover is too thick to be much help so I bought the wool ironing mat when Quilt in a Day had their sale. I got the large one - figured I needed at least 24 inches based on what I iron.

There is no wood in a wool pressing mat. They are heavily felted wool. You could use the blanket, maybe as a base, adding wool roving felting in layers onto the blanket. The ones I’ve seen are about 3/4” thick, solid felted wool.
You could use your blanket as an ironing board cover like others have described.

Years ago a quilting teacher suggested using a fat quarter of wool applique fabric to press open seams. Works great, I use white just in case steam would cause a color to run.

I had many good sized pieces of Wool Felt. I bought these for applique but do not like using them. These are not the cheapie acrylic kind. I layered 4 of these and then sewed a big X and around all 4 sides. I think it works great. I would not have bought these for this purpose but it worked out well for me. I think it is around 15 inches square or so.

She was asking about surface to put the wool blanket on.

I made one accidentally. I was felting a wool sweater for mittens and followed a set of directions that told me to wash it multiple times. By the time I was done it was small enough to fit a teddy bear and so dense it was hard to cut through. After I saw wool pressing mats for sale, I just cut the sweater into as large a square as I could get. It worked!

I remember my grandmother boiling wool fabric to felt it but don't remember what she made with it.