QultingaddictUK

I couldn't sleep last night so in the early hours of the morning I watched a shopping channel showing a Simplicity felting machine and as I had been thinking of trying one for ages I telephoned my machine supplier and ordered a Janome one.

Have I gone completely mad? I have been Googling to see if I can use it to use up scraps etc. to applique designs onto quilts and other projects but all I can find is wool and thread felting. Have I got it wrong or can I use up cotton fabric scraps to embellish things, please say yes

snipforfun

From what I understand it is only used with wool felt and maybe thread felting and other fancy fabrics I cant understand when cotton would be desirable. Maybe you could google felting machine for more info

quiltingcandy

I have the same problem watching a shopping channel or those infomercials in the middle of the night. Since I have always wanted to learn to spin wool, the felting has fascinated me. But living is Southern California wool is not readily available and not worn much. So have you gone completely mad? Not in my opinion - I would love to come play with you and your machine.

PaperPrincess

Felting is where you take fibers and felt them with hot water and/or friction to create a sturdy fabric. It's also called fulling. Boiled wool is felted wool. You can manually manipulate the fibers, or use a special felting needle & pad. the felting needle is actually a group of needles set in a base. You lay the loose fibers (or loosely woven fibers) on the pad and plunge the needle over and over thru the fibers and into the pad. It takes forever! A felting machine basically automates this by having a group of needles that plunge repeatedly into the item being felted. Felting depends on the loose fibers being matted together to form a unified whole. My Viking dealer was trying to get me to buy one when I was making a lot of felted bags, but I decided against it. Not every fiber will felt and my gut reaction is that cotton fabrics don't have the proper fiber type to felt to each other.
Maybe someone who has one can try and (hopefully) prove me wrong!

Prism99

I think there are some differences between felting machines and embellishing machines. There are quite a few Youtube videos that should show the difference. Here are a couple I found:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BqMnGfyFlA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRtItt9n274

KLO

You might want to check out Fiberella's website. She is a very talented fiber artist and there is a lot of info on her website including some free tutorials. You can even take classes via the computer (elearning as she calls it) no matter where you are in the world if you are so inclined. Either way, she has some great stuff there. Hope this helps answer your questions and inspire you to use your new machine.

http://fiberella.com/index.html

DOTTYMO

When I was looking at buying the simplicity at NEC a fellow quilter recommended I look on ebay , gumtree, preloved etc etc as pele buy and resell shortly after did this and got one at 10th of the price. Also only used it a few times as I have so many quilts to sew I don't have time for embellishments.
Also the hand items work very well