This week September 5th-11th is Wool Week. A entire week celebrating the staggering diversity of wool. You can knit it, weave it, wet felt it, needle felt it and sew with it. You can make clothing, furniture or sculpture with it. It can be traditional or avant-garde. Wool is what you make of it.
Here are just a few free tutorials giving you a glimpse of the possibilities. Just click the links to see the free tutorials:
Knitting and Yarn Craft
If you can't knit, you can still make these wool wrapped bracelets with a how-to from Martha Stewart.
I absolutely adore this free pattern for a hounds-tooth loom woven scarf from the Lion Brand Yarn site.
You can loom knit this lacey scarf with a free pattern from Lion Brand Yarns.
Sew with Wool
Re-use old men's tweed sports coats by making them into a patchwork quilt with a wool twist. Get the how to from Martha Stewart.
Make a wool felt owl pillow with a tutorial on BHG.
UCreate featured a tutorial for adult sized mittens with a little pocket for little hands to slip into called "Hold My Hand Mittens" designed by Emily from the Boy Trifecta.
Re-using Wool Jumpers
Full a wool jumper (sweater for the North Americans) to make this funky felted basket with a tutorial on Wildcards.
If you don't know how to take knitwear and turn it into felt by the process called "fulling", read Betz White's post about how to make knitwear into felt.
Betz White, author of Warm Fuzzies: 30 Sweet Felted Projects
Betz White shared how to make her gorgeous wool tea cup pin cushions on the Martha Stewart show. See the video and get the how-to by following the link.
Lovely Nest Designs gives us a tutorial to use felted jumpers to create little trees that would make perfect Christmas decorations.
Kleas featured a tutorial that transformed felted wool jumpers into potholders.
My Poppet took tiny felted wool scraps and made them into a patchwork I-Pad cover and then wrote a tutorial about the process.
With the weather cooling down, you might need this tutorial to make a felted wool scarf designed by Stacy Shyler for the Bernina site.
Needlefelting
Crow Roosters Crow created a simple pin cushion by needle-felting a piece of wool and sticking it in a walnut shell.
Learn to needle felt a tiny bird with Laurie Sharp, author of Wool Pets: Making 20 Figures with Wool Roving and a Barbed Needle
Wet Felting
Wool can be felted with hot water, detergent and agitation - use this property of wool to make wool covered soap with a tutorial on How to Make with SarasTextureCrafts.com.
Marcie of the blog mossymossy was featured on Whip Up and shared a tutorial to make wet felted finger puppets - even kids can get in on the wool appreciation.
Use wet felting to make felt balls that can be used as toys, decorations or even beads with a tutorial from Martha Stewart.
Re-visit older posts to get yet more links to wool frenzied tutorials:
It occurs to me that this Freebie Friday could very well go on forever, or at least until my fingers fall off and I slump incoherent in my chair. There are just so many ways to use wool and so many free tutorials to inspire you. I expect as long as there are sheep, there will be wool and people getting creative with it.
, I've managed to rack up (or loom up, I guess) an impressive array of knitwear.
, so I'm allowed to call it branching out.
