Check out this article I found on www.gretcrafty.com !!!! So major.

Project UK – make felt from pets
by Camilla Stacey

When my cat Bernard was hit by a train and killed last year, one of the things that made me saddest was that I didn’t have anything physical to remember him by, I couldn‘t even bury him. As he was a very fluffy cat I was still finding bits of his fur around the house, weeks after he had died, and I wished I could do something with the fluff to remember Bernard by.

This made me think about the tradition of weaving hair into jewellery that was popular during Victorian times. Making lace from cat fur seemed a bit over ambitious for me, but I figured it couldn’t be that hard to make felt surely?

The only information about making felt from cat fur I was able to find was in Nava Lubelski’s ‘The Starving Artist’s Way‘ (see bibliomaniac’s review) a book I had to sell my copy of because I was…starving, so my recollection of the method described in the book might be a little off, but it’s worked for me.

1. First collect as much fur as you can from brushing your cat, or collecting fur that has been shed in your house- don’t go and shave your pet just to make this! I collected my fur in an old shoe box- when the box was full I made the felt.

2. Using the draining board of the kitchen sink to work on I lay a tea-towel down and then added layers of fur- making sure to pick out any dirty bits, and trying to ensure that each layer of fur was going in a different direction. I covered approx one third of the tea towel with fur and then folded it over so the fur was covered, like a sandwich.

3. I added some squirts of washing up liquid to the top layer of fabric and then poured boiling water over the complete sandwich- using an old spoon I worked the soap and water into the cloth and kept rubbing the spoon over the fabric until I was brave enough to peak and see what was happening.

4. I then opened the cloth up and worked more soap and more boiling water into the fur directly – I continued to agitate the fur until it seemed to be really matting together.

5. I then folded the fabric back over the felt, and turned the whole sandwich over, pouring more boiling water over it and continuing to rub with the spoon. After a while I took the felt out of the fabric and just started working it on it’s own- I gently shaped it a little and made sure the felt was more or less even.

6. I rinsed the soap off the felt with one last jug of boiling water and then started to press as much of the water out of the felt as I could- the fact that I was using the draining board really helped here- I could press the felt into the ridges on the board to squeeze more water out- also it meant that any water just drained away into the sink.

7. Bearing in mind something my mum had said to me (wet cat hair stinks) I decided that I wanted to dry this felt off as quickly as possible to avoid having the smell of stinky cat fur in my house- so I wrapped it up in a dry tea towel and then pressed it with a hot iron- when it was as dry as I felt (ha ha) it could get I pinned it up to air dry a little bit more.

8. My original plan was to use the fur felt to make a cat-nip mouse for my cat – but in the process of making the felt I realised that I really liked the way the shape developed and I’m not sure If I am ready to cut it up yet- I definitely want to make some more felt this way and am really interested in trying mixing it with fleece, or other people’s pet hair!

Tags: cat hair, felt, Yenna Christensen

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