Well, I promised to share the results of my first attempt at true wet felting.  I was apparently on a real sharp learning curve!  ha!  I'm pretty embarrassed, I'll tell you that!  I think 2 things went wrong:  (1)  My layers were too thin and (2) I didn't roll long enough.  I was aiming to have as thin as possible a piece of felt so that it moved and flowed rather than behaving stiffly when draped, and went too far in layering thin.  The rolling!!  It's more exhausting than you would think!!  It's actually hard work!!  Have some good arm and back strength when undertaking felting.  If you don't when you start, you will if you make a habit of it.  It's quite a workout! 

I still think it's fixable.  Since I didn't roll long enough, the fibers are still open enough that I think if I add more wool to it, I can get them to felt together easily enough.  Once the weather is warm enough I plan to give it a shot.  I can't stand to see materials wasted, so I'll definitely find a way to fix it one way or another!!  

The next step after adding more layers to my fiber over the top of the boucle' is to start wetting and rubbing! 

For my soap solution, I used Kiss My Face olive soap.  I shredded it using a cheese grater and dissolved it into a jug of very warm water.  **WARNING**  If you aren't going to use all of your soap solution in one sitting, store it in a jug that will fit into your microwave, or just make up small batches each time you need it, storing your soap chips in a baggy!  Once the solution cools, it will begin to again saponify and separate, and will need to be warmed up to blend it all again.  

When I got ready to use the same solution again later, I had to dump the whole jug out into a giant mixing bowl, heat it up and then transfer it back to the jug and my spray bottle.  Big pain!  

In this picture, I had had my layout ready for a while before I had a chance to start the wet part, and the fine fibers were kind of sticking to my bamboo mat when I would go back to work on it more.  I rolled a layer of newspaper in with it, and it kept it in place for me nicely.

In the bottom half of the picture, you can see where the fiber has been sprayed with my olive soap solution and pressed and rubbed gently with the bubble wrap.  The upper part has been sprayed, but has not yet been rubbed down.  

In this picture, you can sort of see 3 different sections of my length of fiber.  1/3 sprayed and bubble rubbed, 1/3 sprayed but not yet rubbed, and 1/3 not yet sprayed or rubbed yet. 

Next:  Rolling and rolling and rolling in hot sudsy water! 

And by felting, I do mean felting, not fulling.  I've done that, and managed it quite successfully!

Since my next several weeks are booked solid with family stuff and Easter, I seriously doubt I'll have time to touch anything in the UFO pile.  Therefore, I'm going to share a UFO that I have started, and plan to finish soon.  I'm hoping that by the time my calendar clears up a bit, I'll have time to get it finished and fall right in line with the next step in these pics.  I was meaning to post all the step-by-step pictures once I had it all done, but that just isn't going to happen.

Ok, so I started with some raw Alpaca fiber that I have around, and just finger fluffed it into place on my bamboo shade.  I know a lot of people like to use roving, top or batts, and it definitely would have been a time saver, but I pay good money to have bags of fiber turned into roving.  I'm too cheap to dig into that when I can just pull out a bag of raw and take a little more time to use that instead.