Felted Soap

Felted soap is pretty cool. Wool as you know shrinks in hot water. So when you wrap it around soap, continuously rub it under hot water, You create felted soap.. or soap in it’s own little sweater as, some people say. Doing this saves more soap as, the wool creates a built in wash cloth. The wool will also continue to shrink as the soap gets smaller. The wool is anti-fungal, anti-microbial, and anti-bacterial.
You will need:

• Bar of soap. either hand made like mine or your favorite.. and I’d go with Dove.
• Roving Wool.. (I like Merino Wool)
• Felting needles. (38 star, 36, 40 triangle)
• Mat for felting.
• Bowl of Hot water and, bowl of cold.
• Tights.
• Finger protector.. optional but recommended.

Felting needles, Mat and finger protector can be brought from Living Felt
Roving wool can be bought from various places but I’m partially happy with Merino Wool & More.

Here you have your mat and needles.. they are extremely sharp..

I bought a few ounces of basic background color. This is Ecru. Something like cream.. You can see my hand, with the finger protector on it.

Up close.

Here’s an ounce of some of the other colors I bought. They are so ridiculously soft.

Here are some bars of soap I made a while ago, that have basically just sat there.

I love this one.. all the color has bled out of the little embedded shapes, and gone into the rest of the clear bar. Resulting in this rainbow effect.

So here I’ve take some of the Ecru wool. Just enough to wrap a medium layer around the soap in one direction. We will design our shapes into this piece.

Taking a small piece of another color and using whichever needle you prefer (Note the larger needles punch deeper and, harder. You can use 2 needles at once to move faster, use the thinner needle for more detailed work)
Can you see the small blue dot?

This is my finished design. It takes a while and, obviously I’m no expert.. but I couldn’t find any tutorials on this from the experts.. and trust me, their work is just unbelievable!!

I have also learned that you can felt the soap, and add designs as you felt.. it’s a really nice effect.. I will try that another time.

Taking another piece of wool. Wrap it around the soap

Wrap your designed piece around the soap in the other direction.

Taking a cut pair of tights.. thinner is better.. wrap the soap in the tights. You can tie a knot. This will keep the wool from moving around, thus ruining where you wanted your design to be.

Using hot water, submerge the soap and build a lather by moving the soap around in your hands.. as you would a bar of soap naturally. The agitation and hot water is what makes this work.. I’ve come to find out that, after a few minutes in hot water, dipping the soap in cold water tightens the wool.. Doing this back and forth between hot and cold shrinks the wool faster..

You can release the soap from the tights and pull on the wool slightly. If it pulls a lot, you’re not finished. You don’t need to place it back in the tights if, its not that loose. just continue to rub in hot water then cold.. then hot, then cold..

Let dry on a rack. It’s ready for use. While not in use, let dry on a raised soap dish, so that it doesn’t sit in water.