Roe's Exciting Adventures in Fulling

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5. Roe's Exciting Adventures in Fulling
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Fulling is the process of felting wool which has already been made into a piece of fabric, whether by weaving, knitting, nalbinding or any other method.

What you shouldn't do

Well, I knitted this green and red hat for a friend. And it came out a smidge too big.

And I thought "If I fulled this hat, maybe it would miraculously end up the right size".

So I vigorously wash it in warm water. Nothing happens.

So I vigorously wash it in alternating warm and cold water. Nope, nothing happening.

So I boil it for 10 minutes and throw it in cold water. Repeat twice. No shrinkage, no fulling, nothing.

So I throw it in the washing machine with some towels on a hot cycle. Nup. If anything it is slightly larger from being stretched while washed, and now it has towel fluff all over it.

At this point I consider two more options- try it with fullers earth or fermented urine, both period methods. Now Toowoomba has this bright red earth which stains everything that it comes in contact with, so I was pretty sure that it wasn't fullers earth.

And I really wasn't sure that I wanted to ferment urine on the off chance that it would be the magic ingredient.

Then I read the label for the wool I used to knit the hat, and there were the magic words.

"Machine washable." The stupid wool had been specifically treated so that it wouldn't felt.

What you should do

Having failed my first attempt at fulling. I then decided that it might be a good idea to do some research before attempting it again.

Fulling is the process of felting wool which has already been made into a piece of fabric, whether by weaving, knitting, nalbinding or any other method. I will concentrate on fulling knitted items, but the principle remains the same for fulling other items. The process of fulling goes back to the sixth century B.C., and played an important role in the textile industry throughout the SCA time period. Woollen fabric is treated with soap, grease, fuller's earth or other special clays or stale urine, and then agitated with mositure until the fulling process occurs. The agitation was originally provided by people physically agitating the fabric with their feet or arms, but by the tenth century water driven fulling mills had begun their spread across Europe. Later the fulling process was controlled by guilds, as it was an important part of the production of high quality woollen fabric.

There are several advantages to fulling a knitted item.

1. It was often done in period, especially with caps such as Monmouth caps.
2. The knitted fabric is much denser, stiffer and more water resistant.
3. You can cut it without it unravelling (there is a cap with a slashed brim in "A History of Handknitting" which was probably slashed after fulling).
4. The structure of the stitches is less obvious, especially if you use a teasel to fluff up the surface fibres.
5. The knitted piece doesn't curl up at the edges, like an unfulled piece of knitting will.

Before you begin, many commercial wools will NOT work for fulling, as they are often treated with chemicals so that they can be machine washed. This basically glues all of the wool scales in place so that they cannot open, and so they won't be able to full.

This is why it is essential to test the wool before commencing the real knitting project.

Knit several identical sample squares from your wool. Measure them and count the number of rows and stitches. Calculate the unfulled gauge (stitches/inch and rows/inch). One of these squares will be your control piece - don't do anything to it, as you want to use this one to compare the others to.

Now full the other sample pieces. Three things are needed for fulling to occur- heat, agitation and a change in the pH of the water. Changing the pH causes the scales of the wool to open. The easiest way to change the pH is to add some soap, as pure soap is alkaline. I make a soft paste by dissolving pure soap (such as Velvet laundry soap) in hot water, and then add some of the paste to the hot water used for fulling.

Use the different sample pieces to test different methods of fulling. Use warm to hot water, and agitate the sample piece. I have found rubbing and mooshing it around in my hands to work best for me, but you could also rub the piece on a rough surface (remember those old washboards? Perfect.) or stomp on it in the bathtub. Another alternative would be to wet your piece with hot soapy water, wrap it up in bubble wrap or cane blinds, roll it up and knead it (this is how I do felting). Alternatively, you could try fulling in your clothes dryer (add some old sneakers to help with the agitation), however I have no experience with this as we don't own a dryer.

Continue with the fulling process until the outline of the knitting stitches is no longer visible and no more shrinkage is occurring. When the sample pieces are dry, measure them and work out the shrinkage in each direction. Note that knitted pieces usually shrink at different rates horizontally and vertically- you will have to take this into account when doing the calculations for your knitted piece.

The aim of these calculations is to estimate how much bigger you will need to make your knitted piece, so that it ends up the right size and proportions after fulling.

Original width/finished width gives you the shrinkage ratio. You will calculate two of these shrinkage ratios- one for the width, and one for the length.

Then knit your piece. Remember that it will be larger than the final fulled size! After knitting your piece, you need to full it. Follow the method that worked best for you when doing your sample pieces.

After fulling, you may want to fluff up the surface fibres to give a velvety appearance. This was done on a small sixteenth century cap to give the appearance of velvet, and I suspect that many of the Tudor caps seen in paintings may have been produced via this method. Traditionally a teasel (a stiff part of the plant Dipsacus fullonum) was used in this process, however modern substitutions could include a stiff hairbrush (or my cat's hairbrush looks like it would work perfectly!).

Fulling is a technique which played an important role in the medieval period, as evidenced by Fuller's guilds. It is also an effective and useful technique, and is fun to play with!

References

• Crowfoot, Elisabeth, Pritchard, Frances, Staniland, Kay. "Textiles and Clothing c1150-1450", HMSO.
• Malanima, Paolo. "The First European Textile Machine", Textile History, V16(2), pp 115-28, 1986.
• Rutt, Richard. "A History of Handknitting", Interweave Press, 1980.

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