How to Felt a Wool Diaper Cover.
How to Felt a Wool Diaper Cover
Wool can be tricky and confusing. There are so many new terms when it comes to wool and one of them is felting, felt, or felted. Well if you haven't been in the world of wool diaper covers for long it can be hard to understand.
Felting a diaper cover is when you use abrasion or rubbing to cause the wool fibers to shrink. The reason you would want to felt a wool diaper cover is 2 reasons, to make it smaller and waterproof. The first reason is obvious but to make it more waterproof, isn't it already waterproof? Well yes and no, felting your diaper cover will also cause the stitches to to shrink tighter and closer together, adding to the waterproof effect. Add lanolizing to the mix and you will have a very effective diaper cover for a super heavy wetter.
The washing machine can felt a diaper cover, but it is not reccomended with knit wool. The washing machine will shrink it beyond repair in most all cases. If you want to felt your wool diaper covers there are a couple ways to do this. You will want to gauge your felting so you do not shrink it too small. Wash on hot water by hand. Then put it in the dryer on low heat checking it every couple minutes or so. When your wool has reached the desired size take it out and coninue to let it air dry on a drying rack.
Soap, abrasion, rubbing on the wool, hot water, and laying in the sun to dry will all cause it to shrink. Sometimes you can even let your wool shrink with time. Which will usually take a good month of very frequent uses. You can just hand and spot wash when needed and you will find it conforming to your baby. Creating a custom fit diaper cover for your baby.
Another benefit of felting is that it will make it softer. Kind of like your favorite pair of jeans, you are breaking in your wool cover also.
There is another kind of wool called jersey wool. Jersey wool is pre-shrunk before it is made into a fabric. It is very soft and stretchy. Usually you will need 2 layers of this wool to be waterproof. This wool can usually be shrunk a little bit. If you put it in the washing machine it wil shrink about 1/2" in size. Also drying this wool in the dryer will help, but you still need to be careful checking it off and on making sure it doesnt shrink too much.