Felting

Felting is a technique for making fabric directly from loose animal fibers, most often wool, by applying moisture, heat, soap and repeated agitation or pressure so that the microscopic scales on individual fibers hook together and mat into a single dense, non-woven cloth. Because felt is formed by matting fibers together rather than by interlacing thread on a loom, it has no woven grain and does not fray or unravel at a cut edge, which has made it useful for hats, rugs, insulation and many traditional garments across cultures that raise sheep or other fiber-bearing animals. A related technique, needle felting, uses repeated jabs of a barbed needle to mat loose fibers into shape, or to attach fiber onto an existing felted or woven surface, entirely without water.