Differential Shrinkage Scarf - Fulling the sample

I have been having fun today felting the sample. We are having a little heatwave at the moment so it was very hot in the laundry whilst I was doing all this.

Sample as woven

This is the sample before I started the fulling process. It is 18" long and 16.7" wide. I twisted the fringe at one end and just left the other hem.

Washing up bowl and milk thermometer

Agitating the sample

First fulling

I used a washing up bowl to do the fulling and I borrowed my wife's milk thermometer to assist in temperature control.













The technique that I used was 5 minutes gentle agitation in hot water followed by 5 minutes agitation in cold water (from the cold tap which is 60F today).












This is the degree of fulling after three hot/cold cycles with hot at 120 F.

There is a nice bit of movement. The sample length has reduced to 14" (22% shrinkage) and the width has shrunk to 13" which is about the same percentage.

Second fulling

After the second fulling which was two more cycles at 14 F the sample was 13" long and 11.5" wide which is a 28% reduction in length and a 32% reduction in width.

Second fulling

This is another picture of the sample after the second fulling. I think that I want to achieve something between the two around 25% shrinkage.

Felting

Here one can see how much the merino has felted. Again, I think that this is a little bit too much. So, I shall repeat the process to get myself to stage one and then do little increments of temperature to get to the ideal 25%

This is all very exciting. It is too warm to do any more messing around with hot water so I shall  wait until tomorrow to start on the scarf. Time for a nice cup of tea and a bit of gentle fringe twisting