Felted Egg Baskets

I was quite excited about felting my egg baskets. The first round in the washing machine, with a jug of boiling water added to get the temperature up a bit from our 50C hot water system, was a bit disappointing.

I thought I would need 3-4 goes to get what I was looking for.



I decided to see if I could speed things up by boiling them in our pasta pot.





I boiled them for about 10 minutes. There was some advance on the felting - but also a lot of very dark dye leaching out, so I reverted to another round in the washing machine.

This time I added a tennis ball to the machine - hadn't tried this before.

The result was really pleasing. I'm not sure if it was the tennis ball, or the pre-boiling, but this time they were well felted.










They have felted so well I clearly didn't need two handles.

They have been warmly welcomed - and used - by the egg collectors!