Felting new soap

[dixiedragon]

Somebody is buying 12 bars from me to felt. I've felted soap before but it was well aged - 6 months or more. Obviously while felting the new soap she'll want to wear gloves. Is it okay if she felts the new soap then lets it cure for 6-8 weeks? Or should she let it cure 6-8 weeks and then felt?

 

[dixiedragon]

bumpy?

 

[SaltedFig]

Good morning dixiedragon,

Somebody is buying 12 bars from me to felt. I've felted soap before but it was well aged - 6 months or more. Obviously while felting the new soap she'll want to wear gloves. Is it okay if she felts the new soap then lets it cure for 6-8 weeks? Or should she let it cure 6-8 weeks and then felt?

If possible, it would be better to let the soap cure first, and then felt it, but if the buyer is made aware that fresh soap dissolves more quickly and will shrink during the cure, then it would be up to them if they want to felt it earlier.

The felting work should go quite quickly with young soap - the soap pH won't have dropped to it's lowest and the soap will be very soluable.
The downside is exactly the same thing - the soap will be more soluble, so she would lose more soap mass during felting than would be lost than with older soaps.
The felted soap would need to be dried as quickly as possible.

The soap itself will shrink during the cure, and by the time her felted soaps are fully cured, they will be loose in their felted "pockets" (like a cigar band loosens over time).
This can be corrected by doing a final, finishing felt of the soap, to shrink the felt a little more tightly around the soap (although the felt will naturally tighten up during use).

 

[DeeAnna]

Hmmm. I've felted soap that's cured and some that's fairly young. It works fine both ways.

There's not that much loss of soap during felting especially if you choose the right recipe, even when the soap is young. If you're new to felting on soap and likely to be a little slower at the process, a high oleic soap might be a bit of a challenge. A soap with a balanced blend of fatty acids is a better choice, especially for a beginner.

I have not observed the felt becoming "poochy" or loose as the soap shrinks during cure, so I haven't seen any need to re-felt the soap before it's ready for sale or gift giving. Felt, unlike paper, is somewhat elastic, and I imagine that's the reason why.

Arianne Arsenault grates freshly made soap, forms appropriate amounts of the grated soap into "hamburger bun" shapes (rounded shapes are much easier to felt over), felts over the "buns", and then lets the soap cure. She doesn't mention having to refelt the soap after cure as far as I recall. See her Youtube videos for a nice video of her method.

 

[SaltedFig]

I use high olive recipes, so they do lose weight when felted young, compared to tallow recipes, which felt like bricks .

The pocketing I noticed from my own experience over many years, but I use raw wool. YMMV.

Edited to add:


(Her video's are always wonderful to watch!)
*See at 8:10 - Ariane mentions that she dries the soaps for two weeks

 

[Dreabkq]

I had a family member give me several fleeces (mostly wool but also alpaca) that are fully raw.
If I'm reading above correctly, a soap made with more tallow, less olive oil should work well and its ok if its a newer soap? Like only cured 2 to 3 weeks, then felted and set aside another 2 weeks?
I practiced the felting on a bar that wasnt pretty enough to sell and was 4 months old. Ready to make new soap now that I ha e several bins of beautiful wool to work with.

 

[Jillyb]

I've felted both at 3 weeks and 3 months both are fine but I like good amount of Tallow in my HP for felting.
Once I stuffed up the colour in a fairly high CO so felted that at 3 weeks and lost heaps of soap but didnt shrink back later at all..
Not noticed any pouching or loose feeling either way.

 

[gardengeek]

@DeeAnna, Do you find it better to grate up the soap like Arianne Arsenault or felt a full bar? Does it make a difference?

@SaltedFig, thanks for sharing the video. It looks like fun.

 

[DeeAnna]

I can't say, because I don't grate my soap for making felted soap. I can see the benefit of felting over soap that's in a "hamburger bun" shape, regardless of the way you get the soap into that shape.

 

[earlene]

Personally, I think grating the soap beforehand is a waste of time and a totally unnecessary step. I have never tried it, and likely never will because I've never had any trouble felting bars of soap. Shape doesn't really matter either, at least in my experience.

Take a look at my avatar. I hand felted this fish-shaped soap back in 2016 and it was really quite easy to do. Not only did I hand-felt the soap, I dyed the roving, as well (my SIL taught me the process that Spring while we were at Spring Training in Arizona). The detail (eyes, etc.), I added via needle felting after the yellow was dry.

Here is a larger view of the finished soap:

Hand Felted Fish Soap

• earlene
• Jan 16, 2018

I made the mold using silicone caulking. Then made the soap. Then felted the soap with yellow...

Usually the felted soap I make doesn't have a loose pocket-type feel until it is very small. I assume the reason is that by the time the soap reduces in size to a scrap that many people normally just toss in the trash, the felting has shrunk as much as it is going to shrink.

Although one other time, I made a soap with multiple loose scraps inside and that one seemed a bit more like a felt pocket with moveable soap scraps inside, and I have to say, I did not like the feel of it while in use. In fact, it still sits my my tub unused after several years, for that very reason. Perhaps that's another reason I will probably never used grated soap for a felted soap. But to be fair and honest, I have to also admit that some of the wool I used in that one was not from raw roving, but from an unraveled sweater and it may not have been raw enough wool to have enough shrink left it in. So that's another possible factor.

 

[gardengeek]

I did grate up some of my scraps from the August zigzag challenge to use for felting. I shaped some of them into a hamburger bun and one with more straight sidewalls. I'm going to give them a longer cure before I felt since the Oleic was high.