It was a challenge but turned out great!
What is it?.. It is a cat (or other small animal) bed made out of wool that is seamless, padded, made of an eco friendly material, easily washed and it’s great for going into or pressing it down and laying on top. I’m daydreaming of making a large one for myself..
How was it made?.. I laid wool fibers on top of a wet XL cloth covered volleyball about 17″ in diameter in many layers – thick – all the way around, then wrapped it in tulle fabric and wrapped it with string to keep the tulle against the wool, then wet felted it by getting it wet and soapy and rubbing it a lot. Once it was sufficiently felted (which takes awhile) I cut a hole, deflated the ball and removed it through the hole. I rinsed it clean, threw it on the counter top a few times to felt it more, stretched it into shape and set it to dry in front of a fan overnight.
I have been felting around my water bottle to make can cozys for some time now so this was not a new concept to me but the size of the ball once covered in my many layers of wool was pretty impressively large and hard to work with since the wool kept wanting to fall off the sides. Here it is with the wool all on there and rubbed while dry a little bit:
When I cut the hole, I cut it smaller than I thought it would need to be since it stretches larger when you continue to felt and rinse it. When I made my very first small one around a basketball I cut the hole a bit big so to avoid that with this one I cut a pretty small hole just big enough to get the ball out. Later on I ended up cutting the hole bigger so that a clearly well fed kitty could fit!
