Felting a camera sheath

Step 5 Plan B

What to do? Enter the magical felting needle seen on the tools picture! A felting needle has tiny dents along the shaft that pulls individual fibers along when you stick it in which enables you to stitch together two pieces. So when the felt had dried up some I stitched the sides together. But it still didn't look all that nice, the sides were a bit frayed and obviously stitched. So I decided to put it into the washer at 40 degrees (that's "cold" for you with those weird American washers). I kept the wooden block and tied string around it to keep the block from falling out (rubber bands would probably be better but I didn't have any). Sadly I didn't think to take any pictures of it before the washer so you'll have to imagine it.

The washer trick really worked great! I actually ran it in the tumble dryer as well but it made little difference, apart from drying it. The sides came out looking exactly like any other part of the sheath. A side effect of the washer adventure was that the lid part also shrank a great deal and magically came out just the right size!