[Nelson International]

Hiya, I've made a small test rug using raw fleece on a peg loom - I got the idea from various threads here plus a couple of other places, and it's been fun and quite easy even for a clutz like me. And altogether more convincing ruggy than I expected.

Anyway, it's about 70cm square and made out of raw unwashed fleece. As I understand it I need to wash it to try to get the lanolin out. How do I wash it? How vigorous can I be? Do I use some form of soap? Any advice would be very helpful.

[SallyintNorth]

Ingredients to make felted wool : lubrication (soap, detergent, natural grease in the wool) ; temperature shock (esp hot to cold) ; agitation

So, to wash the rug without felting it :

1.  Overnight soak in water at room temperature, no soap.
2.  Remove gently and without wringing.  (You will be amazed how much $*!£ came out!!)
3.  Prepare two containers of water at the same temperature - very hot, too hot for your hands.  To one, add quite a bit of washing up liquid.  Do not froth it up.
4.  Place the rug softly on top of the container containing the water-and-detergent.  Let it sink by itself.  If it is still floating after a few minutes, press it down very gently and steadily; try to avoid making suds.
5.  Leave the rug in the water for 10-15 minutes.  No need to agitate or anything.
6.  Gently, and again, without making froth, remove the rug from the water and place it gently on top of the water in the second container.  Again let it sink in, help it gently if if needs it, leave for 10 mins, then remove.
7.  Keep rinsing until no more soap in rinse water.  Each time, make the water it is going into the same temperature as the water it came out of, or slightly hotter. 

Once there is little soap in the rinse water, you can gently press the water out of the rug before its next rinse.  Do not wring; fold and press.

After the last rinse, you can press harder to get it a bit drier, then place it between two towels, roll it up into a sausage, put another towel down and walk all over the sausage!  Then put it somewhere flat to dry.

[Nelson International]

Sally, thank-you that's incredibly helpful.

How clean will it be possible to get it?

[SallyintNorth]

How clean will it be possible to get it?

In terms of getting the grease out, pretty clean.  You will probably see a cloud of whiteish grease coming out of the rug as it steeps in the very hot detergent-containing water.  (What type of fleece was it?  Some are more greasy than others.)

In terms of getting any other bits of muck out...  Actual solids (bits of grit, hay seeds, for instance) may be in there forever, or may work their way out as the rug gets used (so you might need to pick it up every now and again and sweep the floor underneath it.)  In terms of "soluble dirt" (you know what, plus mud etc) you will get a lot to almost all of that out, but how close to all depends on how tightly you packed it and whether you put any twist into it as you wove it.  In that if there is room for the fibres to move and the small particles to drop out, then that is what will happen, but if it's rammed hard then some will be trapped.

And all of that is one of the reasons you do the overnight soak, with no soap and no heat, first.  No chance of any felting, so maximum chance of anything that can sink to the bottom of the tub to do so, before you add detergent, heat and some inevitable agitation (no matter how careful and gentle you are), and with some fibres, that will be enough to cause a little felting, which will trap more foreign matter.

[Buttermilk]

I felt and clean my peg loom rugs by chucking them into the washing machine.

[Nelson International]

I've only just repaired my washing machine, I'm a little scared of bunging this in.

It's South Welsh mountain wool, so it's very kempy and scratchy. I'm hoping that that will give it a rustic charm.

Edit: here's an image of it. If the washing isn't too tricky then I'm planning on scaling up.

[SallyintNorth]

I felt and clean my peg loom rugs by chucking them into the washing machine.

LOL!   Yours are Zwartbles, I think, [member=75709]Buttermilk[/member]?   A fibre not prone to wet felting, I think?   I'm not even sure that you can wet felt it, can you?  Although I have seen some Zwartbles fleece that handled as if it would, but it was an atypical fleece from what I have seen of Zs. 

And also, Zwartbles is not a very greasy fleece (or you would be needing washing machine repairs from all the lanolin in the pipes!)

[SallyintNorth]

It's South Welsh mountain wool, so it's very kempy and scratchy. I'm hoping that that will give it a rustic charm.

It will indeed

I haven't handled Welsh Mountain fleece myself, but based on what I've heard and the type of sheep, terrain and climate, it's a reasonable assumption I think that it will be akin to the harsher end of the Scottish Blackface / Swaledale type fleece.  They too can be quite 'rustic' and can have kemp.  But both of those also have a shorter, softer underlayer (as does the Rough Fell, which is the harshest of all the northern blackface fleeces), and that undercoat fibre wet-felts quite easily. 

So personally, I would err on the side of caution with your first rug, and you can experiment with later iterations to see whether you can treat it more roughly as you wash it.  You might even decide to felt one on purpose to see if you like it, and then you would know what not to do if you don't want it felted!

And, of course, we would love to see pictures...

[Lesley Silvester]

I used to make a lot of rugs with unspun fleece that had been carded. Once off the loom (a four shaft table loom) I would sink it into fairly warm water with washing up liquid swished into it, lift and push it down a couple of times, gently squeeze the water out, rinse then spin it in the washing machine and line dry it. They came up lovely and white.


I was given a Zwartble fleece with had a lot of mud on the tips. I couldn't tease them apart so decided to wash some of it first. I used tepid water with washing up liquid, put it in very careful and left it to soak. When it came out and was rinsed (in water the same temperature) it had felted. I couldn't face washing any more so it was left until, some time later, I had a set of combs so I got it out to try combing. It had felted in the sack. It ended up on the compost heap. I'm always amazed when people say it's one fleece that doesn't felt well.

[SallyintNorth]

I suspect there is huge variation in Zwartbles fleece.  It was a dairy breed, now more of a meat breed, and has  a black fleece, and there is no reason that breeders would have paid any attention to the fleece one way or the other. 

Our Zwartbles fleeces here have been mostly not wet-felty, and the Chariots of Fire wethers, whose fleeces I used to be given, were not at all wet-felty, but I have handled some prize-winning Zwartbles fleece which was very unlike all the other Zwartbles fleece I have ever come across.  It had a very regular crimp all the way up the staple, and I would lay money it would have felted as soon as it saw a drop of washing up liquid. 

[Buttermilk]

[member=10673]SallyintNorth[/member] I have been breeding for nicer fleeces in my Zwartbles but most of the peg loom rugs I have made have also included some washed, but not very well, Kerry Hill.

[Nelson International]

Update:

You weren't joking about how much grot comes out in the wash.

We struggled to get enough hot water for a really big, hot wash, but we've definitely got the sheepyness right down. It's just talking forever to dry out.

I think we'll try this again in may when it's nicer to do it all outside.


Is it possible to wash the fleece before making the rug?

[SallyintNorth]

I would absolutely wash the fleece first another time.  Not all at once, just what you can handle at a session - and have somewhere for it to dry out.

Fleece washing instructions are the very same

[Lesley Silvester]

Update:

You weren't joking about how much grot comes out in the wash.

We struggled to get enough hot water for a really big, hot wash, but we've definitely got the sheepyness right down. It's just talking forever to dry out.

I think we'll try this again in may when it's nicer to do it all outside.


Did you spin the excess water out? They do hold a lot of water but dry very quickly if they are spun in the machine.


Is it possible to wash the fleece before making the rug?

[Nelson International]

I'm really not willing to trust it to the machine (mostly for the machine's sake). It does mean that it won't be dry until 2021 at this rate.

Here it is. It's definitely enough of a success to try to scale up in the spring.