Felting(fulling) in a front-loading washer?

"Gerald & Donna McIntosh" wrote in news:UeKdnTyAW-CQGwHanZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@insightbb.com:

it can, depending on a few things. can you stop your front loader & open the door during the cycle? if not, you won't have much control over the felting when it occurs. it takes longer in a front loader & wastes more water. you'll need clean tennis balls, or those spiky dryer balls if you can find some to add agitation. i've been considering a high efficiency front loader because they're easier on the clothes, but i would keep my top loader for felting & washing the filthy rag rugs & goat/llama blankets (tip: don't wash halters in the washer if you mind it getting scratched up ). lee

I've been fulling recycled sweaters in the front loader for several months. Some things felt easily, some things are more resistant. If you are working with materials you KNOW will full easily, you will probably have no problem. I did use 2 pairs of jeans per load, and sometimes a tennis ball.

OTOH, I mistakenly thought my Enid sweater was superwash, and put it in the already-gentle front loader on the cold, delicate cycle, and that thing shrank small enough to fit a 3 year old. Oh, well. I never was really happy with it in the first place.

Hesira

I just throw my items to be felted in with the regular 60 C load (i.e. towels) and let'er rock and roll. :-) Then I mangle them; I found that this really makes a difference in producing a nice, smooth felted finish on the items.

Erin

Yes it can. In UK almost all of us have front loading machines and we felt and full happily.

Mary

Since mangle has more than one meaning, I got an unplanned giggle out of that. I assume you mean the "iron firmly" meaning. Ironing does make a big difference even when you aren't felting. I've read that silk lace shawls are supposed to be ironed after they are blocked.

=Tamar

I meant in the sense of running through the mangle several times, turning the piece of felt each time (i.e. top edge, then bottom edge, then one side, then the other).

Erin

Okay, I'll bite...what is a mangle?

I've been doing some research on felting in front-loaders and so far I haven't seen any methods I'm 100% comfortable with. My washer doesn't allow me to open the door in the middle of the cycle so I'm a little nervous about having so little control over it. Then again, I'm making slippers which are pretty small and I know small items take longer to felt. I probably shouldn't put them into the sanitary cycle (2 1/2 hours in 140 degree water!) though ;)

LauraJ

I meant in the sense of running through the mangle several times, turning the piece of felt each time (i.e. top edge, then bottom edge, then one side, then the other).

Erin

A sanitary cycle?

What do you wash in that???

I'm not sure that I want to know though ...

Mary

All I could find was a picture of a toy one Laura. Before the days of spin dryers you had to wring out the washing by hand. Feeding the wet washing between the two rollers of a mangle squeezed out the excess water and saved a lot of hard work. :-)

Oops, sorry - forgot the link!

Looks like a wringer.

Hesira

Yep! Same thing, different name. In the UK it was called a mangle and in the US a wringer. See

We still have a very small wringer, intended for use on a draining board and not very efficient. I used it when manking beeswax foundation but that's another story.

Mary

Wiki isn't always correct Mary but you can always go in and amend an entry if you wish.

We also used both words in my family and Mom had one on the end of the old crock sink. I loved that sink because, when the weather was very cold in winter, she would bath us children in it as the scullery and kitchen were the only warm rooms in the house. The old black kitchen range was the other side of the scullery wall so (apart from draughts) it was always snug. :-)

-- Blessed are the cracked for they let in the light

has a goodpicture of a modern mangle/mangel (Swedish spelling) like we have inour apartment building's wash room. The things I mangle (i.e. sheetsand felt) go into the dryer for the little pre-drying cycle. When theyare half dry, I run them through the mangle and then hang them in thedrying cupboard to finish drying. It's not as complicated as I've madeit sound (LOL) and makes sheets MUCH nicer to sleep on! It's a lotquicker and easier than ironing and relaxes the fibers moreeffectively; also the mangle is great for when your new fabric needs alittle straightening on the grainline.Erin p.s. the Sanitary cycle (aka Thermo-nuclear Meltdown Cycle (tm) is great for washing old towels used to dry off muddy dogs!!! :-)

We had a wringer washing machine - it was essentially a tub on legs. It was rolled over to the sink to be filled with a hose, and when the wash cycle was done, drained and refilled with hoses. When the rinse was done, we used a big wooden fork-ended two-by-four to lift the clothes out of the very hot water and fed them into the hand-cranked wringer attached to the top edge of the tub. My brother as a toddler once climbed up on a chair and got his arm caught in it. It had wooden rollers. If I recall correctly they were about 12 to 18 inches long (definitely less than half a meter).

Using the wringer made the sheets less heavy to carry to the clothesline and they dried a little faster.

=Tamar

I know, then someone else can re-edit it. Life's too short :-)

My Grandma had an ancient (even older than her!) battered shallow brown earthenware sink. I loved it and wished we had one instead of the deep white pot sink. I couldn't understand why my mother didn't agree ...

The huge mangle was also at my Grandma's. And the copper boiler and the bread oven - not room for much more than a table and hard horse-hair sofa in that 'cellar kitchen'. Their bedroom was above that (at street level) and then the attic - they brought up four children there and kept a pig in the tiny garden during the war. No bath, no hot water, lavatory outside under the stone steps to the 'front door' - which led into the bedroom. A tiny fire and a couple of gas lamps. They died in the 1950s, having lived in that house all their married life - about sixty years.

God, why do some people complain now!

Mary

And if the sheets were folded and put through after they'd dried they looked almost as though they'd been ironed.

But not quite :-)

I still have some wooden tongs which I used to use with my little Hoover machine to get the clothes to the wringer. They have 'Rinso' - a soap powder of the time - on one side. My mother gave me them, I think she used them when she went to the 'wash house' on a Monday.

In our first house we had no garden, not even a yard, so washing had to be hung across the street, the line raised and lowered by a pulley. I hated doing that, traffic wasn't the problem - I was just plain lazy!

Still am ...

Mary

Yebbut what IS a Sanitary Cycle? I've never heard of it. What does it do? Why is it different from other cycles? I use one for everything, again because I'm idle.

Mary