wet felting with vegan "wool"

[renars]

Hi!

I am making wool slippers and they are made by wet felting, as You all know. Question is how to get it Vegan approved?

As wool is out of question for vegan lifestyle, have anyone tried wet felting other yarns, like bamboo, hemp, cotton ... ?

logic says, that real Wool felts because of those little scales around the outside of the fibers. What about other yarn fibers, are they all plain and slim?

Looking forward to Your help

regards,

Renars

[MTRuth]

Hi Renars, the fibers that felt are animal fiber such as wool, alpaca, llama, yak etc. Plant fibers don't have the same properties and don't felt on their own. You can add plant fibers as embellishments. Sorry that doesn't help much.

[Shepherdess]

I don't think you can meet vegan standards with felt but you can meet the vegetarian standard. Shearing wool doesn't hurt the sheep and you can source locally or from a small flock rather than from large commercial sources, so you can find out how the animals are raised and kept.

[zed]

Yeah, as the others say, you can't felt with non-animal fibres. Also, plant or non-animal fibres aren't necessarily vegan friendly because of the way they are grown, some plants will be pollinated by bees which are transported in tiny boxes in lorries across countries.

[Patty]

Knit them out of recycled plastic grocery bags! ;0)

[suzanara]

Hi I use an acylic fibre called Aclaine from Sweet pea dolls. I needle felt my items and make mainly flowers and 2d pictures, unsure whether you could build slippers by needle felting, if so it will take a long time. There are also fibres like bamboo fibres and new fibres such as rose and nettle. None of these can be wet felted as far as I know. Hope this is useful.

[Ann @ frabjous fabrica]

Jan 18, 2019 18:10:16 GMT Shepherdess said:

I don't think you can meet vegan standards with felt but you can meet the vegetarian standard. Shearing wool doesn't hurt the sheep and you can source locally or from a small flock rather than from large commercial sources, so you can find out how the animals are raised and kept.

I'm glad you said this.  I was thinking that I couldn't understand why a vegan could not use animal fibres as I don't know of any which need the animal to die before it's fleece is removed.  In fact, if you think about it, before sheep relied upon humans to do it for them, they used to get rid of their fleece by rubbing it off against rough surfaces.  I know that my sister started to spin with wool she had collected from around the edges of fields - using a potato and a pencil as a spindle!

[mariestdenis]

I think this is an interesting discussion and I personally do not understand why wool is not considered vegan friendly, especially since you could use wool from sheep you know or even fur from a pet dog, cat, or rabbit that you took out of a brush you used to groom them. I know that vegans do use wool substitutes but it seems backwards to me since I think the wool from a well treated sheep is much more ecologically sound than using acrylic fiber - additionally if sheep are raised for their wool and it is sold for a good price once or twice a year, it helps keep them from being sold for meat.
Additionally since I have begun felting and also got involved in the US Shave Em to Save Em program, SE2SE which encourages use of rare breed sheep's wool to give farmers of rare breed wool encouragement to stick with these heirloom sheep and give them another source of income for the sheep- I have not only been collecting wool, but I have also been thinking about my occasional consumption of lamb and I think it is very unlikely that I will eat lamb ever again.

[Shepherdess]

I think for vegans it isn't whether wool is ecologically sound but that the animals are kept for the use(exploitation)of humans. It doesn't hurt a cow to be milked but they do not drink milk. At this point, both sheep and cows have been changed over the centuries to benefit us. Animal husbandry is just not ok for them. At least that is the way it has been explained to me. I am neither so can't really say for sure and it may be different for different people.

[winter]

One of the reasons that vegans don't like to use wool is that it usually comes from sheep that are farmed for meat. I prefer to get fleece from no-kill flocks or animal sanctuaries.