Felt is a class of fabrics created by interlocking fibers such as wool, fur, or certain hair fibers through heat, moisture, and pressure. These fibers possess unique felting properties due to their structure and crimp (waviness), allowing them to mat together. Felt production doesn't require adhesives, unlike bonded fabrics. Wool fibers can facilitate felting even when mixed with other fibers. Felt is used for hats, slippers, garments, padding, insulation, packaging, and polishing. It is also used in the paper industry as a carrying belt for moist paper.

What materials are commonly used to make felt?

Felt is made by interlocking fibers of wool, fur, or certain hair fibers through heat, moisture, and friction. Wool has properties that allow it to produce felting even when mixed with other fibers. Better grades of felt utilize all wool, but as little as 10% wool blended with non-felting fibers can produce felt. Industries manufacture various felt goods, including wool felt in rolls and sheets, hats made of fur and wool, and woven felts. The nomadic tribes of north-central Asia still create felt for clothing and shelter using methods passed down from ancient times.

How is felt made from fibres?

Felt is made by consolidating fibrous materials using heat, moisture, and mechanical action, which interlocks fibers with felting properties. These fibers include wool, fur, and certain hair fibers that mat together due to their structure and crimp. Other fibers can be mixed with wool to produce felt. The selected wool fibers are opened, blended, and fed into a carding machine, which combs the fibers into a web that is laid on an apron to form a batt. The carded batts are then sprayed with water and drawn between aprons across a steam chamber for hardening. The heat, moisture, and friction cause the fibers from the individual batts to interlock into a unified mass. The resulting piece is rolled, cooled, and then passed through a fulling mill, where it is pounded and shrunk to the desired dimensions.

What makes the fibres in felt stick together?

Felt is produced through the interlocking of fibers such as wool, fur, or certain hair fibers, using heat, moisture, and friction. These fibers possess unique felting qualities due to their structure and crimp (waviness), which allows them to mat together. Unlike bonded fabrics, felt doesn't need an adhesive for production. The process involves opening, blending, and combing the fibers into a web, which is then laid down to form a batt. This batt is treated with steam and agitated under a heated platen, causing the fibers to interlock into a unified mass.

What are some common uses for felt?

Felt has diverse applications across industries due to its unique properties. It is produced using heat, moisture, and mechanical action to interlock fibers such as wool, fur, and certain types of hair. Common uses for felt: * Apparel and decorative items Novelty fabric for garments, drapery, hats, and slippers * Padding and insulation Felt padding is employed in apparel and furniture. It can also be used for insulation, packaging, and polishing. * Industrial applications Specially woven felt is used in the paper industry as a carrying belt for moist paper. Other uses include wicking, absorption, vibration isolation, sealing, and gasketing.

How does felt differ from woven or knitted fabrics?

Here's how felt differs from woven and knitted fabrics: Felt is a fabric made from interlocking fibers through heat, moisture, and mechanical action, without needing adhesives unlike bonded fabrics. Wool, fur, and certain hair fibers are prime materials because of their structure and crimp. Woven fabrics involve interlacing yarns in a specific order, a process cheaper, simpler, and more adaptable than other methods. Knitted fabrics, on the other hand, are constructed by interlocking a series of loops.

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Round white felt tents called gers, with decorative orange doors, stand on open grassland under a partly cloudy sky in Mongolia.

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Top Questions

What is felt?
Felt is a class of fabrics created by interlocking fibers such as wool, fur, or certain hair fibers through heat, moisture, and pressure. These fibers possess unique felting properties due to their structure and crimp (waviness), allowing them to mat together.

Felt production doesn't require adhesives, unlike bonded fabrics. Wool fibers can facilitate felting even when mixed with other fibers. Felt is used for hats, slippers, garments, padding, insulation, packaging, and polishing. It is also used in the paper industry as a carrying belt for moist paper.
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Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.
What materials are commonly used to make felt?
Felt is made by interlocking fibers of wool, fur, or certain hair fibers through heat, moisture, and friction. Wool has properties that allow it to produce felting even when mixed with other fibers. Better grades of felt utilize all wool, but as little as 10% wool blended with non-felting fibers can produce felt.

Industries manufacture various felt goods, including wool felt in rolls and sheets, hats made of fur and wool, and woven felts. The nomadic tribes of north-central Asia still create felt for clothing and shelter using methods passed down from ancient times.
3 Britannica Sources
Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.
How is felt made from fibres?
Felt is made by consolidating fibrous materials using heat, moisture, and mechanical action, which interlocks fibers with felting properties. These fibers include wool, fur, and certain hair fibers that mat together due to their structure and crimp. Other fibers can be mixed with wool to produce felt.

The selected wool fibers are opened, blended, and fed into a carding machine, which combs the fibers into a web that is laid on an apron to form a batt. The carded batts are then sprayed with water and drawn between aprons across a steam chamber for hardening. The heat, moisture, and friction cause the fibers from the individual batts to interlock into a unified mass. The resulting piece is rolled, cooled, and then passed through a fulling mill, where it is pounded and shrunk to the desired dimensions.
3 Britannica Sources
Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.
What makes the fibres in felt stick together?
Felt is produced through the interlocking of fibers such as wool, fur, or certain hair fibers, using heat, moisture, and friction. These fibers possess unique felting qualities due to their structure and crimp (waviness), which allows them to mat together. Unlike bonded fabrics, felt doesn't need an adhesive for production. The process involves opening, blending, and combing the fibers into a web, which is then laid down to form a batt. This batt is treated with steam and agitated under a heated platen, causing the fibers to interlock into a unified mass.
3 Britannica Sources
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What are some common uses for felt?
Felt has diverse applications across industries due to its unique properties. It is produced using heat, moisture, and mechanical action to interlock fibers such as wool, fur, and certain types of hair.

Common uses for felt:
* Apparel and decorative items Novelty fabric for garments, drapery, hats, and slippers
* Padding and insulation Felt padding is employed in apparel and furniture. It can also be used for insulation, packaging, and polishing.
* Industrial applications Specially woven felt is used in the paper industry as a carrying belt for moist paper. Other uses include wicking, absorption, vibration isolation, sealing, and gasketing.
3 Britannica Sources
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How does felt differ from woven or knitted fabrics?
Here's how felt differs from woven and knitted fabrics:

Felt is a fabric made from interlocking fibers through heat, moisture, and mechanical action, without needing adhesives unlike bonded fabrics. Wool, fur, and certain hair fibers are prime materials because of their structure and crimp.

Woven fabrics involve interlacing yarns in a specific order, a process cheaper, simpler, and more adaptable than other methods.

Knitted fabrics, on the other hand, are constructed by interlocking a series of loops.
3 Britannica Sources
Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

felt, a class of fabrics or fibrous structures obtained through the interlocking of wool, fur, or some hair fibres under conditions of heat, moisture, and friction. Other fibres will not felt alone but can be mixed with wool, which acts as a carrier. Several industries manufacture goods through the use of these properties. The goods produced include wool felt in rolls and sheets; hats, both fur and wool; and woven felts, ranging from thin billiard tablecloths to heavy industrial fabrics used for dewatering in the manufacture of paper.

Nonwoven felts are considered to be the first textile goods produced and many references may be found to it and its uses in the histories of ancient civilizations. The nomadic tribes of north central Asia still produce felts for clothing and shelter, utilizing the methods handed down from antiquity.

Wool felts of the “true” or nonthread structure class are produced as both rolls and sheets. Roll felts are made in thicknesses from 1/16 to 1 1/2 inches (1.6 to 38 mm) and up to 80 inches (2 metres) wide and 60 yards (55 metres) long. Sheet felts are produced up to 4 inches (10 cm) thick and usually as 36 inch (91 cm) squares but other rectangular sizes as well as ovals and circles are made. Wool felts of better grades are made of all wool but the felting power of wool is such that as little as 10 percent wool in a blend with nonfelting fibres is sufficient to produce a felt.

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floor covering: Printed felt base

The wool fibres selected for felting are usually less than 1 1/2 inches (38 mm) in length and must be of good felting quality and strength. The fibres are scoured, treated to remove tar, paint, and vegetable matter such as burrs, and then opened and blended to form a batch. The prepared blend is fed to a carding machine, which further opens, blends and combs the fibres into a web of single fibre thickness that is laid down on an endless apron to form a batt. In most roll felt manufacture two or more cards are set at right angles to each other so that the web from at least one is laid down at right angles to the others to produce “cross” in the batt and dimensional stability in the finished felt.

The carded batts are produced to predetermined weights, after which one or more batts, but usually several to a felt, are laid on a hardening machine and sprayed with water. Hardening consists of drawing the moistened laid-up batts between aprons across a steam chamber. Steam is forced into the batts to activate the fibres, after which the steamed section is drawn beneath a heavy heated platen. The platen is lowered onto the moist, hot batt and is agitated in a horizontal plane. The heat, moisture, and friction is sufficient to felt and interlock the fibres from the individual batts into a unified mass. After a requisite time the platen is raised, the hardened section drawn forward, and the next area, which has been steamed meanwhile, is subjected to the action of the platen. This operation is plate hardening; a similar operation done on a continuous basis between rollers is called roller hardening.

After the hardening operation, the lightly felted piece is rolled and allowed to cool and drain. Only the thickness of the batts is affected by hardening, whereas area shrinkage or felting up to as much as 50 percent is accomplished in the next operation known as fulling. The hardened batt is passed through a fulling aid, usually a solution of soap or acid, although occasionally warm water will suffice, and is rolled up and placed in the fulling mill. One type of fulling mill consists of a binlike receptacle with a concave front, straight sides, and a back that consists of one or more movable hammers that pound, turn, and shrink the goods to the desired dimensions. The scouring, dyeing, treating, and finishing operations that follow are done much as for the production of woolen cloths. Sheet felts follow much the same process except that after carding the batts are cut up and plied to specified sizes and weights and then hardened, fulled, and washed as individual sheets. Maximum dimensional stability, density, and strength are obtained in the sheet felt process.

The uses of felt are myriad. Some of the more important include wicking, absorption, vibration isolation, insulation, padding and packaging, polishing, sealing and gasketing, as well as apparel and decorative fields. Most felts are made to close specification requirements, particularly for mechanical and industrial applications where high standards of quality, reproduction, and tolerances are constantly met. Hair felts, widely used in polishing operations, are made much as described above for sheet felts and are an important specialty item to the wool felt industry.

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FezMan wearing a fez, a red, conical, flat-crowned felt hat topped with a tassel, that originated in the city of Fès, Morocco, in the early 19th century.

Hat felts are made of both wool and fur. Wool hats are made much as already described for wool felts except that a narrow web is taken from the card and is collected on an egg-shaped mandrel. Two cone-shaped pieces are obtained from this starting shape by further felting operations from which the finished hat bodies are shaped and formed. Beaver, hare, and rabbit furs are among the fibres used in fur felt hats and all of these must first be treated with strong chemicals such as mercury. This operation, known as carroting, provides the fibres with optimum felting power. The release of mercury fumes during the felting process led to an especially high rate of mercury poisoning within people working in the industry.

In the manufacture of fur felt hats a blend of furs is laid on a rotating perforated cone surface with a wet cloth and with a vacuum pulling from within. The fur collects and is removed as a fragile cone shape. After many wet finishing operations, including dyeing, the felted cone is molded to a rough hat shape. Many more dry finishing operations are required to reduce the rough hat to the finished article.

The manufacture of woven felts follows to a large degree the conventional woolen cloth practice. Wools of selected fineness, length, and felting property are scoured, blended, combed, and spun into yarns. The yarns are woven into the rough cloth structure required depending upon the type of end goods planned. The rough cloth is soaped and fulled or milled in the fulling mill where felting or shrinkage is carefully controlled to preset dimensions after which scouring, dyeing (in the case of some of the lighter cloths), and other textile finishing operations follow.

Some special felts for the papermaking trade are made as endless belts 200 inches (5 metres) or more in width. Highly skilled operators hand weave or join the ends to produce the endless belt so that no joint or seam is discernible. Special machines are used to make this class of woven felts since the goods must be run as belts and therefore have to be loaded and unloaded from the side of the machines rather than from the front or back as is conventional.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Michael Ray.

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