Felted sofa cushions

Felting is a fantastic way of turning the quality your knits a notch higher. Here for example you get a more durable material that doesn´t tear like normal knits do. Depending on the thickness of your yarn, the needle size and the amount you felt the material, you can get softer or stiffer results.

I started knitting these cushions in the autumn for our new sofa. One of the six panels got washed in a different washing machine and shrunk too much so I had to knit that piece again. Second time lucky and I managed to wash the knit so it shrunk to the same size as the back piece 🙂

On top is the first one that shrunk too much, the blue piece is what I´m aiming for and the big one at the back is the new try before going into the washing machine.

I used a 100% wool yarn  “Ohut Pirkka-lanka tex 125 x 2, 100 % villa, n.400 m / 100 g”  from Pirkanmaan kotityö Oy. The colour chart has over 80 beautiful colours and the yarn felts wonderfully. The same colours are also available in a thicker yarn: Paksu Pirkkalanka tex 285 x 2 for needles 3,5-4 mm.

Here I used size 4.5 mm needles instead of the recommended 2.5 mm. I cast on 90 stitches. The piece is knitted in plain knitting except for the first 4 and the last 4 rows in moss stitch (knit one and purl 1 alternately every second row, “helmineule”), and also the first and the last 4 stitches on each row are moss stitch to prevent the sides from folding in when felted. Knit until the piece is a square, for me this was 150 rows in all. It´s a good idea to straighten the pieces by steaming them with an iron before washing, this also helps the sides not to get stuck during felting. Then with a “free hand” I embroidered chain stitch shapes in contrasting colours. This time my cushion cover shrunk to about 3/4 of it´s original size, a square of 42 cm approximately.

And here´s the perfect match. Now I have to think of something to do with the spare part 🙂