Felted Jelly Roll

I decided I wanted to make a jelly roll and then cut it into pieces, so I started with this wool batt, it has four layers. This is going to be my bullseye colour.

I rolled it as tightly as I could, but unfortunately it wasn't really that tight.

These were going to be my next three colours which I wrapped individually around the first layer. 

Again I tried to wrap each layer as tight as possible.

This is what it looked like from one end.

I then wrapped it in a piece of netting and tied the ends as tight as I could just using regular string.

Next I sub-merged it in warm soapy water but kept taking it out as I didn't want to absolutely drench it. I squeezed it but not too tight as to distort the shape too much. 

Once I was happy I'd got it wet to the core I started to roll it very gently in the towel.

When I'd decided it had felted enough to hold together, I took it out of the netting and then gave it some serious rolling applying more pressure. I didn't do this all in one go, but each time I went back to it I put it in hot water and started the process again.

I don't know if you are meant to cut it whist it's still wet or once it's dried, but I opted to wait until it had dried out after being on the radiator over night. I had no idea what was going to be the best thing to cut it with, so I got a few implements ready! The rotarty cutter didn't do anything, the stanley knife did cut through but left a tatty edge when I got to the bottom. The fabric scissors (yellow handled) didn't cut it, but the kitchen ones did (black handled).

I found that the best thing to cut with was my large kitchen knife, so I stuck with this as I had more control with it than the scissors.

Close up of what I ended up with from the middle section. Quite pleased with them.

These are the ends and the thinner parts from each end. I used these to try out the different cutting implements.

I'm hoping to maybe somehow sew some together to make a sort of trivet like above.

These are the ends and two of the pairs are quite similar so I might try and do something with them. In the middle one, I can see a heart in the centre.

These are the ends which I could easily incorporate into a hat or stem of some kind.

I might even make a belt or a necklace or a chain of some kind - oooh decisions, decisions.