Sewing thick felted wool

[vivalamama]

I'm going to attempt some recycled wool longies (I have only very basic sewing skills). I found some cute sweaters at value village, and they felted up SOOO thick. I am concerned that the sewing machine will not be able to sew 2 layers together due to the thickness... are there any tips and tricks to sewing such a thick amount of fabric?

The machine I'm borrowing has adjustable pressure on the foot, so should I lower the pressure? Do you need a special foot or worse, a special machine?? I simply do not see myself making the time to hand sew these (plus I am a horrible hand sewer.) Any help appreciated!!

TIA~

[Thursday Girl]

not sure I would probably sew it by hand. BUt i enjoy that occasionally.

[Mrs.Oz]

Are you able to push a pin through the layers without a whole lot of effort? If so, the machine should be ok. I find it's not necessarily the thickness of the fabric, but how tight the weave is that gives my machine issues. For example, I was able to sew through 2 thick layers of felt combined with 2 really thick layers of batting with no issue today, but 4 VERY (VERY!!!!) THIN layers of cotton broadcloth almost bent my needle because the weave was sooooo tight. I had to manually move the needle through the seamed areas or my machine started to jam. If you can push a pin through with relative ease, give it a shot on the machine and go slow.

[MyLittleWarrior]

I agree with the pp. It shouldn't be a problem. When shopping for sweaters to felt, I find the ones with a big loose knit felt up really small and thick, while the ones with a tight knit felt a lot less and don't shrink nearly as much. Also sweaters with Fair Isle stranded patterns seem to shrink a lot more. I've had huge sweaters shrink to 25% of their original size, and some with a tighter/finer knit hardly shrink at all. If a sweater is fairly thick to begin with, I often don't felt at all, and just use it as is.