Feltro & Lana cotta, or Felt & Fulling wool

fulling wool and felt balls

Felt and fulling wool are some of the earliest forms of textile processing we know. Asian nomadic tribes started spreading all over the continent thousands of years ago. Felt gives wool a very windproof quality when it's thick enough, and it gets relatively water-resistant as well. 

Felt differs from fulling wool beacuse it takes raw fleece and puts it through the same process without having any initial structure. On the contrary, fulling is the process of fluffing up an already woven or knitted piece of woolen cloth. A well-known example of fluffing wool is Loden cloth, developed to deal with Alpine climate, which is knitted before it's fulled. 

There are some ways to make the process easier. One of the primary ways to encourage the little scales to open up quickly is by wetting the fibers. Cold water will work, but very hot water is far better. Alternating hot and cold water (this process is called 'shocking') it works best. That’s the reason why, in Italian, we call this material “Lana cotta”.