angora rabbit wool, can I use it for felting, and how to process it?

I have 3 angora rabbits and harvest their wool.  I would like to use it to do felting.  Is anyone here doing felting?  My friend said using angora wool is hard and I should get sheep wool.

There are a few of us who enjoy felting, but I'm not sure if anyone has tried angora rabbit fur. I think it might depend on the type of felting you're doing, and what you're making. Angora, as much as I adore it, it's not a good option for, say the bottoms of slippers - though I think as a lining, it would be incredible. Our resident needle-felting artist might be able to address using it in sculpture, but I'm really not sure. I do mostly wet felting, but I'm planning to play with more ideas, once the weather confines me to the house, for the winter. I have had Nigora goats for almost a year, but sheared them for the first time, this past spring. Life has kept me from doing anything with their 'cashgora' type wool, so far, but it comes off of them much more like rabbits angora comes off, rather than like sheep's wool. If all else fails, we can learn, together!

I don't know if angora is "harder" than wool, but it is different.  Like eating cooked green peas is different than eating a raw carrot.

Most of my attempts to work with angora ended up in accidental felt, so I'm betting it will be really awesome for felting!  We need to see if our resident felter Nicole can chime in.  Her felting work is amazing.  

r ranson wrote:I don't know if angora is "harder" than wool, but it is different.  Like eating cooked green peas is different than eating a raw carrot.

Most of my attempts to work with angora ended up in accidental felt, so I'm betting it will be really awesome for felting!  We need to see if our resident felter Nicole can chime in.  Her felting work is amazing.  

I just remembered, because of this comment, I once had a beautiful angora sweater, that my starter husband gave me. I loved that sweater! It was thick, cozy, and SUPER soft. Then, one day, he decided to 'help' with the laundry, while I was at work. I lost 3 tops, that day, to my very tiny (even for her age) 3yr old daughter. She LOVED that warm, cozy, SUPER soft felt sweater. So, yup - it felts very easily, by accident!

I've only felted with various types of sheep's wool (both needle and wet felting). It sounds like a lot of fun to try felting with angora! I'm thinking that if Raven--and Carla--ended up with their angora stuff felting, than I imagine that angora would felt well, too!

When I needle-felt with different types of wool, I find some felt faster, and some take longer to felt. Some wool will felt tighter than other wool. But, I can get all of it to felt. Some wool also kind of sticks out more than others, and doesn't give a smooth(er) texture. Merino felts down really smooth, and other types of wool always tends to have little bits of hair sticking out. But, I think these varying textures can be used artistically to get different effects.

At first I read angry rabbit wool, can I use it for felting, and how to process it?  And I was like

I just started trying to felt angora from my satin angoras. The goal is to make felt gloves out of scrap fiber that I cant spin. I tried needle felting and it is definitely harder with angora, the fiber is very silky and slippery and doesnt want to felt quickly. I mostly used it as adornment for sheepwool, ie making ears and a tail for needle felted bunnies. People often suggest using sheep wool staples for that.  So far I have made a tests swatch with wet felting.  

You have to lay the fiber thickly. I was trying the herringbone technique because I want to use this tutorial for gloves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNQ0GpOi_1c

To process the wool I just carded it (basically ran it through a pair of large slicker brushes) then grabbed off sections of the wool that was laying in the same direction from there

It's looking good.

Happy to see the photo and hear about the progress.  It is a tricky fibre.  It doesn't have the tiny barbs that wool does so I find it slides around a lot.

Maybe we can get Nicole in on the conversation.  She's an amazing needle felter.  Any ideas for making this fibre easier?

I found this resource on felting with angora, it is for german angora while mine are satin but I imagine it should be helpful. I tried to follow the advice to wait for the fibers to soak
Felting with Angora

I tried to make a glove. It seemed to stretch so there was more hanging off the edges of the resist rather than shrink and there are more holes despite my trying to be better about covering everything.



Is there any way to save the gloves? It is felted but not fulled.
Any advice on why it stretched instead of shrank? Or how I can prevent this in the future?
The fiber is from my own bunnies and it feels so precious to me so it seems so discouraging to just have to throw it away after failed attempts

Here’s a link to a video on needle felting with angora rabbit wool. It seems to work quite well. https://youtu.be/PoLb1BNKLgA?si=C729BGHR7Rbo6uZ6