Felted Soap: Making Soap Last (Almost) Forever

One of the most hated chores for colonial and pioneer women was the annual soap-making.  Those women were working in the heat, stirring a pot of lye and beef tallow over a fire.  There were no essential oils to add to make the soap smell nice, and because the soap didn't smell nice when the family was using it the rest of the year, there wasn't a whole lot of gratitude for it.  It was just a drag all around.

As I contemplate a world where we have to make a lot of what we need from raw materials around us, I know I can be happy with raising a garden, gathering medicinal herbs, spinning yarn and knitting socks and sweaters and hats.  I have never, ever wanted to make soap from scratch.  I don't even enjoy doing it when I can buy the glycerin, shea butter, coconut oil, and fragrance from the store and just melt it all together in a pot and pour it in molds.  I'd rather just buy all the soap already prepared.

But that's a whole lot of soap for a large family.  It's a lot to buy and a lot to make.  And a lot to store.

A few years ago, when my daughters were raising rabbits and we wrote our bunny blog, we learned about felted soap.  Apparently it was something that pioneers did to make their soap last longer, though I have not been able to find a source for that information.  But that really didn't matter.  All I needed to know was whether soap did indeed last longer.

So I made some myself.  And I found that soap definitely does last much longer.

If you go searching about the 'net, you can find all kinds of images of beautiful felted soap, and for which purveyors charge pretty high prices.  But from a prepping point of view, this is what you need to know:

Felted soap is promoted as a washcloth and soap all in one.  Basically a few layers of animal fiber are wrapped around a bar of soap and felted with hot water and agitation.  Most people use wool.  It's cheap and abundant.  I have to admit, it sounds a little odd, wrapping a bar of soap in fiber and then showering with it.  People selling the felted soaps claim that the soap lasts longer and is much more environmentally friendly because there is less waste.  The reality?  It's all true, well, at least the part about the soap lasting longer.  I haven't actually run any environmental tests to assess the effect of less soap being wasted.  My regular, small-ish bar of Ivory soap lasted over three months in the shower.  And yes, I shower every day.  For a long time.  Or so says my sweetheart.

The soap lasts longer because the felt helps it dry quickly after each use and prevents the glycerin from dissolving away.  Felted soap is also nice because it is easier to handle and hold on to.  I only very rarely drop a bar of felted soap.  One claim you'll see if you do any other research is that the animal fibers are anti-fungal and anti-bacterial.  I'm not doing any laboratory tests and I haven't seen any scientific research on the matter.  What I can say is that my cotton washcloth starts smelling yucky after a few days of use.  But the felted soap does not.  Ever.  For the first few days of use there is that wet animal kind of smell to it, but that goes away.  This soap and washcloth all-in-one never smells like a yucky washcloth. 

I really like it.

I like it so much that I felted all the soap in the house.  It was a lot of soap.  But now I feel like I've got soap for my family for several years, should the trucks stop delivering Ivory and Irish Spring to the grocery store.

So by now you're perhaps wondering how to do this yourself.  Wonder no further.  Here are the directions, taken from our bunny blog.  I've omitted the parts about making cute designs using felting needles, since those aren't really essential here.  But if you're doing this with a group of crafty women or girls, by all means get some felting needles and have some fun.  Or just get some dyed fiber and make some beautiful soap.  We gave these bars for Christmas one year.  Quick, easy, cheap, practical.

And because it's from the bunny blog, there are pictures.  Hope you were sitting down.

First, I started with Yardley Cocoa Butter soap.  It lathers up really nicely.  As of two weeks ago, it could be purchased from Walgreen's online for 99 cents per bar.

Washed alpaca fiber (Wool is cheaper, but alpaca is what I had at the time.)

Alpaca fiber carded with hand carders. 

Wrap the fiber around the bar vertically.

Then wrap the fiber around the bar horizontally.

Lay some colored fiber on top, if desired.  

Grab a knee-hi from your drawer.

Carefully stretch the knee-hi over the fiber-wrapped soap to hold the fiber in place.  The knee-hi is not essential to making felted soap, but it makes the whole felting process much easier and much faster.

Dip the soap into a bowl of the hottest water you can stand.  For me, that's our hottest tap water.  Squeeze the nylon around the soap bar to get the water all the way in.  Rub the bar firmly with your fingers, back and forth or in circular motions, to start felting the fibers.  

Continue rubbing all around the bar for about three minutes.  You should get a pretty good lather going.  (Sorry, I forgot to take this picture.)

Carefully remove the nylon.  The fiber around the soap may still be wrinkly.  Continue rubbing all around to work out the wrinkles.  You may need to dip your soap in the hot water a few times as you work.  

 

When all the wrinkles have been worked out, set the soap aside to dry.  

That is all there is to it.  Wool fiber (which in the US means from sheep, by law--it is illegal to promote fiber from alpacas, rabbits, or any other animal as wool, though scientifically speaking, they are wool) is best for felting and for scrubbing the body.

Also, in case you were wondering, the fiber around the soap shrinks as the soap is used, at least for a while.  Then it just can't shrink any more.

OK, I had to leave in one of the craft-y pictures.  I think these bunny soaps are so darn cute.

Family reviews:  I love the felted soap.  I love that it scrubs well, removes dead skin well, doesn't slip from my hands, and lasts so much longer.  My husband hates it.  My daughters are happy to use it, especially for scrubbing elbows.  They definitely enjoyed making them for Christmas.  You can see all kinds of beautiful designs for them on Etsy.  

As mentioned above, I originally wrote this article for our bunny blog.  And most people reading that blog were quite familiar with raising animals for fiber and sources for buying and selling fiber.  And it occurred to me that I might need to offer some suggestions for finding fiber to readers of this blog.  

So if you don't know anyone who raises sheep, and if you don't have carding combs (a significant expense), you can buy prepared fiber online, at yarn shops, and even at craft stores like Michael's.  It's called wool roving.  People who spin their own yarn use it to avoid washing, carding, and dyeing their own.  It's recently become more popular for something called arm knitting.  Anyway, if you buy roving, make sure it is 100% animal fiber.  Plant fibers like cotton and synthetic fibers will not felt and shrink together. 

Final note:  You can also make something called soap-in-a-sweater, in which you use wool or other natural animal fibers to knit a "sweater" around a bar of soap.  It's also pretty easy, but of course, you need to know how to knit.  It makes a great beginning knitting project.  

For further reading (and videos!):
http://www.sustaincreateandflow.com/felted-soap/
http://frugalkiwi.co.nz/2009/10/felt-me-up-hand-felted-soap/

 12.19.19