Have you worked with wool - made clothing, etc?
How tight a weave is your woolen fabric?
Who will be using it? (Any animals or children?)
How do you plan an cleaning the quilt?

I once had a bunch of wool scraps that I made into a ragg quilt. I just sewed it with regular thread and settings, threw it in the wash as you do with ragg quilts and it came out real nice. Other than that no experience with wool quilts.

glassquilt,

I have not sewn with wool before.

Some of the fabrics have a fairly tight weave, others are medium. None are very loose.

No animals will use the quilts, but probably children will. We always have them around. :-) The bed wetters use more easily washed blankets.

I clean my woolen blankets, sweaters, and other items by dunking them into cold water with some detergent in it in the washer, letting them soak a bit, and gently squishing the water through them every few minutes. Then I let them drain & spin. Then I do the same thing with clear water, give them an extra spin, then hang them up or lay the knitted items out flat to dry.

Me, I'd use any thread for quilting. (I might do something different for good, quality clothing but it would have to be a classic outfit.) Maybe do a few test runs to get the stitch right - length, tension, etc.

I'd pre-wash the woolens to get the shrinking out of the way as the different weaves will shrink at different rates. Personally I'd run everything through the most gentle cycle on my machine because I have no patience for the hand washing rigmarole any more. Of course this would partially felt the wool so I have added a link about intentionally doing it. You can avoid doing it if you know how to do it.

Here is a link that might be useful: felting wool

I'm with Glass, I'd just pre wash the wool to felt it and then, personally, I'd treat it like any other fabric.

Because wool is a "hair" when it gets hot/cold the shafts open/close. The change in temperature, combined with agitation is what causes the "tangling" or "felting" effect. Which we would think of a shrinking, though technically, I don't think the fibers actually "shrink" in size, they just bunch up more. And different weaves/thread types bunch up much more than others.

Beyond that though, I don't THINK wool is really all that "Fragile" -- I put my good 100% wool business suits in the wash all the time. (SHHHHH!!!!) A gabardine or worsted wool won't really felt that much, if at all. For clothes, I use a gentle cycle to avoid agitation but I have never had a problem or damaged the wool. (I don't put them in the dryer though).

Maybe I'm a crazy, reckless lady, but if this is for children and you don't mind the idea of felting, I would simply wash the heck out of it in advance to get any felting/shrinking out of the way and then treat it like any other fabric.

Know that depending on the wool you may end up with different weights of fabric once it felts. But you'll have a warm, cozy, durable quilt, IMO. If you don't want the felting you have to be much more careful and that might not be realistic with children involved.

I just watched an episode on Simply Quilts (that I'd recorded) and remembered your quilt and got very excited about the wool quilt I plan to make.

I am putting a link to it below as they lay out the steps. But here is the "highlights" (and what I found exciting about it.)

1) You want to "full" the wool -- this is basically the same as the felting Glass linked you to above but I guess when the wool is woven (which your is) it's called fulling and the fact that it's woven is important/good.

2) For a pieced quilt cut the pieces out THE FINISHED SIZE.

3) Butt them up together and iron a strip of lightweight fusible down on the back side of where they join to hold them togehter.

4) Flip the block over and use a ZIG ZAG stitch to join them, or any stitch that goes across both sides of the "seam." With a zigzag stitch, shorten it up some - not as short as a satin stitch, but shorter than normal.

I am VERY EXCITED about this idea because as the lady on the show said - you can do curves without having to deal with the curved seam allowance.

I LOVE wool and the idea of piecing some blocks this way SOUNDS pretty easy. If I ever get around to it I will post my results...

Here is a link that might be useful: How to make a wool quilt

I have tried the light fusible and found it not to stick on wool..............after it has been felted! I use a lot of wool and what I do when I put my blocks together is the quilt as you go method. Once the wool is felted it is very hard to sew. also another trick is if you iron the side you are going to sew it make it easier it will always go back to be being feltted once it is washed.
Just a litle information from my experience!
Red

Very good to know Red! I can see the fusible not wanting to stick to the wool. Hmmmm. I guess I'll have to try it and see what happens, I really like the idea of being able to cut pieces to the exact size and sew them together with a zig zag.

Love the pin cushion idea...

Faye

I have never used wool, but I can not wait to see the pics!!!!
Rosa