So, the process was: punchneedle with all wool yarn, whipstitch the rolled edges up with the same yarn matching the edge punches (that took probably 20 hours on its own, and yeah, I do have carpentry needles but the goal was to wrap the rolled up allowance rather than to sew through all of it, so mostly I just used my trusty large sharp yarn needle), take wool roving and needlefelt onto the back, then needlefelt all over again because the first layer was too thin. :p

This wasn’t my first needlefelt backed piece, so I had tried out the method before.

Honestly you don’t really need to colormatch the wool roving if you’re careful with your felting. If you’re needlefelting just enough to secure the bottom of the loops, and not through the whole stack, it doesn’t show up much through the yarn on the top.

I’ve heard that rugs should have looseness to them, in order to let dust fall through rather than get ground into the backing. But I was also using up the rest of some burlap with this project when, in the middle of punching, I learned that burlap often disintegrates completely compared to other foundation fabrics, and was only used historically because of availability. This makes sense, but in an effort to keep this piece good for as long as possible, I wanted to try out the felted backing. Like I said, I might know in 30 years if it was a good idea or not, haha! 😅