The Felt Folding Stool brings origami and flat pack together in a piece of furniture. The felt is saturated with resin in a specific pattern to create rigid panels with flexible non-resined seams like a folded sheet of paper. This allows the felt to fold up into a stool or collapse flat for easy storage and transportation.

The project was created from a challenge to have a single material create the rigidity sections and the folding seams in one. Felt was a natural fit with the volume of space within the material to accept a rigid material, its non-woven durability, and its soft feel and aesthetics.

Lots of prototypes where made to validate the folding pattern from paper to corrugated cardboard. From there resin is impregnated into the felt to create the rigid sections while thin sections between the rigid panels are left flexible for folding seams. Once the impregnation process is complete, the perimeter is trimmed and the final part is folded together with the help of small feet clips and a center clip.

There was a lot of enthusiasm for the project because of the final aesthetic and the unique dual nature of the final felt material (Folding and rigid). It was shown in several international and local design week exhibits, plus receiving honorable mentions in design awards.

Brett Mellor

I was raised on Legos and gravitated to creating at an early age. My love for building and testing has led me into lots of trouble as a youth and a great skill set in the design world. After many business ventures, I attended Brigham Young University's Industrial Design program to hone those design skills. I have a passion for the creative process, manufacturing, and prototyping my ideas.

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