Friday 25 February 2011

Making A Wet Felted Flower Picture {Saturday Artist}


This week, we had lots of soapy, mess making with a nice big stack of rainbow coloured roving!
Read on and you can make your very own :)

Wool Roving

First select some natural wool roving.


Laying the Felt
  • Tease out some thinish strips of base colour roving onto a sushi mat.
  • Place the first layer of wool roving in vertical strips to form a squareish shape.
  • Place the second layer of roving horizontally over the first.
  • Place the third layer vertically over the second.
Laying out the design

Tease out the pieces of felt you want to use for your design.
Make sure that they are not too thick as they won't bind to the base so well.
Lay them over the base in the pattern you want.


Completed Design

{tip}... Choose a simple design as the colours will merge a little during the felt making process.


Get Soapy!

Cover the design with a piece of netting.
Spray a generous amounts of soap over the netting. Rub and "mush" the felt for around ten minutes. {Really invest in this part of the project, it makes all the difference to the end result}

Soapy fun!

The littest kids loved this "soap mushing" part! It is so tactile!


"Shock" your felt!

Remove the netting carefully and lay your design in the sink.
Carefully dribble boiling water over the design. This will help bind the fibres together. You will want to be careful at this stage as the pressure of the water can distort the design.

Roll the felt...

Allow your felt to cool before rolling it up in the sushi mat.
Squeeze out the excess water and soap.

Roll, squeeze, rinse repeat...

Roll, squeeze, rinse repeat...Continue to rinse your rolled up felt under a hot tap till the water runs clear.
Carefully unwrap the felt and hang it over a radiator to dry.

Felt Flower

Now trim the edges of the felt to neaten them up. Or leve them frayed if you like them more natural :)Once completly dry you can frame your felt, embroider it, embelish it with sequins, buttons and the like, cut it into place mats or coasters or cut it up to make garlands...


Embelished homemade felt

My daughter embellished her felt with a little embroidery.

Felt Wall Hangings!

Blanket stitch neatens up the edges nicely. The girls made simple three plied cords to hang them...

Pretty Spring Designs!

A pretty Spring decoration!



Visit "Ordinary Life Magic" for more Saturday Artists!

9 comments:

  1. These look wonderful Suzy, I have been looking at wool in the craft shop and wondering how I would go about simple felting at home - my youngest will love giving this a try - Thank you!

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  2. great project! My kids love this one.

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  3. These are beautiful! I have tried wet felting in the past, but I think I did it wrong. Might have to give it another try :)

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  4. I remember when my daughter made a hat like you made these hangings. It was about 13 years ago, but it was just like yesterday because it was a really cool experience.

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  5. Ooo how I would like to be a kid in your house!! I think my kids would probably love all the stuff in between the beginning and the end :). The end result would be for mom.

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  6. Gorgeous!!! I keep feeling very drawn to try a wet felt project.

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  7. Beautiful!!! I've done so much things but never try felting. After this,on my "to do" list!

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  8. Lovely from beginning to end!

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  9. Just stopping by to let you know that I have featured your project on Fun Family Crafts today! You can see it here
    http://funfamilycrafts.com/wet-felted-flowers/

    If you have other kid friendly crafts, I'd love it if you would submit them :) If you would like to display a featured button on your site, you can grab one from the right side bar of your post above.

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