What I've Learnt Today: Felted Baubles

The wool I ordered for felting arrived yesterday. So beautiful. It's hard to use it when it's so soft and lovely to just hold and touch. I was thrilled with my mixed bag of lap waste. Lots of Christmas colours.

I also ordered some red and green for making baubles, like the one I did at Kedlestone Hall, and a needle felting kit.

Materials and Equipment

I used creamy white felt from the big bag in the top image, and some red and green shown in the image above.

Last week I got some polystyrene baubles (£2 for 10) to use as a base to felt around. I wasn't sure whether it would work ok with the loop for hanging them or if I'd have to cut it off. It worked fine with it.

I worked on a pink children's play mat as it has a rough surface which helps with the felting process.

To wet the felt I used hot water in bowl, and I also used diluted washing up liquid in a spray bottle. It's really easy to apply too much so diluting in and using a spray bottle helps to spread it around without applying loads.

Steps

1. First two pieces of wool are pulled out, as shown above. The first bunch of fibres is wrapped around the polystyrene ball.

2. Next some red fibres were laid on the white fibres. This is an organic process, and the final result will depend on how the wool felts rather than the exact position of the red fibres.

3. and then wrapped around the fibres and ball from the first step, making sure the fibres at at right angles to the first bunch of fibres, and the red fibres on the outside.

4. Now it's time to wet the ball of fibres. To wet the ball, dunk it gently into a bowl of warm water, then spray on some washing up liquid. It will become a squishy mess. Be careful not to squish it as this can lead to breaks in the finished bauble. I made this mistake with the bauble and acorn I made at the class.

5. Gently roll the bauble in your hands. It will feel quite sloppy but keep going, very gently, until the wool shrinks around the polystyrene ball. Once it was a little firmer, I mixed rolled it in my hands and on the mat. I could have rolled it on bubble wrap instead.