Felt Balls

A long time ago I saw this tutorial on making easy felted balls by shaking damp, soapy wool in a little container. It seemed like it had a lot of potential, but I didn’t have an immediate use for felted balls so I forgot about it until I started thinking about making myself some Christmas decorations this year. I have a bunch of needle felting wool that a relative gave me, but I never got hooked on needle felting, so a project made from felted balls seemed like a great way to use it all up.

feltball_ornaments_01

I got it into my head that it’d be fun to make a felt ball garland, so I dug out some wool and got shaking! And then I quickly realized that a garland was unlikely to happen. Of my eight attempts, only five ended up ball shaped, and only three are really nice usable balls.

feltball_ornaments_02

I’m not entirely sure that the technique is to blame. I think it’s the wool. The pink wool I used for these was soft and smooth. None of my wools are labeled so I’m not sure what sort it was exactly. Maybe Merino?  It felted with “cracks,” and the wool felted down hard. These are solid little balls, and they’re still slightly damp even though I made them on Saturday. They’re so solid that when I tried to needle felt away the “cracks,” my needle broke instead of piercing them. There’s no way I can string these.

feltball_ornaments_03

These three balls, however, turned out quite nice. The wool I used for these was coarse and had a lot of crimp to it. It also seemed to be a shorter staple than the pink wool.  They’re light and bouncy, and although they had a few slight “cracks,” I was able to needle felt them out of sight. These should be easy to string, and the new plan is to dig out all of the wool that looks like it’s this type and only use that. Unfortunately I don’t think the majority of the wool is this kind, so I’ll probably end up making a handful of individual ornaments instead of a big garland.


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7 responses to “Felt Balls”

  1. Nancy

    I just read that putting felted balls in your dryer helps your laundry to dry faster. They are selling them on etsy.

    1. Interesting! I wouldn’t want to try it with these guys, though. Except for the blue one, they all leaked dye when they were in the warm water.

      1. Lisa S.

        P.S., there was an ad for Woolzy dryer balls at the bottom of the page when I posted my other comment.

  2. Lisa S.

    Thanks for the link. I have a friend who wants some felt balls for her cat, and heave knows I have enough wool for it.

  3. So cute! I love the idea of the garland, but they will be darling Christmas ornaments as well!

    -Becca
    Ladyface Blog

  4. Interesting! Needle felting seems pretty tedious, shaking sounds like it would be faster (and thus something I’d be more likely to try). My cats would go crazy over felted yarn balls but I like the idea of a garland strung with them!

    1. The shaking method is a lot faster than straight needle felting. You should give it a try! My first successful ball took me about 30 minutes because I was getting the hang of things, but the last one I made only took 10 or 15 minutes.

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