How to Felt Pretty Flowers

How to Make Pretty Felted Flowers

A FiberArtsy Tutorial

Did you know that you can take raw fiber and roving to felt pretty flowers? Yup! All you need is the basic wet felting know how. And Supplies, of course! The cool thing about felting flowers is that you can make them any color combination that you want. You’re not limited to the flowers found in nature.

Roving s.a. Wool or Alpaca. It doesn’t take much… 1/2 oz is plenty

Small bits of various colored roving and silk for decoration

Bubble wrap

Dish Detergent (clear or white if you’re making a white flower)

Hot water

Old towel

Lay the towel on a table and place a small piece of bubble wrap on top, bubbles down. Begin by drafting (pulling) small, thin pieces of your main color. In this case, I used white merino wool. Lay these pieces out in a roughly round shape, overlapping the fibers at the center. Add other colors for decoration.

Now, sprinkle your fiber with hot, soapy water. Just a squirt or two of soap will do. You want the fiber to be thoroughly wet. Place your hands on the flower, gently push down and move your hands carefully back and forth a little bit to make sure the water completely penetrates the fibers.

Once it is all wet, place another piece of bubble wrap on top of the flower. Sprinkle some water on the bubble wrap and start rubbing it with your hands in all directions. Do this for about 5 minutes, carefully peel back the bubble wrap and add more soapy water. Put the bubble wrap back on top and work with your hands for about another 5 minutes. At this point, your fiber should be starting to hold together.

Now, you want to roll up the bubble wrap and with your hands, roll the whole thing back and forth, back and forth for about 5 minutes. If the plastic is too slippery, you can wrap your roll in another towel.

Peel back the bubble wrap and pick up your flower. It should be felted and holding together. If parts are still pulling apart, you can work those areas between your hands. Add a bit more water and throw your flower on the table. That’s right, throw it! This will cause the fibers to shrink and harden a bit. Just throw it 20 or 30 times. Now you should be able to stretch the petals out sideways (horizontally from the center) which will make them wrinkle and ruffle.

Rinse your flower in cold water to get all the soap out. All that’s left now is to gather up the back, center portion (where the stem would be) and secure it with string, yarn or a twist-tie. That’s it!What do you do with your felted flower? Well, you can attach a pin to the back and wear it as a brooch or make a barrette out of it.

Make sure and check out my Hand Felted Soap Tutorial

Enjoy!

Annette
FiberArtsy.com