Back when my wedding wasn't less than two months away (how did that happen?!) I had great ambitions for just how handmade the whole shebang would be. That's why today, I find myself learning how to make felt balls. Yes, I'm playing with wool and a hot kettle on the warmest day of the year. Well, it's not THAT warm really and I am wearing shorts. We've got workmen in today, building the bookshelves I've wanted for well over a decade and I need to be on hand for creative/design purposes (not really - I just need to choose what size of shelves my books need etc.) so I figured something like this was as productive a use of my time in the house as anything else. I'm sure the joiners think I'm crazy. I often get embarrassed when I'm caught making things that your average person (myself included) would think was a colossal waste of time.
Part of my reason for making the felt balls myself, when they're only destined to become one of very many garlands that nobody will particularly notice, was because I wanted to try felting, but another major consideration was cost. Well, it definitely is working out cheaper to make my own from scratch, but not significantly so and I don't think I'll ever complain about the cost of pre-made felt balls again. These little guys are way more time consuming than I'd imagined and much harder work too. Thank goodness I did all that swimming to get my arm muscles ready for this!
Here's hoping my other decoration plans are a bit easier/more efficient. And here's hoping the finished result is deemed to be worth the effort. Oh yeah, and here's hoping we manage to get everything done on time. Did I mention these felt balls are pretty much the only wedding-related thing so far to get beyond the imaginary stage? Stress!
P.S. While this isn't needle felting (I'm doing wet felting like a felting pleb) I'm going to tag this post with Craftathon 2015. And I'm pretty sure I'm going to have plenty of wool left over, so hopefully needle felting will happen before the year is out. The felting process is definitely weirdly satisfying, so I look forward to exploring some more.
P.P.S. I really missed a trick by not including some variation on the hilarious, "I felt balls!" Oh, wait, I just did :)
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wow! how many have you got to make? I underestimated how long they took too doing them with students recently! was surprised I thought they would be quick an easy!
ReplyDeleteThe garland is gonna look ace though!
I need all the garlands to be about 3 metres long. I've made 30 balls so far and I reckon that would be enough - 10cm between the centres of the balls so just a few cm gap between each one? Of course, I might decide I want more than one felt-ball garland! I've got plenty of wool left. Also, I'm loving this - https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/484277766159030556/ though I might make something similar with pom poms instead. I can't wait to see my home all colourful and colour-full :)
ReplyDeleteI bought this little gadget that I haven't tried yet. It's like two baskets and you put the felt in, add water, put the baskets together, and just shake. It's supposed to make a ball. It seems easier than the rolling in my hands method I was doing.
ReplyDeleteOoh! Let us know how it goes. There's gadgets for everything these days! :)
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