Felt Beads

When I was at the Fold on Saturday, I saw the wall of merino fiber in every conceivable color and homeschooling crafts came to mind!  I grabbed a bag and tried to get a bit of just about every color so that Maddie and I could try our hands at making some felted beads.  Aren't the colors gorgeous all piled up together?

I gathered the necessary tools, which seemed to be only dish soap, towels and a bowl for the warm soapy water.  (I just kind of surfed around the web a bit this morning to see if I could find some different "how-to's" to lead me in the right direction.)

What we did was this:

1. Chose the color we wanted and broke off a bit about twice the size of the finished bead.
2. Rolled it into as smooth a ball as we could manage and then dunked it into the bowl of warm, soapy water.
3. Fished it out and started gently rolling it between our palms to get it into a spherical shape.
4. When it got too dry we dunked it back into the warm soapy water.  When it got too soapy we dunked it into a bowl of warm, plain water.
5. Repeat 3 & 4 until the bead is the size you want or until you are plum worn out!

Here are the finished beads and the bowls of water.  Not much output, but we also tried some beads with some BFL and they just didn't work out at all.  And keep in mind -- you have to roll these for probably 5-10 minutes each (5 for me, 10 for Maddie who didn't use much pressure).  Maddie thought it was a lot of fun though, so I'm sure we will be doing it again. 

Oh -- and see her sheep up in the left hand corner?  MSL Kids had a section on sheep in the Winter Issue and this was one of the crafts.  Cute, huh?

So here is a close-up of our beads.  I'm thinking that I want to try some with other colors layered on top, or maybe I could embroider them after they dry.  I seem to remember seeing something like that somewhere.  Oh the possibilities!

Comments

[jennie]

Hi, I've read your blog for a while, just wondering what is The Fold? I just moved to Chicago and I'm looking for fiber-related shops! Thanks!

[est]

hi thanks for this tutorial! i was looking for this all week! i tried your directions but it just didn't turn out into balls.. they didn't stick . i was using acylic felt and not wool. is this caused the problem? thx!