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Felted Hollow Easter Eggs
Felted Hollow Easter Eggs
Learn how to wet felt while making a fun keepsake to fill and tuck into a spring basket. Jessica Bentson of Toymaking Magic is our Guest Blogger today, sharing another fantastic tutorial she created exclusively for A Child’s Dream. Be sure to check out her monthly subscription for Waldorf-inspired toymaking tutorials and follow along on her Instagram account where she loves to share about all things handmade and homeschooling! On to you now, Jessica!Felted Easter eggs are a delightful spring craft to make. I love that these eggs can be used year after year to hold a tiny gift in your child’s Easter basket or to fill with chocolates and treasures for an Easter egg hunt. (Or a Spring Party egg hunt, as I do with my kids.)Felting around the wooden eggs creates a flat base which allows them to sit nicely on their own and makes for lovely spring decor. (To make at any time in spring! Not just Easter!) AND your kids can play with the wooden eggs all year! No craft waste! SUPPLIESProject set of basic supplies available here >OR individuallyCorriedale Wool Roving in Felting Packs (1 pack is plenty) or Single Colors by the ounce (An ounce is enough) Wood eggs, ours are flat bottomed and just what you need!Olive oil soapSharp pointed scissorsEmbroidery needleEmbroidery flossBall Brause Water Sprinkler (optional)TowelBowlGETTING STARTEDGather your materials. Lay out a towel on your table. Start by filling a bowl with water as warm as you can stand it. Submerge your olive oil soap into the water, and rub it to release the soap and dissolve it into the water. Do this until the water looks murky and bubbly.Then take your wooden egg and separate a piece of the wool roving. Smooth it out to create even density throughout and then wrap it around the egg crosswise. Then grab another longer piece and wrap it around the egg lengthwise.Hold your egg over the bowl of soapy water and sprinkle it generously with water. Flip the egg over and sprinkle water on the other side and all over until the wool is completely wet.LIGHT FELTINGGently pat it all over, cupping it in your hands. Imagine you are making a snowball, how you gently pack the snow to create a smooth surface. Depending on how soapy your water is, you might benefit from rubbing your hand on your bar of soap before you begin to pat and rub the egg. Rub with a light hand, focus on keeping the surface all smooth.Once your egg is starting to look lightly felted you can either add another layer of the same color, or my favorite is to add another color! Wrap the wool crosswise and lengthwise as before. Repeat the previous steps of wetting, patting, and lightly felting. (Applying the wool in two layers helps the innermost wool to felt well)Once you notice that some felting is going on, that your wool has smoothly formed around the egg, it’s safe to dunk your egg into the water. You want to keep the wool wet and sudsy at all times.VIGOROUS FELTINGOnce you notice that the second layer of wool is felting well, then you can start to rub it with your hands a little bit more vigorously. If you rub too hard too soon, it can create ridges or folds. The focus is always on keeping the surface smooth and felting evenly all over.To felt the top and bottom well, rub them in a circular motion in your curved palm.You can roll it in your hands like a ball.At some point you’ll notice that you can feel less space between the wool and the wood as the wool shrinks tighter and tighter around the wooden egg.Gradually get more and more vigorous with your feltingOne way to help the felting along if you’d like to try it, is to run the egg under very cold water (or dip it into a bowl of cold water) and then run it under a hot faucet (or dip in a bowl). These drastic temperature changes will shock the fibers and felt them nicely.You can do that 2 or 3 times back and forth, hot to cold and then dip the egg back into your soapy water and continue felting with your hands. Add more soap to your hands if necessary.When you feel like maybe you’re almost done, then you can get really rough and you can squeeze it all over in an even manner. You’ll know you’re done when you get the feeling that your wool cannot shrink any further and it feels like it is tightly hugging the wood.Once you are satisfied with how it has felted, rinse it under cold water (or even shock it under hot water one last time). Squeeze out the excess water with a towel and set it somewhere to dry overnight.CUTTING AND SEWINGOnce your egg has dried, take some sharp pointed scissors and insert them into the felt and cut around the circumference of the egg, leaving about two inches uncut. If you cut it too much then it won’t hold its shape as well. Remove egg.Now you’re ready to do a blanket stitch. You’ll notice the edges where you have cut are fluffy and a blanket stitch makes it look nice and tidy-looking as well as helps the egg hold it’s shape. Start with the bottom of the opening. Cut an 18” length of embroidery floss. Knot the end and sew your blanket stitch from left to right. If you’re not familiar with the blanket stitch you can check out my video tutorial HERE. Then sew the top of the opening.FINISHING TOUCHESOnce I’ve sewn my blanket stitch across the top and the bottom, I like to take each tail of thread and connect it to the opposite side by going underneath the stitch above and then going back underneath the stitch below. This gives added strength to the opening so that if kids are playing roughly it won’t rip open further. Then make a knot and pull tight.Finally to hide the tails, I poke my needle into the center of the layers of felt and come out an inch or so below. Pull the thread through and trim.Rethread your needle with the other tail and repeat on the other side. Then you can trim the embroidery floss tails on the inside if they are too long. And you’re done!(An optional, satisfying final step is to give the egg a little haircut to trim any little fuzzies that didn’t get felted down. This can also be done to refresh them after they have been “well loved” and are looking a little worse for wear.)Notes:When I am felting eggs by myself, I actually prefer to do the whole process in the sink. Sometimes I don’t even fill a bowl with soapy water, I just use water from the faucet and keep my hands very soapy with my bar of soap. It creates less mess.I like for my felted eggs to be a quarter inch thick but it’s hard to know if you have achieved that until you have cut it open. After making an egg or two, you’ll have a clearer idea of how much wool to wrap your egg in. The thicker the wool is, the more sturdy the egg shape will be. If it’s too thin, the egg will look a bit saggy and floppy. We hope you enjoyed this fun spring felting tutorial! If you make these felted hollow eggs, we would love to see!Be sure to tag us on Instagram! @achildsdreamcrafts @toymakingmagicand use #achildsdreamcrafts Happy Spring!
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Needle Felted Stars Garland
Needle Felted Stars Garland
Felt Summer Bunting Garland
Felt Summer Bunting Garland
Felt buntings are a beautiful, simple way to dress up a space for celebrating! Whether it be for a birthday party or holiday! Jessica, from Toymaking Magic is here to share with us how to whip up a bunting using our Holland Wool Felt.First, gather materials:●Wool felt sheets in however many colors you like*●Pearl cotton or embroidery floss●Embroidery needle●Pencil●Scissors ●Paper triangle pattern piece*I used sunset, tangerine, yellow, emerald, turquoise, plum, lilacUsing your pearl cotton or floss, measure how long you want the bunting to be and add several feet extra to account for drape and hanging purposes. Cut thread to length.Either make yourself a triangle pattern piece (sturdy cardstock or watercolor paper works nicely) or print one out from this PDF.Trace and cut out all the triangles you need. Be sure to cut on the inside of the pencil marks so that they don’t appear on the edges of the felt triangles.Arrange them in the order you want. I chose rainbow order.Divide into two stacks.Fold your length of thread in half to find the center. Mark the center point by leaving the thread folded (or however you want to mark it.) Grab the triangle from the top of the first stack. (This should be the color that you want to be in the center of the bunting.)String it onto your thread using a simple running stitch.Slide the triangle down the thread until it reaches the center point.Continue using a running stitch to sew on all of the triangles in the first pile and sliding them into place. It’s important to note that when the bunting is hanging and draping, the top triangle points are closer together than when the thread is taut. When you are stringing the triangles on, leave a teeny tiny bit of space in between them so that when the bunting is hanging, the triangle points touch perfectly.If you are making a very long bunting, you might find it helpful to wrap the other end of your thread around a mug or other heavy object to keep it taut and out of the way.Once you have finished sewing the first stack, thread your needle with the other end and sew on the second stack of triangles (double check your order to make sure you are grabbing from the correct end of the stack!)When doing the running stitch, I like to load up my needle all the way across before pulling through.Once you have finished sewing the second stack, it’s ready to hang!We made a bunting for our summer party (we throw a little party to celebrate the start of each season) and my son’s birthday fell just a few days after so we left it up for his party! We love it so much we are contemplating whether to leave it hanging there all summer or move it into the boys’ bedroom as a permanent decoration!Children can easily participate! My 7 year old cut out all of the triangles and chose what order to put the colors in. He wasn’t interested in doing any of the sewing but I feel certain that many children would enjoy helping with that step as well.We hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you make a felt summer bunting, we would love to see!Be sure to tag us on Instagram!@achildsdreamcrafts @toymakingmagicand use #achildsdreamcraftsHappy Summer!.............
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