Essential Wet Felting Techniques and Tips

How-To Guides

Wet felting is a hands-on, creative technique that turns loose wool fibres into durable, textured fabric. Ideal for classrooms, studios, or home crafting, this guide walks you through layering, wetting, soaping and rolling wool to produce beautifully felted pieces while exploring the versatility of felt.

Enhance your design by building up your texture with an array of wool, stranded cottons and rayon threads. Create bags, 2D and 3D objects, as well as jewellery by making felt ball beads!

Step by step - Let's Create

Tease out small pieces of wool. Put down three layers, laid out perpendicular to each other. It is better to add numerous thin layers rather than thick ones as thin layers will give you more control and allow more opportunities for the fibres to connect.

Cover your wool with a piece of net curtain or nylon netting big enough so that the netting extends over the edges of the wool. Use a wet sponge or pour a small amount of hot water directly onto the middle of the netting.

Using an ordinary bar of soap or washing up liquid, carefully rub the wet area, adding more water and soap until the entire piece is covered and flattened. Keep checking that the wool has not attached itself to the netting. The wool should be completely wet and soapy, check this by pressing your hand down into it. If suds and water pool up between your fingers then the wool has too much water, remove the excess by dabbing with a towel.

Rub in circles until the fibres are bonded together. The wool should lie flat. If there are bubbles in the wool then it is not wet enough. Gently peel back the netting. Carefully fold over any loose edges and press them into the wool to give a clean edge. You can now add other contrasting pieces of wool. Once you have created your design, just replace the netting and repeat the wetting and rubbing process.

Roll up the wool in a bamboo mat and lightly squeeze out the excess water and soap. Then roll up the mat in a piece of scrap material to help prevent slipping when rolling. Roll for approximately ten minutes. The more you roll, the more the felt will shrink.

Allow the felt to dry before making into projects such as bags, sculptures and jewellery. Experiment by embellishing to add texture and build up colour.