Easy Wet Felted Easter Egg Owl

by Craft Invaders

2 Materials

30 Minutes

Easy

I know the traditional method of wet felting requires both time and effort if you are aiming for a lovely flat piece of textile. But I wanted to felt around a form as a trial for a bigger project I have in mind. Since Easter is fast approaching, I decided to try and felt a little owl using a wooden egg as my form, and let the washing machine do all the hard work.

We had our wooden egg forms left over from our Pretty String Wrapped Eggs that we made last Easter.

I started by covering my egg with two layers of wool roving. Then dampened the wool with hot soapy water.

Even though I planned for the washing machine to do the hard work of felting I could feel the fibres start to tangle and tighten around the wooden egg when I rubbed it between my hands to make the basic shape and check that I had an even covering of wool.

I added the detail I wanted using different colour wool fibres, spraying them all with soapy water and using my fingers to smooth them into place.

I wore vinyl gloves throughout the process and thought the way they glided over the fibres without tugging at them made the process easier.

Once I was happy with my design I popped my little owl into the toe cut from a pair of tights and secured it with an elastic band. I then threw it into the washing machine with a detergent capsule and the kid's swimming towels and ran it in a hot (60C) wash.

And here he is! We think he is super cute and will be making him some little friends soon.

If you are looking for some more egg decorating inspiration how about trying our Sgraffito Eggs. It's a beautiful technique that works on both dummy and real eggs (as shown above).