Felted Easter Egg Tutorial

 

When I first started Waldorfmoms.com, I did a felted Easter egg tutorial based on a project that I did with the 2nd grade class at our school.  A year later, and Easter a short month away, I thought it would be nice to repost this with a few more pictures and hopefully a little more detail.  I love Easter and this is a great project to do with your children, group of children or group of moms…

These are the supplies you will need:

*  plastic Easter eggs

*  small bells (optional)

*  wool roving in various colors

*  wool yarn 

*  soap “glue” for wet felting, vegetable soap, or Ivory bar soap

*  warm water

 

The first step is to prepare your plastic Easter eggs.  IF you like, put a bell inside and tape the two egg halves together with scotch tape.

 

Next, gather your roving.  If you’re doing this project with kids, it’s really helpful to separate out individual portions of wool roving–enough to cover the egg when slightly stretched.

Now get your soap ready.  I like to use soap “glue” that is made from vegetable soap.  I like vegetable soap because it’s low suds and natural.  If you want, you can just use a bar or vegetable or ivory soap.  With a large group of kids, I like to portion out individual cups of soap.

 

Take a portion of wool just large enough to cover the plastic egg when stretched slightly.  In the opposite direction,  (crosshatching) put another portion or wool over the egg.  You can use the same color, or you can contrast colors–like above.

Fill a bowl (or large tub for a group of kids) with very warm water–as hot as you can stand.  Cupping the wool covered egg carefully, lower into the warm water and soak completely.

Take a small amount of soap and begin to PAT the wool INTO THE egg.  This is a very important step.  Your first impulse might be to rub the wool around the egg, but it’s very important to first move the wool IN towards the egg.  Pat for a minute or so.

Next, add some yarn decorations if you want.  It’s critical that you use untreated WOOL yarn (not synthetic or super wash wool yarn).  To make felting easier, untwist the yarn–IF you can.  You can also buy untwisted “yarn” that is specifically made for wet felting.  This is the yarn that we used and it adhered very easily to the wool roving.  Again, PAT the wool yarn into the roving for about a minute.

You can now start to start to gently rub the wool around the egg–using soap as necessary.  Too much soap hinders the felting process–so try (ha!) to keep the kids from using too much…Also, add warm water as necessary to keep the wool wet.  Warmth and friction makes the felting magic happen.  

A word of caution.  Rub the eggs gently.  Too much pressure will cause the plastic egg halves to collapse inward and you will have a misshaped egg.  You will know that your egg is completely felted when the wool fibers bind tightly together.  Rinse with clear water and set to dry.

After the eggs have dried, a nice touch is to add some embroidery for decoration.  Here’s an example of what we did.

Here are other examples of eggs that the children made simply using wool yarn and contrasting wool colors as decorations.

 

 

 

This is a fun and really easy project for you–and your children.  It may not seem like it (with chilly weather and snow falling in many places), but Easter–and Spring will soon be here…

Linking to:  Clever Chicks, Create With Joy, Wildcrafting Wednesday, Thursday Favorite Things, Creative juice, Six Sisters Stuff, Made By You Monday, Creative Mondays, Friday Flash Blog