Wet Felting With Children: Felted Balls, Soap and Water

Wind a little wool into a loose ball, dip it in warm soapy water, and roll it gently between soapy hands. After a few minutes the fibres start to hold together, and with more rolling the ball turns firm. That's wet felting: wool, warm water, soap and a pair of hands. Many Waldorf kindergartens start with felted balls. In grades 1 to 3, children go on to flat pictures, eggs and small bowls. All you need is a bowl, a bar of olive oil soap, a towel and some wool roving.

Why Waldorf children felt

Put a bowl of warm water on the table, a bar of soap beside it and a basket of soft wool. Your child's hands are in the water within a minute. Wet felting is warm, slippery and a little messy, and it turns a fluffy handful into something solid that your child made.

Felting is one of the first crafts in many Waldorf kindergartens. Lavender's Blue is a Waldorf homeschool curriculum. It puts simple hand sewing, finger knitting and wet felting in the kindergarten years, at about 5 or 6. A handwork teacher at an Arizona Waldorf charter school writes the Teaching Handwork blog. Her felted projects for kindergarten include small balls strung into necklaces and thumb-sized mice and chicks.

The reason it suits young children is simple. There are no tools. The work is done with the whole hand, and it rewards patient, rhythmic rolling more than precision. A 5-year-old who can't yet manage a needle can make a felted ball.

How wool turns into felt

Every wool fibre is covered in tiny scales, like tiles on a roof. Knitting writer Megan Goodacre explains that felting needs three things: moisture, heat and agitation. When wool is wet and rubbed, the scales flare out, catch on each other, and the fibres tangle tighter and tighter. They can't slide back apart. That's felt.

It also explains why a wool jumper shrinks in a hot wash, which older children enjoy hearing. And it's why some wool won't felt: wool labelled superwash or washable has been treated to stop it.

What you need

• Wool roving, also sold as carded wool or wool tops. A little undyed wool for the center of each ball and a few colored wisps for the outside.
• A bowl of warm water, and a second bowl of cold water for older children.
• Bar soap. Olive oil soap or Castile soap. Under Three Acres advises against using washing-up liquid for felting.
• A towel and a tray, because water will go everywhere.
• Bubble wrap, for flat pieces later on.

For kindergarten colors, the Teaching Handwork writer suggests soft pastels and plant-dyed wool, saving darker colors for later years. Our supplies list covers the rest of a handwork basket.

How to make a felted ball, step by step

Make one yourself first, before you teach it. You'll learn how much pressure the wool needs, and your child will want one that looks like yours.

1. Wind the center. Pull off a length of undyed roving, about 5 inches (13 cm). Wind it tightly into a ball about the size of a golf ball.
2. Add color. Wrap a few thin wisps of colored wool around the outside, crossing each other so the whole ball is covered.
3. Wet it. Dip the ball in the warm water and squeeze a little out.
4. Soap your hands. Rub the soap between your palms until they're slippery.
5. Roll gently. Cup the ball lightly between your hands and roll it round and round, barely pressing, as if you were holding a baby bird. Pressing hard at this stage pushes the wool out of shape.
6. Roll firmer. As the outside starts to hold, roll a little harder. Dip it back into the warm water now and then, and soap your hands again.
7. Test it. Squeeze it between your thumb and fingers. If it still feels soft and spongy, keep rolling.
8. Rinse and dry. Rinse the soap out, squeeze out the water and roll the ball in a towel. Leave it somewhere warm to dry, which usually takes about a day.

Under Three Acres suggests dipping the ball alternately in hot and cold water near the end, to shock the fibres and firm the felt. With young children, you can do those last dips yourself.

A first ball takes a while, and Under Three Acres warns it isn't a craft for when you're in a hurry. Some children love every minute. Others lose interest halfway, and that's fine. Under Three Acres describes felting a toddler's ball most of the way first, so the child can finish it without the frustration of the slow start.

A little rhyme while you roll

Waldorf teachers often bring a verse or a song to handwork, and felting's steady rolling fits one well. Myriad, a UK Waldorf supplier, shares a felted soap ball craft with a hand-washing song that its writer learned in kindergarten. Any short rhyme or song you already know works too, said in time with the rolling hands.

Wet felting safety

Wet felting is one of the gentlest crafts a young child can do, but a few things are worth watching.

• Warm, not hot. Adults often felt with hot water, and Under Three Acres uses water that's "quite hot to the touch". For a young child, use water that feels comfortably warm on the inside of your wrist. If you use hot water to firm up the felt at the end, do those dips yourself.
• Soap in the eyes. Soapy hands find their way to faces. Keep a cup of clean water and a cloth nearby.
• Slippery floors. Work on a tray, with a towel underneath, and wipe up spills as you go.
• Small balls and bells. Felted balls, beads and bells are a choking risk for babies and toddlers. Sew any bell inside securely, and keep small pieces away from little siblings.
• Needle felting can wait. The needles are sharp and barbed. Bear Creek Felting writes that children should never be left unattended while they use them. For kindergarten and the early grades, wet felting is the safer choice.

Wet felting projects by age

Kindergarten (about 5 and 6)

• Felted balls, in the colors of the season.
• A necklace of tiny felted beads, strung by you on a strong thread.
• A jingle ball for a baby. Wrap the bell in wool before felting begins.
• Felted soap. Wrap a small bar of soap in wool and felt it like a ball. It lathers through the wool and makes a good gift. Myriad has a version of this.
• A group felting mat. The Teaching Handwork writer describes kindergarten children felting a large mat by stamping on wet, soapy wool with their feet.

Grades 1 and 2 (about 6 to 8)

• Felted eggs for spring. Wrap the wool around a plastic egg, felt it, then cut a small slit and take the egg out. W Curriculum lists felted Easter eggs among its projects, and they suit the festival year.
• A flat landscape for the nature table. Lay thin layers of wool on bubble wrap, each layer at right angles to the last, sprinkle with soapy water and rub gently. Bella Luna Toys describes a larger playmat made the same way.
• An earth ball. The Waldorf Handwork Educators wet felting series for grades 1 to 3 starts with a wet felted earth ball, then moves on to a flat landscape.

Grade 3 (about 8 and 9)

• A small bowl or pouch, felted around a flat shape (called a resist) so it has a hollow inside. The Waldorf Handwork Educators series includes a vessel made this way, felted in one piece with no seams to sew.
• Felted balls from raw fleece. One Waldorf handwork teacher's grade 3 fibre block starts by washing a raw fleece and making felt balls on the first day.
• A pencil roll. The Waldorf School of Santa Barbara describes older children felting and stitching new pencil rolls.

Grade 3 is the year many Waldorf classes follow wool from the sheep to the cloth, and our guide to grade 3 fibre arts and crochet covers the carding, spinning and dyeing. Starpath's grade 3 Fibre Arts block ends with a small project in finger knitting, weaving or felting, and the public Fibre Arts guide shows how it runs. For the whole year, see what is the Waldorf grade 3 curriculum?.

Where felting fits in your week

Felting is messy enough that it works best as its own afternoon, not squeezed in before lunch. Some families keep one afternoon a week for handwork, as part of the daily rhythm. Felting can take that slot for a few weeks in autumn or spring, alternating with finger knitting or, from grade 1, knitting on needles.

Pick a warm day if you can, or the kitchen table with the window open. Put the finished balls in a basket where your child can see them, and let them be played with.

A week to try

• Monday: felt a ball yourself while your child watches, then leave it on the table.
• Tuesday: help your child wind the center and add color. Roll it together.
• Wednesday: your child makes a ball on their own, while you make one beside them.
• Thursday: felt a bar of soap to give to someone.
• Friday: string the dry balls onto a thread, or give them a place in the season's corner.