This is a very easy and pretty project for those new to needle felting. Make as many hearts as you like to decorate with love this festive season.
For a beginners guide to needle felting you should check out my previous post: Needle Felting Basics
How to make a Needle Felted Heart Garland
You will need:
- Wool roving (assorted colors)
- Felting needle and pad
- Heart shaped cookie cutter (metal or plastic)
- Embroidery thread in a complementary colour
- Tapestry (long) needle
- Scissors
How to:
1. Gather your supplies, we will be using the cookie cutter as a mould for our felt shape.
2. Stuff the mould with some wool, to avoid the risk of needle breaking make sure the thicker lip of the cutter is up most.
3&4. Start needling the wool to flatten and compact, add more wool if required. To avoid felting the shape into pad, lift it out of the mould and turn over regularly as you needle. Remember to keep your needle at a 90 degree angle to the pad so there is no risk of breaking the needle against the metal cutter.
5&6. Once you are happy with the thickness you can remove the mould and do some surface needling to tidy up the fuzzy stray wool fibers.
7. Repeat in assorted colours until you have as many hearts as you like. I’ve made seven.
8. Arrange your coloured hearts. Don’t they look pretty? Take a long strand of embroidery thread and thread your needle. Make a big knot in the end
9. Thread on your hearts.
10. Space your hearts out on the thread and make a loop for hanging at the top.
All done!
This garland looks lovely hanging from a door knob, or make a long one and string around your Christmas tree. You could even try using different shaped cutters for a fun assortment of different themed garlands, stars, spots, or even little gingerbread men maybe?
I’m sure you will enjoy this project. Please feel free to leave any question in the comments.
I love this! I recently bought some beautiful roving from Indigo Inspirations in Mullimbimby. I'm so excited that I have found something to use it for.
Thanks so much!
felting shapes using cookie cutters – simply genius idea – I'm so excited to try that one. I'm having a festive tutorial and giveaway tomorrow – I hope you will be able to join in.
This is absolutely gorgeous… and I love that your fingernails match too!
This is so gorgeous! I have been wanting to learn to needle felt for ages…and your tutorials make it look so doable! Thanks for the encouragement!
This is so pretty and a lovely tute too! Saw it on CraftGawker and just had to come visit. 🙂
very cute! 😉
question: this wool has to be 100% natural? i mean, can it be done with artificial ones? thanks!
Yes. Real wool has fibers that help bind it together. Unfortunately synthetic fibers just won’t work
i’m not gonna lie, i won’t make this (cos i am lazy and craftily challenged) but i would TOTALLY buy one. you should add them to your store!
🙂 It’s probably not the DIY activity that you ever thought you’d inspire with this post; however, when I was planning to craft some fur-filled hearts, I thought that perhaps cookie cutters could help cut (hehe) the corner on manually shaping the hearts. I did a quick Google search to see if any crafty person out there had already validated my cookie cutter plot and found your post. Here is the link to our fur-filled DIY if you’re curious and we included a shout-out to your post in the preamble: DIY Felted Wool Heart with Dog Fur https://dalmatiandiy.blogspot.com/2016/04/diy-felted-wool-heart-with-dog-fur.html
It’s not that crazy. I know people that spin dog hair into yarn. And there was a book I saw about needle felting with cat hair. Sadly I am allergic to dogs so it won’t be something I try in a hurry. Love to see people experiment with materials and processes. Thanks for sharing your post 🙂
We did this! It’s fun, it’s easy and it’s beautiful. Such a winner