Wet Felted Flowers

Lay out your Wet Felting Mat or bubble wrap with the bumps/bubbles facing upwards. Tear off wispy strands of your main colour wool top and lay these out in a circular ‘base’ so that the fibres overlap each other. The diameter is about 13-15cm.

Now use the same wool top and tear off a longer length. Fold this into a loop and lay it on top of the circular base, so that this will cover the base entirely - this will make the flower stronger.

Add a second loop at a right angle...

..then two more, again at right angles as above, to make a total of four loops. Now use some white Seacell or Ramie plant fibre and lay wispy strands in the direction of the round loops.

Add orange wispy wool lengths on top.

NB: you can add more colour such as yellow if you like. Add it as per the white and orange fibres.

With a bowl of warm water at the ready, wet your fingers then rub them with soap. Dip your fingers into the bowl, then dribble soapy water onto your flower. Repeat the process until the wool is totally wet.

Then fold your mat/bubble wrap over the wool (or lay another piece on top). Make sure to put a tea towel or strong cotton fabric underneath. Place your wooden roller on top and begin to roll the towel, wool and mat around it into a tight sausage.

Use your body weight to roll the sausage back and forth 30 times, applying a lot of pressure. Open the towel, turn the mat and wool 90° then roll it up again. Repeat the rolling process another 30 times. Do this twice more, again turning 90° each time, so you end up rolling your work four times from four directions.

Unroll your work and lift off the top layer of your mat/bubble wrap. The first stage of the felting process should now have taken place. Next use your soapy water and rub your fingers over the felted wool to continue the felting process in a more focussed way.

Then dip your work into a bowl with hot water (as hot as you can bear), rinse out the soap then squeeze the water out. Now immediately put it into a bowl with cold water. Repeat the previous step and this one several times, until the second stage of felting is complete...

...which should be achieved when your work has almost shrunk by half. Now use scissors to cut small wedges into the four ‘petals’ to double them in number. Also cut in between the four petals if they need to be separated.

From now on you will be working on the individual flower petals. Use soapy water and your fingers to rub the cut-open wool to felt those edges closed again. Continue to rub the petals to shrink and shape them so they become more pointy.

Then fold the petals up and concentrate rubbing and shaping with soapy water underneath the flower to make a base. You can roll the whole flower in the palm of your hands, open them up again. Shape the petals, then roll again and so on.

The underside of the flower should look a little like this.

As a final step, make ure that all of the soap if fully rinsed out, then leave your flower to dry.

You can make all kinds of flowers using this technique - why not try different colours, shapes, sizes... have fun and experiment!