Wet Felted Eggs

I just can not get enough of wet felting eggs and felt I should write a blog about it! The process is so easy that it can be done by a small child, and the results are really quite beautiful. 

To begin, you must have an egg to wrap around- whether that be a wooden egg, or a plastic egg- both work. (However, you must take more care when using the plastic eggs because they tend to open up in the squeezing process, resulting in less of an egg shape.) Wet felted eggs can be made without an egg, using lots of roving, but for the purpose of this blog, we are sticking with wet felting over an existing egg.

Take your egg and wrap a nice amount of roving, length wise around your egg a few times. (Knowing that this color will not be showing, unless you cut the egg off, and in that case, it will be the inner color.) Then take more roving and wrap the egg width wise a few times. Take care to wrap pretty tightly. Continue this process until you think the egg has enough wool covering the egg, with no this spots, and gives approximately 3/4 inch- 1 inch when squeezed. 

The next step is the fun part! With my children, I did this part over our water table. First, I squirt warm to hot water (watch the temperature with little ones!) all over the egg, and then squirt about a half of a teaspoon of soap per egg soap (I personally use Dawn dish soap). Begin with gentle squishing, using rounded hands, careful not to move the roving around too much until the fibers begin to stick to each other. It is at this point that I generally hand all the work over to Sugar Bear, my 3 year old. He squishes the heck out of it, all over, until the fibers really start to get tight. 

Occasionally, more water and soap needs to be applied.

Once they are nice and tight all over, I then rinse them off with cold water. Don't worry about getting every last smidgen of soap off, just most of it. I then put them in a pair of nylons, tying knots between the eggs if I made multiple, and throw them in the dryer with some laundry for a full cycle on high heat. 

Yes, the wooden eggs and the plastic eggs are fine in the dryer. I have done both now, and neither had any warping or issues with the heat. 

When they come out of the dryer, they are so nice and tight! At this point, you can keep them like they are, with the egg inside, or you can cut the egg out and stitch around the edge if you want. A very big hole does not need to be made to get the egg out. At the beginning of the blog, you can see pictures where a dear friend cut out the egg and made baskets with the halves! 

I plan to make several for their Easter baskets for putting special little treats inside. 

This egg, pictured below, has been lovingly named "birdie".