Why is making a felt rock weirdly fun and addictive? I don’t know and I just made seven of them. After a 4 hour drive in the rain. Why? Because it was the International Day of Felt and I promised.

Some things are hard to describe.

And now, I’m here to give you the low-down on the ins and outs of felt rock making. Extra tips above and beyond the video. And why you should try it. Because you want to know. No really, you do.

First Things First

Even though I’ve done a lot of wet felting in my day, I’d never made a felt rock before, and my FB friend Terry Pike had a great video on how to do that very thing–so the first thing I did was re-watch the video.

I already had a stash of wool roving, so I was psyched to use it because I’d had it a long time and we all feel bad when we buy art supplies we haven’t used. I even had a bit of yellow, red, and orange roving, which was great, because those were the color parameters for the International Day of Felt, 2009. I mean, if I’m gonna participate, I might as well follow the rules. (Here are my red and yellow rocks on the right in my garden.)

Bet You Can’t Make Just One

I’m going to assume that you’ve watched the video and I’m just going to add some handy tips, tricks, and thoughts to augment Terri’s wonderful directions. So here goes:

• I worried my glass bowl wasn’t tall enough, but it’s all I had and it was fine.

• You definitely need that towel. I’d put it under the bowl and maybe drape it over your legs.

• No long sleeves. The water runs down your arms and it’s kind of annoying.

• I used Murphy’s Oil Soap instead of dish soap because my favorite book on felting recommends it, and it’s my felting bible. (The book is called: New Directions for Felt, An Ancient Craft, by Gunilla Paetau Sjoberg and it’s out of print. Darn, because I love it.)

• Just dollop the soap into the water. No measuring necessary. The water should feel soapy–and the wool should feel kind of slippery when you’re squeezing the rock. I also recommend that you make the water as hot as you can stand it. And have some boiling on the stove as well, to add as the water in the bowl cools.

• I used too much wool for my initial rock and actually had to cut off some of the extra wool at the beginning. In fact, I kept cutting down on how much wool I used for each rock. The wool that you’re folding together as you wrap your rock is actually pretty thick, so too much overlap just makes it harder.

• On that same note, I began to add extra wool directly underneath my rock to balance out the thickness of the wool on the folded-together-side–it usually felt a bit too thin compared to the side where all the wool was bunching together.

• I found it easier to wrap my tulle very tightly around my rock as I dipped it into the hot soap water. This might be from my days of using panty hose to wrap felt vessels, but I found it easier.

• It can be a little hard, at first, to tell when you’re done. The felted wool feels like a bag around the rock for quite a while. You just need to keep squeezing. I tried to get rid of the tulle pretty quickly on my first rock or two, but I found it was really handy to use it for almost the entire felting/fulling process.

• The only stressful part is really at the beginning–getting your wool wrapped in the tulle and then getting the wool to felt in the bunched up areas. Also, it can take a little while to get rid of the wrinkles, but they do go away. You’ll start to think, crap, they’re never gonna go away, and that’s about when they do.

• I tried combining a couple of kinds of wool and I found that a little challenging. It’s doable, but a little harder, so I’d stick with one kind of wool at first.

• It’s slightly awkward at first to control the rock and the wool and the tulle, and you’ll feel like you’re not doing it right. But the awkwardness goes away as you do it–you get better at feeling your way along.

• Another great thing is you can felt your rock again later if you want. I felted two of them again/more the next day, and I thought it helped make the wool firmer.

• And if you do have a towel, you really can felt rocks front of the TV. In fact, it sort of helps stop you from wetting it too much.

• Definitely save your rubbing for the end. It’s way more squeezing than I would have thought. It feels like a bag around your rock for most of the process.

• Good exercise for your hands muscles–whew!

• Start with your smallest rock at first. It really is easier. You can get bigger as you get better at it.

Highlights

• Making your first felt rock you’ll find yourself thinking, Hmmm…is this fun? I’m not sure. Hmmm, is this working? I’m not sure. (More time passes as you continue to “pack the snowball”). Oh, how ’bout that… it’s starting to look better now. Is this fun? Yeah, kinda.  And by the fifth rock you’re like, okay, this is weirdly fun and I can’t stop.

• They get better looking as they dry. I don’t know why that is, but it’s true. So if you’re not sure what you think of it, just let it sit there on the window sill and dry out. You’ll like it better the next day.

• This makes you want to make more. So you do.

• It’s awesome that you can fix as you go–I had one rock where the wool didn’t felt together properly in the overlapping area, so I just got more wool and stuck it in the open area and kept squeezing. It felted the gap closed quite easily and you couldn’t tell. I also re-felted two of them the next day and they looked better. The wool is happy to shrink some more. So accommodating.

• It reminded me of gold leafing because when you learn to gold leaf, you pretty much want to cover everything in sight with it. You start scrounging around for things that would be cool to cover in leaf. Felting rocks is like that. You make one and you think–gimmee another one of those, I’m gonna try that again. And then another. Inexplicably satisfying.

• This project requires virtually no room. I have a big studio but I felted my rocks at the kitchen table. Even if you have NO space of your own to work, you can felt rocks. And when you felt rocks, you’re making cool things.

• You like to make cool things.

• An ounce of wool will make you a lot of felt rocks. So it’s inexpensive to try it, they look cool, and they’re fun to hold. Can’t beat it.

Ideas and Possibilities

They’re endless, as usual, but here’s a few ideas to kick around if you’re still looking for a reason to get started.

• This is a great project to do with kids. They might run out of steam at the end, but they won’t notice if their felt rock isn’t that felted.  And, if you need to, you can finish them easily enough later (if they’re “helping” you with your project, for instance, and you want them to look a certain way). So it has possibilities as a family project. And boys will also like it–which ain’t always the case with crafting activities. Felting is unisex! Who knew?

• Find a beautiful bowl. Fill it with felted rocks. Put it in your living room. Everyone will want to touch them. It could be a great graphic statement–make them all one color except for one, or make them a tonal range that goes with the rest of the room, or use “stone” colors–greys, and browns, and whites, and pale yellows. Just make a whole bunch, because they really hold their own when there’s a lot of them.

• See above for cool holiday present idea. For another arty person. (The same people who get your most beautiful holiday cards because they’ll appreciate it.)

• This is a great project for high school art teachers. It’s fun and cheap and everyone can contribute to one large piece. It’s a great way to teach about the power and possibilities of repetition and multiples in contemporary art to teenagers–the “why is one just kinda neat, but forty-five filling an aquarium (or something like that) so cool” kind of discussion. (Or, when does repetition make something more powerful, and when does it make something meaningless?) Great looking project to teach an interesting lesson.

• And it’s also a great introduction to an ancient craft for elementary school teachers as well. The kids can make a paper weight for Father’s Day. And you’ll have a cool display when you pile them all together for the Back to School night display case.

Did you make a felt rock(s)? Have I convinced you yet? What are you waiting for? Inquiring minds want to know!
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