Top felt craft tips for beginners
Welcome to the Cosy Craft Club's felt craft month! We really want to encourage you to have a go at felt craft, and we'll be sharing the key things you need to know to get started. You can find all our felty posts in one place here.
Felt is such a versatile material to work with, but it can be daunting to know where to start. We asked top UK felt crafters for their top tips for beginners, and they delivered! Keep reading to learn all their insights, and get inspired to start felt crafting away!
It can be tricky to trace the shape you want to cut from felt. I tend to use a cardboard template and draw around it in felt pen. I get more success from using a felt pen colour that contrasts with the felt colour so it stands out for you to see where to cut. Also, be careful with felt pen ink bleeding into the felt fibres (and under your template) so be sure to test first. A new felt tip will be very ‘inky’ so one that has been used a bit already works better.
Also, if I’m using felt to appliqué something like letters for personalised items I trace the letters onto ‘Heat ‘n’ Bond’ by Thermo-o-Web (backwards!) first. I then cut them out close to the line, bond onto the felt following the instructions, cut the shapes out following the trace line and remove the backing paper. Finally, the felt shapes are arranged where I want them and bonded using an iron.
Sonia - Fantoosh @fantooshbysonia
Photo: Felt Boutique
It is worth buying a felt chart from a supplier if you are going to use felt regularly. They will help with colour matching and are a good investment. The range of colours available is amazing and I haven’t yet needed a shade that doesn’t exist
Suppliers often sell collection packs which is a great way of trying a range of colours that compliment each other - perfect for the floral bouquets I make!
Penny - Felt Boutique @felt.boutique
My top tip for working with felt would be to chose a good quality wool felt, not a polyester mix or any other synthetic variation. With a good quality wool felt supplier comes a wider range of colours, and better depth of colour. A better quality felt can also mean if you are using a hot glue gun with the felt, that you are less likely to get your fingers burnt when fixing (in my case petals) together!
Jess - Felt by the heart @feltbytheheartetsy
The best thread to use when sewing felt is embroidery floss. It’s usually made up of 6 twisted strands, that can be divided or used together. For the chunky stitched look use all 6 as they are, for the more dainty smaller stitch try to separate the embroidery skein to use 2 strands.
When sewing try to keep your stitches consistent in size and spacing for the most polished finished look.
Most importantly, sewing with felt should be fun! With a few basic principles in place to begin with you can achieve a fantastic looking finished project with minimal sewing experience!
Nicola - Felt Tails @felttails
Photo: Jenny Blair Kits
Use 100% wool felt... it might be a little more expensive but the quality is superb, it is thicker, feels amazing and the seams holds up fabulously when stuffed. (www.cloudcraft.com has ALL the colours)
Jenny - Jenny Blair Kits @jennyblairkits
I can’t work without my Sewline glue pen! It helps to hold all of the small fiddly bits in place, dries clear & leaves no marks, and doesn’t dry too hard meaning it’s still easy to sew through!
Savana - Savana Lawler Textiles @savanalawlertextiles
Make sure you're using sharp scissors to cut your felt! This really makes a difference to the finished look of your project. Have a separate pair of scissors that you use just for felt/fabric so they don't get quickly blunted by paper and other materials. And whilst die cutting machines are great for felt, they are not essential - all of the felt flower patterns I write use simple scissors for cutting out the templates, so as long as they are sharp and you are patient, you can achieve beautiful results with simple tools and materials.
Start small and build up to bigger projects. Felt flowers are a great way to get started as you can begin with making just one or two and achieve something beautiful in a short space of time.
Hannah - The Handmade Florist @thehandmadeflorist
Photo: The Handmade Florist
Invest in two pairs of scissors - both really sharp! Little ones for details and some larger ones for cutting through more layers.
Ruth - The Make Arcade @themakearcade
Knowing the different types of felt and felt making and where to purchase supplies would have been a great help. It was really confusing looking at all the different felt options and when what they are best used for. So for example there is craft felt, which is ready made felt for a whole host of cutting and sewing projects, wet felt making which is using wool fibre soap and water, needle felting which is dry felting, using a very sharp barbed felting tool and fulling which is the process of knitting with felting yarn, which when washed in the washing machine create a felt like finish.
Now you can buy lovely fibres from the likes of World of Wool and beautiful soft craft felt sheets from Creative Craft Supplies. My two favourite suppliers, from both a quality point of view but an ethical point of view too.
Lisa - Tiger Lily Makes @tigerlilymakes
Photo: Tiger Lily Makes
When cutting out small or tiny shapes from felt, sellotape the template to the felt then cut around it using embroidery scissors.
Caroline - Zou Zou Design @zouzoudesign
Thank you so much to all our lovely felt crafters! I hope you learned something new there, I certainly did. Please click on the links to check out more of their work and show them some love.
Rachel x
