If sheep layed eggs
I’ve made felted eggs before but this year decided to try thing just a bit different. I’ll take you step by step through how I made these today.
Step 1:
Take a styrofoam egg and a hunk of dyed roving in the color of your choice.
Divide the roving up into approximately 1″ wide strips.
Begin wrapping the egg with the roving trying to cover it evenly.
Take another strip and wrap the egg horizontally.
Needle felt the entire surface to get the felting process started and to help keep things together.
Step 2: Adding details.
Break off smaller bits of roving in contrasting colors. Add these in circles, spirals, or stripes and gently needlefelt into place.
Be careful when needling not to over do it in any one area as this can break down the styrofoam form inside and make your finished egg mis-shapened.
Continue adding additional stripes and needling them into place.
Step 3: Wet felting/fulling
Fill your sink with hot water (as hot as you can comfortably put your hands into.)
Gently immerse egg and “squish” water through it to completely saturate the wool.
Squirt a small amount of dish soap on egg and work it into a good lather.
Continue to roll the egg between your hands while keeping the wool warm and soapy. The stripes or other shapes will want to shift around so gently push them back into shape every so often.
The warm soapy water will open up the scales on the wool and enable them to lock together. The friction of rubbing it in your hands also helps to mat the fibers together.
Alternate between the hot soapy water and some cold water and continue to rub. You may want to wear rubber gloves to protect your hands from the extreme temperatures and to aid in the friction.
When the wool is tight against the foam form and has a nice hard surface, continue to rinse until all the soap is gone and then squeeze the excess water out in a towel.
Let dry completely and you can just stop here.
I decided to take mine the step further and add embroidery stitches to help define the colored shaped and to add some more detail and texture.
EDITED TO ADD:
Erin asked: Could you needle felt the designs directly on, too? (I still can’t find a felting needle anywhere…)..and how did you get the embroidery on there with the egg inside? Was it difficult?
Answer: Yes, I did needle felt some of the designs directly onto the egg. Particularly the yellow flowers and pink swirls on the light blue egg, the turquoise polka dots on the pink and the stripes on the lavender.
The trick with the embroidery (and I should make another and take pictures of that part I guess.) is to not-knot! Don’t tie knots in the ends of your floss. Instead poke your needle into the egg an inch or so away from where you want to start stitching and come up where you want your first stitch to start. Carefully pull the floss until the end is buried inside the egg, but don’t pull so hard that you pull it completely out! You can also make a tiny back-stitch to lock in the floss before you start stitching. This locking stitch is important if you are doing long running stitches. It can be tricking embroidering on a surface that you can only work on from the front side but just trial and error and you can make it work. When you are done stitching with a particular color floss just make another long stitch back into the egg and out the other side (if your needle is long enough) and snip the floss close to the egg and it will bury itself back inside.
I also suggest using a sharp tipped embroidery needle rather than a blunt tipped tapestry needle. It makes getting small even stitches much easier.
Another idea would be to use a long doll-makers needle and attach a loop of floss through the middle of the egg, top to bottom, to make it so you could hang these on an “Easter Tree.”
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