Some places in the world are in summer vacation mode, others on winter vacation, but everywhere, I'm sure, parents are looking for ways to do some meaningful, fun things with their children. I taught a summer felting camp for four to six-years-olds last week & I put together this little tutorial. If you decide to do this project, please do blog about it & leave a link here in the comments section. I would love to see what you come up with!
You will need: Wool batting/roving, two large trash bags, soap, hot water, scissors, embroidery floss & a sewing needle.
Here's what we did:
We spread out wool batting onto a large trash bag. If you want to be *really* Waldorfy, you would of course not use a black trash bag with these young children. ;-) I estimate that the batting was about 2" (5 cm) thick. On top of the wool batting, the children spread some colorful wool bits. They were all from my "leftovers bag." I told them to use their fingers to make nice, fluffy clouds. They then put them in random places.
When the piece was ready to be felted, I squirted soap on the top. I used Dr. Bronner's Pure Castille Soap. Why? Because I had quite a bit leftover from our camping trip. Yes, this project has "leftover" written all over it. Don't you just love that?! I must say I had never felted with that soap before & I was very pleased with the outcome! Then we poured a pot of very hot water on the top.
We covered the whole thing with another trash bag. I made sure that the surface wasn't too hot for the children to touch. The children then started rubbing, banging, pounding...
... and after a while we rolled the whole thing up into a giant burrito of sorts & did some more rubbing, banging, pounding. - Mostly pounding and then even...
... some stomping! Gasp. Lots of fun!
When we unrolled the burrito, it looked something like this.
We put the felted piece in a bucket of cold water & rinsed all the soap out. After this step, I would recommend doing the process of adding soap, hot water & doing the burrito-felting-poundy thing & rinsing one more time. It will produce a stronger felt!
Then Father Sun worked his magic & did the drying.
I used an oven mitt I had at home & traced a template. We cut out two for each oven mitt. (One left & one right to ensure that the colorful felt is on the outside of the mitt!)
Finally, we sewed along the edges with cotton embroidery thread, using a simple blanket stitch. The children loved this project & the oven mitts were very well received by the parents!
A "phunky wool" caterpillar on one of the boxes. The children felted around a bit of floral wire. I really like how the ones turned out where rovings were mixed. 
Butterfly created from a flat piece of felt & cut out. Unfortunately there was no time to refelt the cutouts. I'd do that in the future to have a neater edge. 
The lil' loop makes it easy to fly them.
Ladybugs created by making red & black pompoms. Once you figure out how to wrap the little cardboard donuts, it's success each & every time. 
Awww. 
I don't want to show a picture of the boxes, because it would reveal the names of the children, but I think you get an idea of how they looked. Just lil' square boxes & names engraved with a wood-burner.
Finally, a movable picture. I made a cut along the wave, then we inserted the boat on a long piece of cardboard & attached a piece of heavy paper to the back with staples. Stapling was fast. Glue would be my recommendation, though. Voila! Boats are sailing across the sea.
I'm participating in the Heart Swap, 'cause when I already have work overload, I try to pile more things on top of that to stay really crazZzy busy. I like to be on the edge of insanity - always. ;-) Go figure. Anyhoo. I had no idea for a heart-sy creation. None. Blank. The other day Nathan was cross-stitching away when I had the idea for this lil' heart pin-cushion. Voila. I used fingering weight hand-painted yarns & I really like the effect that gives to this wee lil' creation. Really small. Lotsa love. I hope my swap partner will like it.
It is finally a-blocking! I was going to use the fancy equipment at the local yarn store, but then we had another snowstorm & I never got another blocking spot thereafter, so I'm doing the good-ole bed-blocking (with a fresh sheet, no worries). I'm mailing it at the post office in the morning. I love this Robin's Egg O~Wool. I think a Paua brooch would look very nice with it. It measured up to be 66" (180 cm) long and the triangle comes down 25" (63 cm). - A pretty nice size. And here's the pretty rainbow quilt Lottie sent me in exchange months ago. Isn't it amazing? You can find her blog at The Slightly Mad Quilt Lady.
In our Santa Lucia procession the boys will have the star wands in one hand and a jug of (a non-alcoholic version of) Gloegg in the other. The girls will carry the Lucia bread. Oh, I should mention that the girls will also be wearing a red sash tied around the waist. It will simply be a 6x48" silk scarf dyed red.
Instead of choosing the oldest or youngest child in the class to be Santa Lucia and instead of rotating a Lucia crown with burning candles among the students before we enter the various classrooms, I decided that the nine girls in my class should all be Lucia this year & I'm asking parents to come felt Lucia crowns at my house. The first get-together was last night & look how beautiful they all are! The boys will have stars, cut from wood, painted golden & attached to a long dowel. I'm looking forward to Santa Lucia's Day!
Inspired by my friend Angie's post "Treasure Bag" (Thanks, Angie!) we felted little pouches. These pouches would later hold the felted little fish, the seashell & a small dyed silk. - Sort of a "mini puppet play in a pouch."
Felting the fish in one piece didn't quite work out as I thought it would, so we created a flat piece of felt, cut out fish & blanket-stitched two pieces together. We added a little loop so the fish can easily swim through the water as puppets. So cute.
It's seems I am most often inspired to be creative when really I should be doing something else.
It's so beautiful. These curls in so many different hues! I still owe my 100th blog post giveaway, so I have decided to take the autumny fibers (not pictured) to needle-felt a harvest maiden to give away. Stay tuned. Thanks, Lizz! You are awesome.
