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Felt sewing is one of the simpler needle arts -a way to teach children sewing fundamentals and to hand sew charming ornaments, stuffies and other crafts. Not to be confused with needle felting, in which the crafter creates cool fabric pieces, including appliques and felt balls with a felting needle, felted wool and a few other specialized felting supplies, sewing felt is a craft that lends itself to frugal ideas and will have you creating endless wonderful hand sewn items from a bit of thread and just a few fabric pieces of soft felt.
Felt Sewing requires only the most basic sewing supplies. The felt material is of course the most important and for that you have two choices- material made from natural wool fibres and that made from synthetics- polyester or polyester/ rayon blends. When purchasing wool felt fabric, you may want to read what the cloth is made from, because some wool felt material does contain non wool fibers. To sew felt, you'll want to use a circular needle. Circular needles are very strong, tend to be a larger gauge and allow even children's fingers to push through a thick or heavy decorative flat felt.
Felt cloth can be cut with regular fabric scissors, decorative scissors, a craft knife, or a rotary cutter and cutting mat, all of which can be purchased here or through most yarn shops. Depending on the project that you have in mind, you may also want to buy craft glue (any good fabric glue will do, but a hot glue gun may be neater, and for some projects a removable glue or temporary spray adhesive may be called for), a circle punch for needle punching, or materials for creative lettering.
You can sew felt with any number of stitching techniques, including a straight stitch and a back stitch, but may find that the most satisfying stitches to sew the pieces of felt fabric together are the whip stitch and the blanket stitch, both simple stitches that you may be familiar with from crazy quilting.
With the whip stitch you will be able to hand sew a stitch that meshes very tightly into the felt material, with seams on the base piece that meet flatly. To use this stitch for sewing felt, you first pin or baste the wrong sides of the flat felt pieces together, and then sew the edges, about an eighth of an inch back from the very edge. The knotted floss (thread) is then pulled from the inside of the bottom layer of fabric to the outside, which sandwiches the knot between the top layer and the base piece. The needle is then pulled up through the top layer of fabric, just above the original stitch, and then pulled down through the original hole in the bottom layer, joining the two layers.
With the layers anchored, you now begin angling the needle, pulling it about an eighth of an inch from the left of the preceding stitch, and through both layers. You repeat the stitch until all of the felt edges are sewn.
Using a blanket stitch to hand sew felt, the stitching and the seams are much more obvious and lend a rougher, more home spun quality to the final piece. With the blanket stitch, the flat felt is joined in the same way, wrong sides together and knotted between the two layers, but in this stitch, the floss is not immediately pulled tight, but first left in a little loop over the edge, after which your circular needle is pulled through the loop and the felt fabric is joined.
If you've been toying with the idea of sewing felt for a while, it may be time to finally jump right in. Felt sewing is easy, fun, and the sewing supplies, including our marvelous discount felt material, are a wonderful way to turn an idea into a satisfying and inexpensive craft project.
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