- By Annie -
Recently I’ve been making some hand embroidered, autumn inspired, wet felted beads to make a decoration for the house. I love this time of year, autumn is my favourite season. Not only does it feel like the perfect feltmaking season, I love the cosy feeling of this time of year and feel so energised by the drop in air temperature.
There is nothing like a fresh walk through the garden or a woodland for inspiration, picking up and examining leaves, acorns and other fallen goodies for their colours, textures and patterns.
I always like to bring something indoors to display in the house, a few sprigs of this or that often plopped into a jam jar or bottle. Above my stove I have a dotty jug that has random bits in depending on what I’ve been doing in the garden and also depending on how long they survive before they wilt in the steam of cooking! The tiny kitchen table is often adorned with various stems or seed heads or interesting sticks and fir cones.
I was looking for inspiration for my autumn decoration when I was gardening and the crocosmia seed heads would usually have stayed on the plants for a lot longer, with just one or two coming indoors but I had to cut them all back as they had laid down across the path and were getting trampled. So they became the perfect carrier for my felty balls autumn project!
The felt beads are about 2.5cm/1 inch in size and are fun and quick to make using only small amounts of wool.
Making felt beads is such a lovely process and they can be used for so many projects from keyrings to necklaces, and all kinds of home decor.
Mum made a lovely tutorial, available in our Etsy shop, on how to make wet felted beads then hand embroider and string them into a necklace with a sliding closure.
You can make your beads in your favourite colours and go on to design your own stitched patterns once you get started. Mum used summer and beach colours in her tutorial but as you can see I used an autumn palette and adapted some of the stitches for the season.
We hope you feel inspired to make your own decorative woolly beads and balls, but be warned, once you start you might not stop!
