Summertime crafts: Making a felted butterfly

June 22nd, 2010

Summertime crafts: Making a felted butterfly

I needed a quick project to do with my 2 year old as our morning was cut short due to chore load. It’s summer so I thought it would be nice to break out the felt (Tuesday is felting day – in our weekly rhythm) and make a butterfly for the play house.

This project could easily be adapted to wet felting as young children love – however due to our shortened morning I decided to needle felt it and have my daughter participate by adding friction or simply touching the piece when she desired.

I also wanted to add that you don’t hvae to be particularly artistic or crafty to do these kinds of projects. Believe me I churned this out fast this morning and the butterfly is lopsided – the children don’t care! They simply cherish what you make with them.

All you need is dyed wool, pipe cleaners and your needle and mat for felting.

I took one pipe cleaner and folded it in half and twisted it together.

Then twisted the endos of the other two together, forming a circle

Twist your circle into a figure 8, and shape the wings as you wish.

I covered the body part with wool and had Sophie roll it back & forth in her hands. The friction starts the felting process. Then I ran my felting needle over it a few times.

Sophie is too young to use the sharp needle, but that doesn’t mean she can’t mimic the movement. I catch her “needle felting” in the play house with her bubble wand. Here she gives it a go on the body of our butterfly.

The body is now done.

Then I attached the body to the wing armature I formed, criss-crossing the wool around the center of the wings and body. I lightly felted this into place with the needle. I wanted to be able to loop string through here later.

I started to lay the wool on the wings to felt – weaving over and under the pipe cleaner armature – then felted it into place.

So as you can see, our butterfly looks more like a dragonfly than a butterfly! This is great too – but I told Sophie we were making a butterfly. :) I could have made a second set of wings, but again due to our short morning I simply snipped the body with scissors and felted over the bottom. We will keep the other half of the body to make another later.

Sophie of course requested blue for the body, and then I jazzed it up a little bit…

…adding fuschia & purple felt to the body.

Just one last apple green element added to the top – and our butterfly is ready to take flight.

Our butterfly now lives at the front door of our play house. Where he will stay all summer long. :)