How to Make a Wet Felted Pansy
Sally Gulbrandsen Feltmaker: Her tutorials and techniques are as individual as she is—unique, experimental and always interesting.
Easy Step by Step Felt Flower Tutorial
This step-by-step felting tutorial takes you through the steps of making a felt flower using silver beading wire to help support the petals and stems. This pretty flower can be used on its own in a bud vase or used on a garment or as decoration for a felted hat.
A sander can be utilized to aid the felting process. Alternatively, the project can be rolled as usual between a sheet or bubble wrap or between a bamboo mat. My preferred method is to use a bamboo mat.
Things Needed
- Paper pansy template
- Scissors
- Stirling silver beading wire fine grade silver wire (for large flowers use a slightly thicker wire)
- A soft felt tip pen
- Paper
- A small quantity wool roving in colours of your choice
- Washing up liquid or grated olive oil soap diluted in hot soapy water
- Bubble wrap
- A sheet of thick plastic if using a sander.
- A palm sander (optional) This may be substituted with a bamboo blind or bubble wrap.
Items You Will Require
Step 1: Find a Suitable Pansy Image
- Trace the image below.
- Enlarge the image if required by simply increasing the magnification of your computer screen.
- Use a soft tip felt pen to trace the image.
- Cut the petals out.
- The cut out template will give you a very good indication of the size of the wire frames which will be needed for each petal.
Step 2: Trace the Image
- Once traced, the template can be enlarged or made smaller using your printer.
- Most printers these days have this capability.
- Follow your individual printer manual Instructions to find out how to enlarge or reduce the size of the image or use the method described above to trace the image using a sheet of computer paper.
The Template
Step 3: Cut out the Petals
- Cut out the individual petals and enlarge those which are shown to be hiding one behind the another.
- Lengthen the short ones behind to make those the same size as the petals which are visible from the front.