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.