Wet Felting Mice

Our school is donating a tree for the Hospice Festival of Trees and our theme is the Nutcracker so each classroom is making ornaments. Yesterday my students did the white wool angels from Making Magical Fairy-Tale Puppets for the Snow Fairies. Today we wet felted little mice. We are sewing thin pink felt tails on them tomorrow.

First I read a story with a mouse in it: The Story of Jumping Mouse. Then we modeled little mice out of modeling beeswax so that my students could get a sense of the shape. Then the felting began! I used a variegated grey, black, and white roving. I couldn't find a cheese grater so I simply peeled curls of soap into the bottom of each bowl with a vegetable peeler (and a plain Crabtree & Evelyn bar of bath soap) and then added hot water. The kids loved to swish the water around with their hands to dissolve the soap and make the bubbles. It also was a good introduction to the hot soapy water, minus wool, for people who had never done it before and wanted to go slowly. It helped them get over their apprehension.

Step 1 was to roll a piece of roving into a ball and felt it by rolling it back and forth and all around between your palms. This is hidden later and is just the foundation of the body so it is OK to make mistakes. This also helped with apprehension for newbie felters. Anything you end up with, be it a ball or a long stringy felted mess with some solid parts and some holes in it, will be fine because it gets hidden. And it gives the children a sense of just how quickly the wool felts (this particular kind). So they formed the dry roving into a ball and then dunked it in the hot soapy water and rubbed vigorously.

Step 2 was to lay loose strips of dry wool over the still-wet ball in all directions, wrapping it completely. Then hold the ball in one hand and with the other, scoop and gently sprinkle the ball with hot soapy water, and GENTLY pat the overlapping wool as it is moistened so that it felts securely all around your foundation ball but is not so hard that details can't be added. Next, pull the nose out a bit, tug on some ears, and flatten the bottom with the palm of your hand. Dip the mouse if you need to rewet it and shape it further. Finally, rinse it with cold water, squeeze out the excess, and set it on a drying rack (I use the cookie ones) to dry.