Felt Bubbles
A while back I went to a felting friends for a few days fun. She showed me how to make bubbles and cut them open to great effect. Here are the pictures of what I did.
First of course I laid out some wool to felt. But these are samples so plain felt won’t do . I added silk threads and a silk square and some silk roving and other wools to see how it would all go. This is the underside.
This is what the top side looks like
Then of course there was the usual rolling and fulling.

Here they are all finished and ready for the marbles.
The next step is to put marbles in while it is still damp. You pull the felt tightly around the marble and secure it with an elastic and now it is a bubble. We used the elastics they use to put braids in horses tails and manes because they are small, stretchy, strong and cheap. You put in as many as you like and what ever sizes you like. You can also use felt balls. the felt balls are good if you want to leave them uncut. Marbles are to heavy for that.
Here they are all tied up.

Here they are cut. I cut the tops off , I cut x’s and star patterns and some I tuned inside out. if you cut more off you see more of the inside and you can stretch them flatter too.

You can see how the underside becomes the inside of the bubbles. These samples started out about 6×8 inches and the finished pieces are about 1.5 by 2.5 inches. They take up a lot of room. I only have 2 of them left my friends dog ate one. I think I will glue them to some leather and make broaches out of them. They are lots of fun to do. I made some wrist cuffs with this method and I will blog about them next week.
13 thoughts on “Felt Bubbles”
Yeah, these look really cool! I can see them as brooches. Great post, thanks.
Are the bubbles made just by drying in shape? You don’t do any felting or rubbing or anything once the marbles are in? And do the elastics stay in the finished piece or do you remove them? Thanks
Ann they look like so much fun to make and i love the way they finish up, very cool, i’d like to have a go at that soon 🙂
They’re lovely Ann – especially the star shapes. The green and red reminds me of coral plants.
Thanks Ladies. No more rubbing once the marbles are in, then you just let them dry. You do leave the elastics on. On some I have cut the elastic off and warped some invisible thread around because the elastics showed to much. The elastics I have are not as thin as the ones my friend had. but they were what I could get.
Way cool!!
These are lovely Ann. How’s the dog?? :0)
The dog is fine., we caught him before he swallowed most of it. he came and showed us. It was funny because he never bothers her stuff and a lot of it is accessible. He seemed to take a liking to me. He isn’t very old only about 1 1/2, so an adolescent crush?
They look great, Ann!
I’m glad the dog’s okay 🙂
thanks Zed. I am glad to he is a nice young dog.
I will try these bubbles today x
Great, have fun with it. Take some pictures and pop over to the felt and fiber forum to show us.
Ann, Don’t you have to rub the cuts to felt them, like when you remove a resist. Or because it’s completely fulled when you put in the marbles you don’t have to.
Because its completely fulled you don’t have to. It really needs to be well fulled for this technique. make a sample and give it a try. wrap the elastic around as many times as you can so its really tight. You will be surprised how much adding marbles shrinks it.