Make a Felt Ball Garland the Easy Way

Don’t buy a felt ball garland when they are SO easy to make! Use felt balls and embroidery floss to add colorful and fun to an unexpected spot in your home. Scroll down to the bottom of the post to see a video of how it’s made.

Skills Required: Beginner. This felt ball garland is as easy as it gets, especially if you purchase the felt balls ready-made.

However, you can also make the balls using wool, and that process is quite easy as well. Even a child could make this garland (making it a good kids craft, especially for teens!).

The holiday decorations are put away and it’s that time of year when we start bringing in some cheery colors into our home to shake us of whatever winter blues we may be experiencing. This simple felt ball garland is a fun way to add some color and interest in an unexpected spot.

Felt Ball Garland

For this project, you will need felt balls (I used 50 0.78″ balls), two skeins of embroidery floss (I doubled up), and a needle. Embroidery floss comes in skeins that are 8.7 yards long, or 26.1 feet. These are the supplies you’ll need for one garland, and you can obviously tie two garlands together if you like.

Since I wanted a wide array of different felt colors, I found it more practical to buy my felt balls already made.

However, you can definitely make your own felt balls using roving, felt sheets, or yarn scraps. It’s more time consuming but it’s fun, especially when you can put the kids to work doing it! 😀

How to Make Felt Balls Using Roving

If you want to make your own felt balls, the process is called “wet felting.” You’ll need to purchase wool roving. Besides the wool, you’ll need hot water and dish soap.

The basic process is to dip pieces of wool roving into warm, sudsy water and then shape into balls. Then you’ll let them dry overnight before creating your felt ball garland (you can get more details here on the process).

Using Felt Sheets or Yarn Scraps

You can also make your balls using felt sheets (or scraps of felt sheets), or yarn scraps. The process is very similar to using the roving, but you’re going to have to work the material a little more. You’ll still want to use wool felt or wool yarn.

There will be quite a bit of manipulation of your felt or yarn as you massage it in the water and soap mixture. Having said that that, the colorful effects you can get when using scraps are very unique, so it’s something to consider. No two balls will be the same, and it’s very colorful!

How Many Balls?

How many wool balls will you get out of a 1/2 oz. package of wool roving? Approximately 12 – 16 at about a 1/2″ diameter. It varies greatly depending on how tightly you squeeze the balls, etc.

I recommend estimating conservatively so that you have wool roving to make your balls. Also you can’t lose if you have too many, but it can look sparse if you don’t have enough.

DIY Felt Garland

Start by arranging your felt balls in the order you will string them. I kept in mind what colors worked well next to each other, and also spaced out the different colors somewhat evenly across my strand.

I doubled up on my embroidery floss and strung the balls on using a needle. The needle went through easily and without any issues.

After all my felt balls were strung, I started spacing them out keeping in mind how long I wanted my finished garland to be.

I had initially planned on making a knot before and after each ball, but found the balls stay put easily and securely wherever they are placed. I am very glad I didn’t spend any time on this extra step and it gave me greater flexibility to experiment with the spacing.

Now here comes the fun part of deciding just where to display your felt ball garland!

How to Hang Your Felt Ball Garland

You can drape your DIY garland over just about anything. I highly recommend doing it the way I’ve shown in the pictures below. If you don’t have anything to hang the garland on, just use pins to push it into the wall. You won’t see them (use a hammer to tap them in).

Swag your DIY garland about every three to five feet for a little interest. You never want to hang it straight. The swag (tacking it up at various points) will integrate into your decor better. Trust me!

I chose to drape my felt balls over a map.

Or you could try draping them over some white curtains. No pins were required for either method!

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Are you ready for a video that will show you how to make this fun DIY garland? Check it out:

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If you need another idea for a garland, check out this budget friendly fall garland below. Wouldn’t it look fantastic with some of these balls in fall colors?