I’ve done a little bit before with felting. Last spring, I made a flower corsage and decorated an Easter bonnet. I was recently inspired to pick up my needle-felting tool again when I saw a demonstration using an applique mold. Making the shapes looked like loads of fun! However, I did not have any of the applique molds at my disposal. Being the innovative girl I am, I thought that maybe I could use a cookie cutter to act as the outline for my design. It doesn’t hurt to try!

First, I selected a couple of cookie cutters from my supply with simple shapes and that weren’t too big. For my demonstration pictures, I am using a basic tulip cutter made out of plastic.  Then, I placed a scrap piece of felt on top of my felting needle mat. I didn’t want to use something nice such as a sweater or handbag in case this experiment didn’t work out!  Then, I selected some wool roving to fill in the flower area.

This is the fun part!  All you do is poke the wool roving through the base fabric with your needle felting tool. It is easy and amazingly satisfying!  I made sure to go around the edges very carefully before removing the cookie cutter to see how it was going.  So far, so good!

Next, I filled in the stem and leaf portion with some teal roving.  The colors you use are completely optional, of course.  These just happened to be the ones I liked that I had on hand.  The hardest part of this step was the stem area.  I simply removed one of the needles from the tool and used that to poke the roving through in the tiny area.

I am quite pleased with the final product!  It’s not exactly like how the molds work but it’s still a neat and fun way to do some simple designs.  After the tulip, I used a Mickey Mouse cookie cutter and it was even easier since there were no really skinny areas to work through.  I am definitely going to do Mickey Mouse on my daughter’s sweater!

For even more project ideas involving needle felting and some basic tips and instructions, check out the book Easy Needle Felting: