I made sets of these felted balls a few years ago as presents for friends and family members. Put them together in sets – half in one color, half in another, with a smaller different colored felted ball and you have an indoor bocce ball set.
Start with felted wool sweaters. To felt sweaters, take 100% wool sweaters and wash them on hot and then dry them on hot. Cut felted sweaters into strips and rectangles.
Begin fashioning the rectangles and strips into lumpy spheres. Use the strips to tie knots to hold it all in place. It’s ok if the spheres look really lumpy and messy – we will fix that soon enough.
Once you have the approximate shape and size for your sphere, wrap the felted core in roving wool or 100% wool yarn. Wrap until the felted core is completely covered, making sure to wrap in several different directions around the sphere.
Here are my 5 wrapped orbs. A few pockets of felted core showing are ok, however they will most likely show up in the finished product, so if you want to avoid that, wrap completely.
Carefully slip the wrapped orbs into OLD socks, push down to the toe gently. Twist the sock closed and secure tightly with a twist tie.
Wash in hot water and a small amount of detergent. You can also boil them in a large stockpot for 10 – 15 minutes for a quicker felt. However, only boil like colors with like colors as the dyes tend to run and bleed in boiling water.
Greta immediately loved these felted balls – grabbing for them while I tried to photograph them.
This is a fun and easy day project that requires minimal planning, prep, time, or skill. The nice thing about these felted balls is that if they should happen to get funky just throw them in the wash and dry them. They are already felted, so no need to worry about shrinking any more. Some people even add scented oil to these and turn them into natural dryer balls/sheets.
Bluebird Hill Art 