Needle Felted Ghost Tutorial - Finally!

'Tis the night when up in the sky

You might see a ghost come gliding by,

Fear not, he is friendly you see

For once he was human, like you and like me!

So finally - here is a very easy tutorial on making some cute Halloween ghosts to hang in your home - or outside on a special Halloween tree! You will only need a few supplies:

~ white wool batting or wool roving
~ a tiny bit of black wool roving
~ a needle felting foam pad (or a thick sponge works, too!)
~ a needle felting needle

I wanted to show the difference between different batches of wool batting. This is from a newer batch and it is great for stuffing dolls. It is very thick and has tiny balls of wool in it...


Whereas this batch below is more like roving, but I also bought it as wool batting. Batting is cheaper than roving, so it's great to use it when you can. If it is too chunky, you can always try to felt it a bit and then pull it apart and I will have more of a long-like sheet which works well for these ghosts.

Step 1: Make a ball.

Place a section of the wool on your mat and start to roll it up, rolling the sides into the center of the ball and then needle felt into place.

Hint: if you'd like to involve your children, this would be a great part for them to do, but instead of needle felting this ball, you would have them wet felt it. There are many tutorials available online that can show you how! This one is quick and to the point and explains how to do it around an existing ball or with just wool (what I recommend for waldorf).

Step 2: Cover the ball with a tuft of wool.

Place it inside of the tuft of wool and hold your fingers around it and give it a few good pokes with the needle so that the outside layer felts to the ball inside. You don't have to overdo it - this ghost looks best airy so less is better - plus the eyes will keep it in place : )

Don't be afraid to really play with the wool and arrange it so that it looks right. Needlefelting and wool is very forgiving so if you make a mistake, you can usually fix it without having to start over!

Once I have the basic shape, I like to give a few punches with my clover needle - you can just use a single needle - this one is just faster as there are five needles in the punch.

Step 3: Put on the eyes (optional).

Waldorf is known for its simplicity, so by all means - if you don't want any facial features on your ghost, skip this part. Just make sure that the ball is securetly needle felted inside the outer layer. If you end up attaching string (covered below) that will hold your ghost together, too!

You only need a tiny bit of black wool. Separate two equal parts and simply roll the wool in your fingers to form a tiny ball.

Then place the ball in the position you'd like the first eye to be.

And needle felt it into place. Be sure you don't push the needle down too hard or it will go through the ghost and you might pull some of the black to the other side so it actually shows on the back of the ghost. The barbs are at the top of the needle, so you never have to go all the way down for it to grab the fibers and felt.

And voila! You're done! Wasn't that easy!

Now, if you'd like to hang them, it's pretty self explanatory, but just in case, here's what I do. Mine will go outside on a tree, so I've decided to use black thread which will be hidden when it's dark outside, giving the ghosts a floaty feel. Double thread it.

Go in from the inside/bottom of the ghost (where you made your initial ball).

Come up through the top and go back down again.

When you come out the bottom, thread the needle through the initial stitch, so that it's actually knotted onto your original stitch. This will help it from sliding off if it gets pulled in the wind or if a child grabs at it.

Then head back up through the bottom to the top once more.

It should look like this.

And then cut the loop and knot it at the appropriate height, cutting off the excess thread.

Now he's ready to fly!

There's no limit to where you can hang them! Whether it's somewhere inside the house, on a tree, or even (one of my fav's) wind it/tie it onto a long stick that your child treasures and they can fly their own ghostie around!

They will twist and turn and spin at even the slightest change of air pressure!

These would make great party favors for anyone having a Halloween birthday party or a class party!

Can't wait to see them when it gets dark out! Until then - happy early Halloween!

Hope you enjoyed!

Language Arts Block II: Vowels... Letter E & Felting Eggs

E is for Eagle that soars in the sky...

The short "E" was covered on Thurs and we did the eurythmy verses from Kristie's "Sixth Sense Language" ebook. She has a cute little Aesop fable in there called, "Everyone Agrees to Peace" and the girls acted it out with little characters.

For the Fairytale, I told them Grimm's "Bremen Town Musicians". Charley had gotten the set for Christmas this year, so it came in very handy! We used our eco-twig house handmade by Syrendell.

We looked at our pictures in our two alphabet books and went outside to walk the forms. Since the girls hadn't walked "A" (just their rabbits did), they walked both forms and then we made the shapes of A and E.

For "A", we used acorns.




For "E" we used sea shells.

In our main lesson books, we drew a picture of eagle eggs, which emphasized both long and short "E".

On Friday, we covered the long "e" sound. I read to them a story by Clara Dillingham Pierson called, "The Bees and the Kingbird" from her book, "Among the Forest People".

We then decided to focus on eggs with Easter just around the corner. We thought it would be fun to wet felt some eggs so they picked some wool colors...

And I grabbed some wool roving scraps...


And we headed outside with our bowl of very warm water and dish soap.


As a needle-felter, I do prefer that to wet felting, but it was a fun experience and the nice thing is you don't have to worry about little fingers getting poked!

You basically fluff up a piece of wool, keeping in mind that as it sets, it shrinks (about twice the size). Put dish soap in the warm water and soap it up, then immerse the "egg" in the bowl. Bring it out and roll it over and over in your hands, working the soggy mush into a tight egg ball.


When it starts to cool, dip it in the warm water again and keep working at it. It takes a bit of time, but eventually the fibers bind and felt and you end up with a small egg (or ball if you shape it into a ball instead).


Afterwards, rinse the soap out under running water (sink works best) and leave in the sun to dry on a bakers rack.

We also wanted to try making hollow eggs that we could cut open to put a special needle felted chickie in, so for that, get some plastic eggs that open, layer about 4-5 layers of wool around it and stick it in the hot soapy water. Work it gently with your fingers to bind the fibers.


Once the soft felting is done, you could rub it on a washing board. I didn't like this process so I went back to soft felting until I felt it was nice and tight.


And now I'm waiting for them to dry before cutting them open with scissors, removing the plastic and placing a surprise inside. It takes quite a bit of time to dry wet felt. I've heard of people sticking balls in the dryer to speed the process, but since these ones have plastic underneath, I'm just going to be patient. But if you plan to make these for Easter, start early so you have enough time for it to dry and decorate. You can wet felt designs on during the process before you dry them, or you can add your wool with a needle afterwards.

Another egg project is in the works and we had to solicit Daddy's help!


The girls and I don't eat eggs, so we waited until Daddy was ready for some good ole scrambled eggs.

If you want to save your eggs, you can blow the yolk and whites out. I won't fudge the truth, blowing out eggs is a pain and is pretty hard (so Daddy goes on duty for that)...pierce a hole on each end using a pin (a thimble also helps to push it through). Usually you make the blower hole slightly larger, for some reason. I really didn't take the time to look up why, but my mother always did it this way.


The put it to your lips and blow!


Once you're done, rinse the eggs out, inside and out and leave to dry.


We'll be making some Ukrainian eggs this week. I also have another egg project to share later this week, as well, so the egg section is TBC!