How to make felt pointy hats! Perfect for witch/wizard/pixie/Gandalf costumes

[queenholly]

These hats are easy to make but pretty time consuming. They use wet felting (no knitting required!). If you haven’t done any felting before, I would suggest you first try making a flat piece of felt to get the hang of the technique, but nothing in this tutorial would be difficult for beginners. Next time I make one I’ll take some in progress pics 







What you will need

• Wool felt roving in colour/s of your choice
• Tule or netting fabric – approx x2 fat ¼ size (I used some recycled mosquito net material)
• A bar of soap (make sure you don’t hate the smell of it)
• An old baking tray with deep sides (larger the better)
• Access to hot and cold water
• Something round and bigger than your head – I use an old netball propped upright, but I would guess than any type of ball or upside down bowl would work. Remember to allow heaps of room for shrinkage.

How to do it!

1.   First, set up your felting tray. Your ball or bowl needs to go in your tray and not fall over. Using a small bowl to support your ball is a good idea.
2.   Drape one of your netting squares over your ball
3.   Pinch out long loose strands of wool roving and drape them over the top half only of the ball. The fibres should go in all directions. Build up extra fibre around the brim area and plenty on top of the ball in a cone/pointy shape.
4.   Look ok yet? Check whether you have enough fibre. When you gently put one hand under the netting and press your other hand against it through the wool, it should feel like a thick layer of material. Also check that there are no patches that are lots thinner than the rest.
5.   Ready? Yay! Felting time! Gently drape your second piece of netting around the hat (not over the top cos you will squish your pointy bit!). Gently drizzle hot water over the hat until it is wet through.
6.   Massage gently with the bar of soap until the hat is soapy all over and cool enough to massage by hand. Don’t burn yourself!
7.   Massage the top layer until it holds together well, then pull off the ball and massage the inside layer too.
8.   When the hat holds together well and you are happy with the shape, fold the hat into a ball shape and put on a square of netting. Grab each corner of the netting so you have a bundle of hat. Squeeze some of the soapsuds and excess water out, then drench in hot water until it is no longer soapy. Give it a bit of a shake to get some water out, then drench in cold water until it is cool all the way through. Do another couple of hot/cold drenches then see how the hat looks. If you aren’t happy, try doing a bit of massaging in warm soapy water and you might be able to fix things.
9.   Squeeze as much moisture out as possible
10.   The hat will take ages to dry. Leave it somewhere warm and dry with some support inside to keep the shape (eg scrunched up netting). I would imagine using a hair dryer would speed things up, and if you are brave maybe the dryer but I haven’t tried this.
11.   Post pictures! I wanna see!

[Evilkittieninja]

This reminds me of the sorting hat, and that makes my heart happy

Awesome job!

[queenholly]

This reminds me of the sorting hat, and that makes my heart happy

Awesome job!

Thank you! You make my heart happy!
I should totally do a sorting hat one next!

[Abbeeroad]

A-mazing!  I love it!!!  Great job -- keep um comin!

[allat]

God!  I want to make a hat like that!  It's booootiful!

About how much wool rove would I need?   And is there an online store?

Thanks.