What you need for felting

• a large towel to work on

• white wool fleece

• a bowl of warm water

• pure soap (laundry soap)

• a bowl of clean cold water

Felting with the Little Friends

Step 1: Let's start with the soap

First, put some pure soap into the warm water and dissolve it there. Then dry your hands thoroughly, because the wool fleece must not get wet! Now take a small piece of wool fleece and shape it into a loose ball:

Step 2: Moisten the football

Now moisten this ball with some soapy water …

Step 3: Form a perfect ball

… and roll it gently back and forth between your hands.

Step 4: Stabilise with wool fleece

Keep moistening it with soapy water as you go. The firmer the ball becomes, the more firmly you should roll it between your hands. When the small ball is nice and firm, add a new layer of wool fleece around it, …

Step 5: Rinse with water

… moisten it and continue rolling the ball. When the ball is really nice and firm, wash it in clean water, squeeze it well, …

Progress: The ball is already finished!

… and let it dry thoroughly. Once it is dry, it's ready.

Step 6: The finishing touch

For Matze the ball should have a diameter of about 2 cm. Of course you can also felt larger balls in bright colours for yourselves in the same way by gradually adding more and more layers of wool fleece around the ball. If you want to give the ball the characteristic "football look", you can draw small pentagons on the ball (e.g. with a black laundry marker); it will then look like the picture on the left.

Final result

And now you've reached the end of the felting tutorial. Great result, isn't it? Now the big football tournament can begin!