Felt Craft Projects for Kids
This week, we are looking at Crafting with Felt. Felt is a super versatile material and comes in so many bright colours it really should form part of any crafty stash. Felt is perfect for beginners learning to sew (whatever the age!) but has lots of other lovely felt project uses too! Felt crafts tend to be easy and often make great gifts as so bright and vibrant. You can make so many lovely diy Felt Toys and Felt Ornaments too. Come take a look at our fab felt tutorials and be inspired!
I tend to buy it in “scraps” – it tends to be cheaper and usually is just right for crafting with kids. Reserve buying “sheets of felt” for specific projects where you know you will need bigger pieces. Felt is great for the beginner crafter, but here are some things to keep in mind!
Top Tips:
- Use good quality materials (I am not a fan of super plastic-y stuff felt – wool felt is often much easier to work with, but maybe not as easy to cut)
- Use sharp scissors to make cutting easier (but obvioulsy under adult supervision)
- Have fun with different color schemes
- If doing a sewing project – embroidery floss is often a great complimentary thread to use with felt.. you can use regular thead too, depending on the final look and feel of your project
- Be adventurous!
General Felt Crafts for Kids
Let start with the craft ideas that require “no sewing”. Though don’t be put off by the sewing projects below, as they are genuinely easy and a great way to get people of all abilities giving sewing a go – a great life skill after all.. but enough of that here are our no sew felt craft tutorials to try out!
Wings for pine cone Fairies! Felt was perfect for this craft – as felt as a certain regidity that helps prop up the wins and makes them perfect for this kind of DIY. Also both felt and pine cones hold glue well, especially if using a good PVA glue or a hot glue gun!
Stone and Felt Pocket Pets. We used felt ears for Stone Bunnies and felt for decorating the bunnies matchbox house! This is a perfect example where felt scraps are great for kids felt craft projects!
Santa hats on our little Santa Corks and Snowman Cork Scarves – felt is great for small embellishments! We used felt in many ways again like this – penguin corks and bear corks show these as well!
Similarly, felt scraps are brilliant for combining with walnut ornament crafts and walnut crafts. This includes our Walnut Mice (you can race these using a marble) and popular walnut reindeer ornaments. But we also used felt for the walnut fox ornament ears, the walnut teddy bear ornaments, walnut owl ornaments and for the small details on the walnut penguin ornaments!! Perfect felt scrap busting crafts!
Make a no sew pencil roll! This does need whole felt sheets for this one. But you can use your felt scraps to embellish details on the outside of the roll. These can be add using a hot glue gun or with some basic hand stitches.
Here are some super easy Felt Pencil Toppers – you can make up a batch for Back to School or hand these out as monstrously cute Halloween Gifts!
We have made MANY Toilet Roll Crafts over the years and frequently used our felt scraps to add the embellishments and features to our Toilet Roll Characters. A great example of this our TP Roll Animal Zoo!
A simple “no sew” super duper quick Alice Band.
Bluebear Wood made some adorable pinwheel flower hair accessories. So sweet!
Felt Crafts – Sewing Projects
Whether you feel confident using a needle or not, I encourage you to give these projects a go and improve on your and the kids’ sewing skills. These are easy projects, using often basic shapes to get everyone sewing and making lovely things out of felt!
Felt Toys to Sew
Felt toys are fun to make and great for imaginative play. Tactile and cute!
First up some Felt Toys – Felt Strawberries – we do love a good felt strawberries. I made ours probably 3 years ago now and we still have them and STILL play with them!
And then of course there are the Felt donuts – ditto the strawberries, great to have in any toy kitchen or teddy bear’s picnic. Much loved toy in our house. Both the donut and the strawberry also feature in my book Red Ted Art, Cute and Easy Crafts for Kids (email me for copies, I have a small handful left!).
We have a couple of mini felt paper doll patterns – first up two different kinds of felt mermaid dolls. One for adults to make (with free pdf pattern) an done to combine with fabric and for kids to make (also with simple free pdf doll pattern).
Or make some pipecleaner people with simple felt dress! So sweet! Crafters of all ages will LOVE to make these! These make great little felt dolls for creative play, but can also be “used” a Pixie Doll Ornaments at Christmas. So cute!
Felt finger puppets are also an option – you can glue (hot glue probably best) or handsew your finger puppets. I have two examples – Minion Finger Puppets and the Kookaburra Puppets (with PDF pattern).
A super simple handdrawn free felt pattern for the Gruffalo. My friend made this one as a special keepsake for her daughter many moons ago.
Me and My Shadow made some adorable little felt mice – using circles as a basis, these are easy to make and a GREAT project for starting kids on sewing with real needles.
Felt Accessories to Make
Felt is also great for combining and snazzing up other fabrics. Here we had a go at upcycling school tshirts, jeans and school trousers into a sewing project for kids in elementary school. We have two free felt patterns – our Ted Felt Pattern and our Owl Felt Pattern.
Or how about some felt sleeping masks? We made these as a party craft activity at our giant tween sleepover for my daughter’s 13th party. They were so fun! I have three PDF animal mask patterns for a sloth, a piggy and a llama sleepmask! Though of course let the kids unleash their creativity and create their own designs! Such an adorable DIY that went down a treat!
Felt Christmas Ornaments and Projects
Why not decorate the Christmas Tree with some wonderful Felt Christmas Ornaments? Here is a selection from us over the years..
My daughter was inspired to make some Felt animal ornaments after we made the reindeer! She did these all herself and I thought they made great little gifts for the family. Especially as she could customise each animal for a family member’s favourite pet!
It is amazing what you can make using basic shapes. This Reindeer Ornament focusses on felt circles and I show you how to use a tin can to make your own pattern! I particularly like the colour combination for this, the white felt and pastel pink look lovely together!
Similarl, we have this uper Easy Felt Penguin Ornaments – again, the shapes are basic – felt circles, triangles nad hearts. This one also has printable worksheet instructions should you find that handy! (I actually made this “up” as a little birthday party bag gift for my daughter’s friends to take home and make!). Such and easy DIY in the run to Christmas!
How cute are these Christmas Gnome Ornaments? Really quick and easy to sew! They make lovely gifts too!
Cute felt heart ornaments filled with lavendar and teaching the running stitch. My kids where quite small when we first made these, so they are really precious! I think they make lovely Christmas Decorations, but would also be great zipper pulls or keychains near Valentine’s Day.
Alternatively go a step further and practice different handstitches – e.g. blanket stitch and over stitches with colourful embroidery threads for different effects. Cookie Cutters make GREAT templates for tracing so you can make any shape cookie cutter ornaments!
I used some old jumpers and turned them into “no knit” Christmas Stockings. Then personalised the Christmas stockings with felt embellishments.
Hope you have enjoyed this collection of DIY Felt Crafts and Projects! Happy crafting!
You may also like our collection of scrap yarn crafts and t-shirt yarn ideas – check out the full tutorials here: