I have a chronic case of "I can make that."
Body scrub? I can make that. Cloth napkins? I can make that. Vanilla extract? I can make that.
I especially like to set out to "make that" when I have other things I should do but don't want to do. I sorted through my pants and put the ones that don't fit right now aside, that felt like enough productivity to justify doing something that has very little value to the overall making of our home. It does have value in that it is bright and cheerful and brings joy.
Over the years I have aged into the ability to make a somewhat reasonable call about whether something is worth making or if I should just buy it. Like, I bake a lot of bread, but I don't bake all of the bread we eat, you know?
Anyway. One of the prerequisites for being an "I can make that" person is having a lot of miscellaneous supplies and tchotchkes on hand all the time. Enter... the balls. I own a lot of little felt balls. I love needle felting, but I'm not going to needle felt a bunch of little balls. Honestly, to just buy little felted balls instead of driving myself around the bend stabbing roving into spheres night after night is some real personal growth. It's so mature of me. If you want to get felt balls, you can order them in a variety of sizes, these are approximately half an inch in diameter. Google can help you find what you seek.
This past winter, I decided to make some fun wintertime decorations for the house from little felt balls. I bought a lot of them. I piled them on the table, I turned them into garlands and little "berry" clusters. I might glue them into acorn caps eventually. I legitimately love them. What's not to love? They're colorful and adorable and I didn't have to make them myself.
When spring sprung, I got ready to put away all of my balls for whatever the next project would be. Then I went to the store. Specifically, I went to Trader Joe's. In the section of household goods, I saw a trivet made of little felted balls just like the ones I have in my house!
Internal dialogue:
me: "Oh my gosh, I love this little trivet made of little felted balls!!"
me again: "You know you own roughly a million little felted balls, right?"
me: "But this is already made."
me again: "But I can make that."
me: "Yeah, I can make that."
And so, the part of me that fancies herself an industrious creator left without a trivet and with a vague plan. Namely: turn some balls into a trivet.
Here's a thing I love about needle felting: I never use a pattern. I just start stabbing something until it turns into something else. I'm just not into planning projects so much as I am into doing them. Which means that I often have false starts before I have success.
I began by laying out felt balls in the pattern I wanted, which is sort of a gradient tetris deal. (soundtrack to this part: me singing Radiation Vibe by Fountains of Wayne as "gradiation vibe.") Then, because I was halfassedly flying by the seat of my pajama pants – I grabbed my felting needles and started stabbing.
It did not take long for me to recognize that trying to felt these balls to each other from the sides was going to be, in technical terms, a frustrating mess. I just don't have the patience for felting a thing to a thing for hours. Making a felted mushroom or a kitchen witch? Yes. Felting ball to ball? No.
Next plan – I took some roving and started to felt them together from the bottom. Which worked but would have taken so very long to really work and didn't actually solve the attaching balls from the side problem. The felting would set them into the roving, but they'd still be flopping around in a distinctly untrivetlike manner.
If I had fabric glue, I probably would have used it. But I don't have fabric glue and I didn't want to run out to get some. I have super glue, duct tape and a hot glue gun. Super glue makes fabric and fiber crunchy and I am bound to get it on parts of the balls that I don't actually plan to stick to anything. And, as I am no longer in kindergarten, that is not charming. Duct tape is a direction I am always willing to go, but still has the floppy problem. Hot glue is great, but this is a trivet, I'm not going to put hot glue into a project literally destined to have hot things set on it. That's how a trivet ends up glued to a tablecloth. After running through my adhesion options, I landed where I often do, my sewing box. I always have thread and I know how to use it even if my aging eyes are betraying my ability to speedily thread a needle. My readers were in the other room, why bother to get them when I can swear and struggle?
So here was my final process if you also have a bunch of balls laying around.
What you need:
felt balls, I used 90 felt balls (10 rows of 9)
neutral thread
sewing needle
Optional:
wool roving
felting needle
soft sheet felt
Lay out your felt balls in the pattern you would like for your final trivet.
Thread one row or column of balls onto a piece of thread and tie off.
Repeat for all of the rows or columns that run parallel to the first. You'll have some adorable caterpillar adjacent mini garlandy things.
Now string the first ball on each row to the next. Essentially, you are doing the same thing you did with the individual balls now with the connected ones.
Halfway through this process, pick up your half finished trivet and shake it so that the unconnected parts of the strand dance. This step is optional, but fun.
Continue until all of the balls have been connected. (That's what she said?)
You can be done now, if you want to be. You may want to reinforce the connections with fabric glue or more thread.
At this point, two of my balls fell off of the ends of rows. (Mind out of the gutter, please!) I went ahead and resewed them but I decided that, in the interest of stability, I should add some sort of a backing.
I found a scrap of soft sheet felt in one of my random stuff drawers. I needle felted it to the bottom of the trivet with a layer of roving on top of it. In other words, the sheet felt is sandwiched between the balls and the roving. Because the sheet felt and the balls are tightly felted, the roving helps to secure them together. Also, I felt like it was a good idea. (get it? GET IT??)
Even though I own finger guards so I don't stab myself when I needle felt, I did not wear them and did stab myself pretty hard, twice. But I managed not to bleed on the project, so that's a win. Wear your finger guards.
Trim your loose thread ends. Unless you're working with monochrome materials, you will probably be able to see little knots at the ends of your rows. If that bothers you, you could run the needle into the bottom of the balls and see if that works. But, for me, this is good enough and it's fine.
This is an easy afternoon project if you already have little felted wool balls on hand. The ones at the store are a tighter grid, which I am certain I could also do but felt like too much work and too much time. If that is the look you want, I would imagine that squishing the balls right up on each other and felting them would work. Or, you know, glue. Or heavy duty thread pulled very tightly. I know, as is, this seems like a whole-assed project, but I assure you that it looks much more assed than it is.
If you do try and make one of these, I'd love to hear about it. If you use a different method, tell us! But remember, if you don't feel like making the thing, there is never, not ever, any shame in buying it. And if someone asks if you made it, well, you made the money to buy it so... yes.