Making fun dryer balls

So have you ever used dryer balls?  Yeah me neither.

I had heard of them, but had never used them and certainly had never made any. Well recently I had a friend add them to her baby shower list because she was doing cloth diapering...perfect time to try!  I found this post from Petals to Picots on a few different ways to make them.  Ok...seems like something I could do and I have the supplies on hand!  WIN!

So here we go.

Supplies:
wool yarn
hosiery
wool roving
needle felting needle
scissors
crochet hook or yarn needle

I started off with some Fisherman's Wool and made little balls.  I made mine bigger than a ping pong ball but not as big as a tennis ball.


Use your crochet hook to secure your ends inside the ball.

You could stop and felt the ball at this point, but I have read that the yarn balls will fall apart after a while.  We don't want that!  So I took mine a little further and needle felted some roving on to the yarn ball.

Take some of your roving and place it around the yarn ball and then use the needle felting needle to keep it in place.

I had plans to decorate mine further so I kept mine solid colored at this point.

Next we are going to put them in the hosiery.  I used an old dress sock but only because the panty hose that I had was in too good of shape to ruin.  Carefully place them in the hosiery and separate them by putting a knot in between each one and making sure that there are

tightly in there.
Throw them in your washer with some towels and complete a cycle in hot water.  One round should be enough.
I took mine out of the hosiery and put them through the dryer for a cycle.

I had a picture of them plain but apparently my Blogger app on my phone ate it. :(  So you'll just have to use your imagination. 

So next I took my felted dryer balls and embellished away!  I needle felted the details on to them using bits of fiber and wool yarn.  When I was satisfied, I put them through another felting cycle in the washer and followed up with another dryer cycle. 

I think they turned out great and have plans for some of my own!