Decorate your DIY dryer balls with wool hearts
We use quite a few wool dryer balls these days. Having a zillion kids and all of their associated laundry kind of makes that happen.
I used to use brand name wool dryer balls, but now I just make my own since it is pretty simple and cheaper.
Wool can absorb around 30 percent of its weight in water. This reduces drying time by quite a bit if you use enough balls.
You want at least six dryer balls in your clothing load to really work well. Personally, I have about 40 balls floating around the house. We temporarily lose so many up shirt sleeves and the baby loves to throw them everywhere, so I have way more than needed.
The great thing about making your own, is you can personalize them. If my kids are going to use them as toys, I may as well make them look more like toys.
DIY Wool Dryer Balls with Wool Hearts
You need:
- Unwashed wool roving or batting
- An old pair of tights, pantyhose, or dress socks
- Rubber bands or string
- Colored wool felt
Use sharp fabric scissors to cut hearts out of your wool felt. Make the hearts about 60% bigger than you want for the final size.
Roll a bit of batting in your palm. Pull more batting from the bunch and wrap it around the ball. Keep it snug enough to hold together. Keep adding wool to your ball until it is about the size of a softball. It seems big now, but it will shrink up a ton.
Place your felt hearts on the balls. This felt is a merino wool blend. Since felt is of course, felted, it will not be raw. In order to get the felt to merge with the raw wool roving, you want your felt to be AT LEAST 30 percent wool. A typical polyester felt from your run of the mill craft store isn’t going to stick to the wool very well and your hearts will fall off.
Using your thumb to hold the hearts in place, put the balls inside the tights, separating each ball by tying the string or Rubber bands on the outer side of the tights. Your are tying between balls much like you would links of sausage.
Once all of your balls are securely and snuggly tied into the pantyhose/tights, they are ready for the washer and dryer.
When you are using raw batting or raw roving, one run through the washer and dryer can fully felt the wool, but a couple extra runs makes tighter balls. Keep in mind, the first run will make whatever laundry you wash them with smell like lanolin. You might want to do the first wash and dry alone. Wash them on hot to shrink and felt the wool.
These heart decorated DIY dryer balls are cute and almost look like decor for your laundry room. They also make a fun craft project to do with the kids. My one year old likes to collect them out of the laundry basket and stuff them down her pajamas until she looks all lumpy.