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Needle Felted Acorns Tutorial

Needle felting is one of those simple crafts that I love to pull out from time to time.  These needle-felted acorns were the first needle felting project I did on my own, and I am always so happy when I unpack the ‘fall’ box and spy these little guys. They are a great fall adornment in a bowl on their own, wired to a branch, or as lovely needle-felted acorn napkin rings for a fall table. 

Here’s What You Will Need to Make Needle Felted Acorns and  Needle Felted Acorn Napkin Rings/Wraps:

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  • Wool Merino Roving.  I’ve easily made 30 acorns from this 20 gram bag and still have some left.  A little goes a long way.  I also had some brown left over from the making of Rudolf, and I incorporated some brown into a few of the acorns for some variations.
  • Felting Needles. These are the kind I used, you really only need the 38 for these acorns.  If I do more felting, I may get one of these as the needles can get hard to hold onto after a while, especially for my mile-long fingers.
  • Felting Pad.  No way around this, those needles are sharp and you need something to absorb the point.
  • Acorn Caps.  My sweet sister-in-law and her family collected some for me in the mountains of NC, but I also purchase some bigger ones online.  Etsy has some here.
  • Brown Florist Wire,if wrapping the acorns onto a branch or for the napkin rings.
  • Brown Rustic Wire 70′ 18 Gauge, if making napkins ‘rings’ from the acorns.
  • Drill with 3/32 (2.38mm) drill bit
  • Glue

Here’s How You Will Make Your Needle Felted Acorns and Napkin Rings:

  • If you are going to want to wire the needle felted acorns on to a branch or for the Needle Felted Acorn Napkin Rings, drill holes in your acorn caps, as close to the stem end as possible and set them aside.Illustrated Instructions to make needle felted acorns and needle felted acorn napkin rings. Perfect for your Fall and Thanksgiving table.
  • Cut your florist wire into 3-4 inch segments and set them aside.
  • Gently pull some fibers out of your wad of wool.  The wool can’t really be ‘ripped’; it’s best to just pull the fibers out.  You won’t need much and it’s best to start too small than too big; you won’t be able to really reduce the size once you start felting it.  The process of felting compacts the fibers.

The beginning of my little GIF below gives you a sense of how much wool you need for one needle felted acorn. Two things to remember when figuring out the amount of wool you need…I have really long fingers so your proportions will be different and I actually made this one a tad too big.

  • Roll your yarn into a little sausage
  • Start poking it with your needle.  The felting needles have little ridges which catch the fibers and compact them.  Regular needles will not work.
  • Watch your fingers!!!  After making these needle felted acorns, I purchased  leather finger guards…worth their weight in gold!
  • You can start out holding two needles to make the beginning process go quicker.  The first 50 or so pokes should be all over, just really to compact the fibers.
  • Once you’ve got them compacted a a bit, you can start shaping.  I made my acorn flat on top and rounded on the bottom. That just required me to hold the acorn with the top side up and poke down, shaping it as I went.  top of acorn
  • You’ll do the same thing on the bottom, just not making it so flat.  Go around the sides of the bottom, pushing in the fibers as opposed to primarily coming down from the top.
  • You’ll notice as you go along, the needle will start getting a little resistance.  That will be the fibers compacting.
  • Just keep going around all sides of your acorn.  If it’s still fuzzy, you need to keep felting it.  You can make it smaller by just keep going at it
  • Start to finish, each needle felted acorn takes about 5-7 minutes.

If you want to add a wire to your acorn:

  • Once you have the needle felted acorns the size you want it, if you want to attach wire to the acorns then take your felting needle and make a hole in the top by going in and out of the same hole several times, while at the same time pushing the needle against the hole to widen it.  Go down about 3/4 of the way through you acorn…don’t go out the bottom.Wire going into acorn. Illustrated Instructions to make needle felted acorns and needle felted acorn napkin rings. Perfect for your Fall and Thanksgiving table.
  • Put a dab of glue on one end of your florist wire and jam it into the hole you made.
Putting the cap on acorn. Illustrated Instructions to make needle felted acorns and needle felted acorn napkin rings. Perfect for your Fall and Thanksgiving table.
  • Drop the acorn cap over the other end of the wire and secure the cap to the acorn with a dab of glue.
finished acorn
  • For my Needle Felted Acorn Napkin Rings, I made 3 wired acorns for each ring.  Once you have your stash of wired acorns, it’s time to attach them to your rustic wire.  I cut my wire about 1 foot long and added a dab of clear drying glue to each end to prevent the fiber from unraveling.Illustrated Instructions to make needle felted acorns and needle felted acorn napkin rings. Perfect for your Fall and Thanksgiving table.
  • I merely wrapped the acorns about 3-3.5″ in from one end
  • When I wrapped the Needle Felted Acorn Napkin Rings around the napkin, I arranged the acorns so they were all laying flat.Illustrated Instructions to make needle felted acorns and needle felted acorn napkin rings. Perfect for your Fall and Thanksgiving table.

Linen Napkins, Juliska Jardins du Monde Dessert Plate

So that’s that…needle felted acorns to fill a bowl or Needle Felted Acorn Napkin Rings for your fall or Thanksgiving table.  You can see how I fringed my linen tablecloth and napkins here.

If you’ve been bitten by the needle felting but, try your hand at these easy needle felted pumpkins.

Instructions on how to make needle felted pumpkins
Illustrated Instructions to make needle felted acorns and needle felted acorn napkin rings. Perfect for your Fall and Thanksgiving table.

Bookmark this page or pin the following image if you’d like to refer back to this Needle Felted Acorns or Needle Felted Acorn Napkin Rings project at a later date.

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Until next time…

Hugs,


Bowl of needle-felted acorns

 

Thanks for making my day by SHARING!!

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37 Comments

      1. They are so perfect for the season! Thanks for sharing at our Creative Spark party—I’m featuring these this week. I hope you’ll stop by to link up again and grab a “Featured” button. The party starts at 6am EST tomorrow 🙂 Have a wonderful week!

        1. Thanks Emily, I’m giddy about being featured this week and I’ll be back to party again tomorrow. Really appreciate the work you put in being a co-host! Lynn?

    1. Thanks so much for your kind words Rita. I’m pretty tickled with them myself to be honest. And so glad that the tutorial was helpful! Have a great day. LYnn

    1. Hi Katrin, thanks for your kind comments and for visiting today. Just came from your site, it’s quite lovely. I see you’re from Germany. We were in Germany and Austria this summer which is where I got the inspiration for the needle felting. Many of the hotels we stayed in had wool/felt decorations and that’s what got me thinking. I’d like to do some more of it in the near future. There were several things I have tried to incorporate into our home life back here in the US from our visit this summer. In fact, I wrote a blog post about it https://www.nourishandnestle.com/6-lifestyle-ideas-i-brought-home-from-europe/

  1. These are so very pretty. And your tutorial was very detailed and helpful. I will have to go looking for some acorns, and if I find them I will definitely give it a try. They add such a warm and elegant touch to the tablescape.

    1. Thanks so much Mary. Surely there are acorns in the Boondocks!!! And Congratulations on your Blogger Award!

      Thanks for visiting, Lynn

  2. These are about the sweetest things I have ever seen, they are truly adorable! Am pinning 1st then ordering a felting needle to try and copy 🙂

  3. These are so pretty! I am so amazed at the things that can be made from needle felting. Like your pretty acorns, miniature animals etc. if I didn’t already have enough hobbies going on I would give felting a try.

    1. Thanks Linda…I get you about Hobby overload! Got to know when to say when, which is hard to do sometimes. Enjoy your other hobbies and thanks for stopping by.

  4. So beautiful! Perfect for January tablescape. I don’t know why, but in January I’m all about whites.I love colors all year round, but January is my color free zone 🙂 Definitely pinning.

    1. Good morning Mila and thanks for stopping by for a visit. I’m so glad you put the January idea in my head! I become very focused in my thinking and all along just saw these as fall decor, but your comment has really made me see how pretty they’d be on an all white table, maybe with some Mercury glass!!
      Got to think outside of the box!!!
      Thanks and have a great day!
      Lynn

  5. Lynn, I was so impressed with your calligraphy placecards and am just as impressed with these lovely felted acorns. They look so cool! I never would have thought they were handmade, they are perfect, as if a machine created them. I love how you attached them to the branch and on the napkins. What a gorgeous table setting! Do you have room for one more at your holiday table? I could set and enjoy this, and I’m sure the food going on the table will be just as gorgeous!

    1. Ah Nikki, now you’re getting at my soft spot…I really do love these little acorns. And so easy to do. It’s nice when the concept actually gets carried out to fruition…these turned out just as I had imagined. Thanks again for being the hostess with the mostest!

  6. I have wanted to try my hand at felting for some time now. These are absolutely darling! Thanks for sharing the instructions! Don’t have time this year, but hopefully next. I have a nice stash of acorns gathered over the years. Hopped over from One More Time party. Happy to be a new follower! I have a link party, Share Your Cup Thursday. It’s about sharing the things that make you happy. I’d love if you shared some time!
    hugs,
    Jann

    1. Hi Jann, thanks for visiting today and for your kind comments on my acorns…I do love them! Hope you give them a try when time allows. One of my blog friends noted how great they’d be for a winter tablecloth after the holidays…just a thought!
      Thanks for the party invite…I’ll be there! Got to love anything that shares happy!!
      Have a great day, Lynn

    1. Oh Michele, thanks for your very sweet compliment. It is much appreciated. And I enjoyed browsing your site and reading about your recent luncheon and seeing your beautiful Thanksgiving setting. Can you believe it’s literally right around the corner!?
      Thanks for visiting and have a good week.

      Lynn

    1. Hi Marie, thanks for visiting and thanks for you kind comments. I’m pretty tickled with the acorns as well! BTW, visited your site today and really dig your wood coasters. Putting them on my to do list…it’ll be good for me to find something to do using power tools! One of my many new year resolutions is to spend more time in the garage.
      Thanks again for visiting, Lynn

  7. Hi Lynn, I just loved these so much that I had to feature them at Share Your Cup this week. Thanks for joining!
    hugs,
    Jann

    1. Aw gee Minerva, thanks so much! You can’t have too many soulmates! And I really appreciate you being there to read what I put out and for taking the time to comment. So very much appreciated.
      Many Hugs, Lynn

  8. Oh how adorable the acorn and pumpkin are!! My dear friend had just started doing felting and is loving it! I will send her the link for the tutorials. She needs to join your newsletter anyway! 🙂

    1. Thanks Leslie! You’re hired as my new PR agency!!! Thanks for sharing and hope your friend finds it helpful

      Have a fantastic day!

      Hugs,

      Lynn

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