How to Cut Felt for Projects and Patterns
Learn how to cut felt and felt patterns in different ways for the perfect finished project.
Felt is a go-to fabric for sewists around the world. Soft, lightweight, and available in many brilliant colors, felt is perfect for applique accents and inexpensive fabric crafts. Whatever you’re using felt for, it’s important to know how to cut it!
Learn how to cut pristine felt patterns in minutes with this comprehensive tutorial. In this guide, How to Cut Felt for Projects and Patterns, you’ll find everything you need to make felt patterns look both polished and professional.
By the end, you’ll know what die-cutting is, how to use freezer paper, and other neat tricks for cutting out an immaculate felt piece.
First, this guide goes over what tools you need to cut felt properly. Then we will explain how to cut felt using the most common technique, scissors. Felt is easy to work with but also easy to miscut, shape, and sew improperly. That's why resources like this will help you create the perfect piece the first time.
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Felt Cutting Tools
Before you embark on your felt-cutting adventures, it’s important to discuss felt cutting tools. There are two primary tools used for cutting felt:
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Scissors
Though there are several tools you can use to cut felt, most sewists opt to use scissors or fabric shears to do the job. Before you begin any sewing project, make sure that the scissors you are using to cut fabric are sharp. Though you don’t always need specific tools to cut felt, it is important that whatever blade you do use is sharp enough to cleanly snip through the fabric.
This way, you won’t get any jagged lines on your pattern. Also, when you cut, it’s important that you don’t try to glide your scissors through the felt. This won’t work and will probably wear the edges of your felt pattern. Instead, try cutting in a measured and slow rhythm. This will ensure that you don’t make messy or imprecise cut-outs. -
Die Cutting Machine
A die cutting machine uses sharp template designs, called dies, and a roller to cut out patterns in materials. The material is fed between the rollers and dies, usually with a hand crank, and the dies cut through the material like cookie cutters.
Crafter and writer Esme Clemo notes in her WomansWeekly.com article “How To: Use a Die Cutting Machine to make impressive projects” that these machines usually work on a wide variety of materials, including felt, paper, and foam. Many even have adjustable dials to allow different distances between rollers. Die cutting machines are a good method for mass-producing felt shapes.
Cutting Felt Patterns with Scissors
If you've decided to use scissors to cut out your felt patterns, there are several methods you can use to get the perfect pattern:
Many marking tools, such as pencil, fabric marker, and even pen, show up on felt. If you have a specific pattern you'd like to cut out, draw its mirror image onto the back side of your felt piece, a few millimeters larger than you want the felt cut-out to be.Cut a few millimeters inside your traced pattern. This way, you won't have any residual markings around the perimeter of your final felt pattern. If this felt pattern is being used for applique, apply the felt back-side-down for further protection against unwanted lines.
- Tape
- Freezer Paper
Cut out the pattern, being sure to leave a little space around the drawn line. Iron the cut-out freezer paper pattern to your felt fabric with the shiny, waxy side touching the felt. Cut along the pattern line through both the freezer paper and the felt. Finally, peel the freezer paper off of the felt.
Felt Cutting Projects to Try
Now that you have learned how to cut felt patterns like a pro, here are some felt cutting patterns that will put your knowledge to the test!
Not only are these felt hand warmers positively precious (and upcycled!), but they're also reusable! Keep a heart in your pocket for a cozy warmth you'll feel all winter long.
Sleek, sophisticated, and simple, this Monogrammed DIY Glasses Case is the perfect gift or make for glasses wearers. The best part? The felt is soft enough that it won't scratch your lenses!
If you’ve ever needed a last-minute Halloween costume for your child, you know the panic that can set in. Or maybe you just don’t feel like spending fifty dollars for a Halloween costume.
Nothing will get your sewing room more summer-ready than this ripe Summer Strawberry Pincushion Pattern. The vibrant red of the pattern will make sure you'll never misplace this sweet piece!
You'll be the greatest mom in the galaxy after sewing a set of these Star Wars Inspired Homemade Dolls! Huggable and soft, these toys will be ideal anywhere from the playroom to the bedroom.
Stunning, right? If you adore a vintage aesthetic, then this tutorial is the perfect thing for you! Give your hat collection a 1920s twist with this simple 1920s Cloche Hat Pattern.
Felt projects are ideal for kids because it is a material that is super easy to work with and cheap to purchase. They are not only fun felt projects but they are easy sewing projects.
This Sweet Stenciled DIY Coffee Sleeve would make a beautifully encouraging gift. You can either hand or machine sew the felt into a sleeve and then move into the stenciling.
This Pizza Party No Sew Craft for Kids guide and printable pattern is a surefire way to produce a fun family activity! It is both a quick and easy project that will get your kids' creative hunger growing.
Ever wonder how to easily create a new, fashionable bag? This surprising no-sew purse is the perfect project for you! The resulting purse will be classy but you'll get to boast that you made it!
This pillow is sure to turn heads! Learn how to make a pillow with a giant flower on the front! This quick, easy, and cheap project for a petal pillow is great for the beginner sewist who wants to make throw pillows.
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Lynn K
Nov 28, 2018
I always have the most fun working with felt and our children love it too. We don't have a die cutting machine so we always use sharp scissors. If the scissors are not really sharp the blades tend to 'smear' the felt so that you get a raggedy and damaged edge to the shape.
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