This complete soap felting tutorial shows you exactly how to make bar soap covered with wool felt
Why put wool fiber on bars of soap, you ask? Great question! Because it makes a wonderful scrubby. You can exfoliate and wash your skin at the same time.
Not only is this a fun activity for you but it’s a great craft for kids, too. So, let me show you how to make felted soap.
The basic steps for making felted soaps:
- Gather supplies: Bar soap, wool roving, nylon hose, water
- Thin out the wool and wrap it around a bar of soap
- Place wrapped soap in the nylon hose
- Add water and work it with your hands
- Check the soap occasionally to prevent wool from felting into the hose
- Work the soap until wool is firmly felted and attached
What is felted soap?
Felt Soap is literally soap that is enclosed in felted wool. Basically, the wool is placed on a bar of soap and as you work it with water, the fibers felt together.
As you use the soap, the bar shrinks and the felt shrinks with it.
Materials and Tools
- Wool Roving (s.a. Sheep or Alpaca)
- Bar Soap or Olive Oil Soap (for Gifts!)
- Nylon Hose (Knee Highs work well)
- Water
How do you make felted soap?
Soap felting can get a little messy since you will be using water. So, before you begin, think about where you will be doing this. You can work the soap over a sink or a large bowl or cover your table with a plastic tablecloth.
This is also a great activity to do outdoors with your kids.
1. Prepare the wool roving
The first thing we have to do is prepare the wool roving. All this means is that we will thin it out.
Simply, take your roving and with your hands, spread it out just enough so you start to see through it. Not too thin, you don’t want gaps in your fiber or the soap will show.
Take a length of wool and wrap the it around the soap, tucking in the ends. Check for any holes in the fiber and add more as needed.
You can use one color of wool or many. You can make stripes or solids … whatever you like.
2. Felt the soap
Now, carefully place your soap inside one of the nylon knee highs. You can easily do this by holding the wool covered soap in one hand and stretching the nylon over it.
You need to be careful not to pull the wool off the soap. No worry if this takes you a few tries! Once it’s in there, secure the stocking with a loose knot.
Then, either over your sink or bowl, add some water and using your hands, gently begin working the water in. Do this all over the soap until the entire surface is thoroughly wet.
Work the wool for several minutes and then carefully pull back the nylon and check for spots where the soap is showing and add more fiber, if needed.
Place the soap back in the nylon and keep working the fiber. Make sure to work all surfaces and the corners.
Remove the soap from the nylon every couple of minutes to check the felting process and to make sure the nylon does not get felted into the wool.
When you can no longer pull apart the individual wool fibers, you can continue working the wool without the nylon.
Keep working the wool until it has shrunk and tightened around the soap. If it seems that your wool doesn’t want to felt, try ‘shocking’ it by alternating hot and cold water while you are working it.
Finally, just rinse off the suds and set your soap out to dry. This may take a day or two. Rotate your soap so the felt can dry on all sides.
3. Add needle felt designs (optional)
With this particular bar of soap, I first needle felted a simple star shape (see how in this tutorial). Then I lightly felted only the white wool onto the soap but only until the fibers were just starting to grab onto each other.
Finally, I added the star on top of the white and finished felting it until the wool completely enclosed the bar and the fibers could not be pulled apart.
Grab the E-Book!
How to make Felted Soaps
Soap Felting Step by step tutorial
(GET THIS E-BOOK PDF AND OCCASIONAL UPDATES)
How do you use felted wool soap?
Use these soaps the same way as a regular bar. If you have very dirty hands, you can scrub between the fingers and under the nails.
Note: After use, do not let them sit in water. You may wish to hang them up to dry. This will keep any mold from forming.
As I said before, these soaps are great scrubbies. They are wonderful for anybody who gets their hands dirty such as gardeners.
Also, felted soap works great for exfoliating your skin. In that case, you will want to use a higher quality soap such as scented lavender or olive oil soap.
What are the benefits of felted soap?
- Natural way to exfoliate your skin (when using natural colored wool and all natural soap)
- Great for removing dirt from hands for gardeners, mechanics, etc.
- After the soap is used, the leftover wool felt can be composted
- Make great gifts
Find more felting tutorials at What is Felting? A Beginner’s Guide and Needle Felting for Beginners
How long does felted soap last?
That really depends on how often you use it as well as how large your initial bar of soap is. As a general rule, one bar will last from about 4 months to as long as a year.
Related Wool Felting Articles
What is Felting? A Complete Beginner’s Guide
How to Needle Felt (for Beginners)
– Basic Felting
– How to Felt Wool – Cobweb Felting
– Nuno Felting
– Resist Felting
Wet Felt: Adding Color & Texture the Easy Way
How to: Lattice Felting
Wet Felted Easter Eggs
How to Make Felted Dryer Balls
DIY Wool Dryer Balls with Needle Felt Designs
Huh, this is neat. I had never heard of felted soap. Pinned it.
Thank you Kristen!
I felt my homemade soaps. I make cold processed and hot processed soaps and then felt over them. My question is that after a few uses my soaps are staying very soft almost like a gel. They do not dry out between uses. Any suggestions?
That’s very interesting, Vicky. I’ve only felted over store-bought soap and have not had that issue. Would you be able to use less liquid in the soap you plan to felt?
This is a great beginner project for those of us interesting in felting (me), but slightly overwhelmed by the whole process! Thanks for sharing : )
This is a great one to start with. Also, it’s a good kids project.
Great tutorial! I have seen these before, but have never made one. Might have to give it a try.
Let me know how it turns out!
I’ve never seen anything like this before! Not only is it useful, it turned out really pretty, too. I’m pinning it so I can put it in my pile of projects to try. Thanks for sharing. 🙂
You’re welcome!
Thanks for sharing this! Gotta try this!
Hi! Stopping by from Mom Bloggers Club. Great blog!
Have a nice day!
Thanks Veronica, I’ll come find you over there 🙂
WHOA! I didn’t know such a thing even existed. I’ve never tried felting, but I love making soap. This would take my spa baskets to a NEW level!
I’m not super familiar with felting though, is just rubbing and sprinkling with water what makes it felted? What happens to the felt as the soap shrinks with use?
These would be perfect for a spa basket, Kayla! Especially, if you felt over your handmade soap. It’s very easy, really. The two things that make fiber felt are extreme water temperature changes ….going from hot to cold, and agitation. Working it. Just like when you accidentally wash a favorite sweater and it comes out 10x smaller. The felt shrinks with the soap which is also great. Give it a try. If you have any questions, shoot me an email at kyblue (at) bellsouth (dot) net. Let me know how it turns out!
I’ve only recently seen felted soaps and you make it seem so easy! Thanks for sharing this!
You’re welcome! They are fun and easy enough for kids to do as well.
I’ve never heard of felted soap. That is awesome! I may have try it this project out. #ThrowbackThursdaylinkup
What an interesting idea! I’ve never heard of (or thought of) doing this! I’ve been wanting to try felting, but didn’t think doing it on soap would be my first experience. Thanks for sharing on #throwbackthursdaylinkup
Felted soap is a great project to start with. Good activity for kids too. Thanks for popping by!
This is adorable! I have never seen this done. These will make great gifts! I am pining this for later.
It looks great, and you make it sound so easy. Visiting from Wake Up Wednesday Linky Party.
Thanks Heidi! I’m still making my rounds 🙂
never felted soap before. looks like a fun project. visiting from the wake up wednesday linky.
Thanks Nancy! I’ll pop over to your site 🙂
This is really neat! I will have to see about trying this sometime. Would definitely make great gifts. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you! Let me know if you try it.
I am so impressed by this! You make it look super easy and doable and the final product looks fantastic as well as super functional. Thanks for linking up at the #smallvictoriessundaylinky! You’ve been pinned to the group board. 🙂
Thank you!
This is really interesting. I’ve never seen felted soap before but I can see how it would be great for exfoliating. I am interested in soap making and I’m pinning this for future reference. Your blog is pretty awesome too, by the way.
Thanks Jen! Soap making is on my list too. Do you have a recipe?
Thanks for sharing!
I’ve always wondered how it’s done. Thanks for sharing, I’ll try this one day. Store bought they’re very expensive!
Yes, they are. Plus, they’re so much fun to make! Send me pic 🙂
Annette