What could possibly be more fun than polka dots? Needle felting is an easy way to add a touch of dottiness to your knitting. I added polka dots to my popular Tea Toters pattern, but you can do it on virtually anything. Smallish polka dots like these won’t interefere with the stretchiness and add a whole bunch of fun to coffee cozies, mitts, and other smallish projects.
Adding needle felted embellishments to your knitting is easy once you know the tricks. First, you must use non-superwash wool yarn to knit the item to be embellished, (like Paton’s Classic Wool). Second, you’ll need wool roving in your desired colors. Third, two basic felting supplies: a felting needle to felt with and a piece of foam to felt on. Finally, my little trick to get a perfect polka dot: a Wilton’s icing tip in the size you’d like your polka dots to be. I used a size 12.
The process is just as you’d expect. Put your icing tip, small side down in the place you want a dot, add a small amount of wool roving and poke away with the felting needle until the roving is felted. The sides of the icing tip act as a sort of guard to keep you from poking your fingers, (as long as you don’t lift that needle too high, that is!)
To keep the polka dots similar in size, you may want to pull off small amounts of roving, so you can eye them to be a similar amount before beginning to felt.
Don’t get too worried about having perfect placement. Irregularly spacing only adds to the whimsical quality of the finished project.
You’ll find that your dots will adhere to the foam, and when you pull it away, you’ll have fuzzy little polka dots on the inside too!
I dotted a whole fleet of Tea Toters. I’ve been told that they aren’t only great for carrying extra tea bags – they also work great for corralling mini pads, jewelry and other small essentials in your purse.
I also like using up those leftovers and making little goodies for friends.
So why not have a polka dot party?
oh my! They were cute before but with the polka dots, they are elevated up the ladder of awesome. Wait until my son finds out I’m stealing his decorating tip for my knitting.
LOL Suzanne! Do you have a polka dot loving son? Who doesn’t like them?
Oh yes, Julie, you just kicked knitting up a couple of notches – I’m tempted to say BAM!
Love those dots. Have a great weekend!
LOL Toni!
These are way too cute! You have such great ideas, Julie. I love your creativity!
Thanks so much CathyAnn! xxoo
Genius idea to use the icing tip to get a perfect dot. So many possibilities here. Embellishing is one of my favorite things about knitting!
I agree Becky! I’ve seen some gorgeous things, with lovely embroidery and duplicate stitch. I like the icing tip because it requires very little skill. LOL!
Julie, I love what you have done with these tea envelopes! I am a relatively new knitter and when I knitted your original design it brought a smile to my face. I found it fun and informative – I learned about button holes and short rows – so I made another one. This time with big chunky yarn on larger needles in oatmeal with a big orange button. It had me grinning for hours and may end up in a care package to my niece. The polka dots can add that bit of whimsy we all need sometimes. I am thinking of matching buttons to polka dots for unique looks. Thanks for your wonderful and original designs. Can’t wait try thus small felting project.
Darlene, I’m so glad you’ve had fun with the tea toters. I hope you enjoy needle felting as much as I do. I’m thinking of making a pair of polka dotted mitts now. 😀 Love your idea of matching buttons to polka dots. Cute!