Creating Felted Flowers with UNIQUE Craft Wool Roving

Now that we know a little bit about the versatility of cotton and rayon thread, we’re onto a new topic today! It’s all about roving. What the heck is roving? Well, it’s wool that’s carded and combed into a long skein, used for a variety of projects.

The UNIQUE Craft roving comes in 25g or 50g packages.

Now let’s talk about the variety of colors! Here are some neutral colors, including black, ecru, white, gray, and several shades of brown.

And look at these gorgeous colors! There are 24 different colors (neutrals and colors) in total, and I managed to get my hands on 15 of them! I’m pretty excited about my two projects. I’ll discuss one today and explore the second tomorrow. Let’s get started!

Remember what I said yesterday? Even though I classify myself as a quilter, I don’t just make quilts. And it seems that the more quilts you make, the more you start to look for new ideas. So making cushions, mug rugs, bags, etc., is a great way to add variety to our quilting world. I also love exploring new techniques to incorporate into my quilting, especially in my art quilts.

Today, I’ll be making felted flowers that I’ll stitch onto a small cushion! I’ve gathered some supplies, including five packages of the colored roving and two different button styles. The DRESS IT UP Larger bee buttons are adorable, and I can just see them buzzing amongst my flowers. The ELAN orange shank buttons will serve as the closure.

I found an 8″ cushion form in my stash of cushion forms. There are many different sizes of cushion forms in squares or rectangles. If you can’t find the right size, it’s easy enough to make a cushion form and fill it with fibre fill!

I grabbed some fabric from my stash and made a 6½” square for the center with a strip of “grass” along the bottom, and the rest is sky. Then, I added an outer 2″ border, which I’ll trim down when I have completed the front of the cushion cover.

If you don’t wish to make a cushion cover, consider a small wallhanging. Or how about putting the 3-D flowers into a shadow box? A pocket on a tote bag? Or maybe a fidget quilt? The possibilities are endless!

You know me, I have sewing and embroidery machines, and I love to test out ways to use them. PLUS, one of my 2026 goals was to explore felted embroidery, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to get started.

I gathered some supplies for the machine embroidery: the Husqvarna VIKING Felting Embroidery Set, an embroidery hoop, stabilizers (water-soluble for felting and a tear-away stabilizer for the final assembly), thread, applique scissors, and fabric for the applique.

Alternatively, you can do the felting by hand. You’ll have way more freedom in the shapes. You’ll need a felting needle (available in 1-, 3-, or 7-needle formats) and a felting mat. Note, there are two sizes of felting mats. While the mat and the 7-needle are great for 2-D felting, the 1 and 3 needles are excellent for 3-D felting. Something you can’t do on an embroidery machine!

I started by designing the picture in the Creativate Embroidery Software. I found some applique flowers and removed the flowers, keeping only the stems. I brought the felted flower designs into the software to get an idea of how many and what size were needed. The next step was to use machine embroidery to appliqué the stems onto my background. That was easy!

I love it when embroidering the felt flowers, a clear message pops up to alert me to install the felting set.

Let’s talk about the roving and how to prepare it. The wool roving comes in a long, multi-strand skein. I want a consistent thickness in the roving bundle to create the felted flowers. I decided that rather than pulling the roving, I would cut it into a length more or less equal to the width of my flower. As I needed a visual of the size, I had printed the flowers out on paper, making it easier to visualize the size.

Then I separated small sections and spread them apart. I started with one layer all in the same direction. Then another thin layer in the opposite direction, and so on, until I used up that entire piece of roving I had cut off. You don’t want a lump in the middle with nothing on the edges, so take some time to even out the layers and ensure equal thickness (as best you can) throughout the entire piece. The more I did, the more I got the hang of it!

You don’t want the bundle to be too thick, or you can’t embroider through it. It’s hard to describe, but it’s about ½” thick, which, of course, will be compressed under the needle.

Then I put a piece of water-soluble stabilizer in the hoop and placed the roving on it. To prevent the wool from getting caught in the felting needle, I placed a small scrap of water-soluble stabilizer on top of the roving.

I used the placement tools (Exact Positioning and the Projection System) in the Designer Epic 3 to assist with where the roving needed to go.

Once I had the roving lined up with the projected design, I pressed START, sat back, and watched the felting process.

While it’s hard to see, the flower’s shape is taking form as the felting needle meshes the layers of roving beneath the water-soluble stabilizer.

The water-soluble stabilizer prevents the roving from getting caught. It’s NOT being punched into the roving and is easy to remove after the stitching is complete.

After felting the flower, I removed all excess roving and returned it to the bag, along with the remaining roving from the skein for the next project. Don’t throw those bits away, they will be ready to use in the next felt project, and there will be another project!

Here’s something to keep in mind – if you’re felting by hand, the right side of the work will be facing up, and you’ll have a lot of flexibility to add little bits if one area is a bit thin. If you’re felting by the embroidery machine, the right side of the work is on the underside of the embroidery hoop!

Look at the right side of another flower. It’s super cute! The different patterns of the felting needle created the shapes and edges you see below. It’s all programmed into the design, and all you have to do is press START! Please note, the embroidery design has to be digitized to work with felt – you can’t just switch to a felting needle for a design meant for threads.

Here are my five flowers in various stages of clean-up. A sharp pair of scissors makes it easy to cut away the excess roving from the flowers. I found a couple of petals that didn’t have good coverage, so I added a bit more roving to that spot and redid some of the felting. I did that BEFORE I removed them from the embroidery hoop.

The more I did, the better I got at the process. It’s always a good idea to experiment BEFORE you attempt your final project! And then the more you do, the easier it gets, and the more confidence and experience you have. And even more importantly, the more successful you are!

Next, I laid out the flowers on my background to see how they looked! OH MY — this is so cute. I’m so impressed with the result!! I’ve done a couple of felted flowers in the past, but didn’t have the roving well distributed, and I was determined to get better at the process! I think I succeeded, and I’m well on my way to accomplishing that 2026 goal of becoming more familiar with felted machine embroidery.

Each flower has a center stitched with thread. I kept that part to the very end so that I could embroider the flowers onto the background using that center stitching. Note that I ended up stitching each flower separately and used the Small Metal Hoop, which was much easier than the way shown below. In total, I hooped the fabric five times to attach the flowers. I tried a shortcut, and I wasn’t happy with the results. When I did the flowers one at a time, the results were much better.

Again, I used the excellent placement tools on the Husqvarna VIKING Designer Epic 3 (Projection, Scan the Hoop, and Exact Positioning) to get PRECISE placement of the flower centers. Doing one flower in a single hooping was so much easier than my original plan. And this just goes to show that there are multiple ways to achieve the same thing, and if one option doesn’t work, try another. My lesson to you is – don’t try a shortcut or a slapdash way! If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right – even if you make a mistake! I learned and fixed it!

And here’s the top of my cushion cover with the felted flowers! OH MY — I LOVE THIS!!!! I’m so pleased with the result, and I know that I WANT all 24 colors of roving so I can make more flowers. They are adorable. OK – I have to brag – do you see how perfectly aligned the center stitches are? Learn to use your positioning tools in machine embroidery! Note that the corners are trimmed to prevent dog ears when the cushion is complete.

Whether you use an embroidery machine or hand needles to felt your flowers or other shapes, imagine the freedom you’ll have to express your creativity. You could mix and match techniques – make machine-embroidered flowers and hand-embroider the centers. Mix up the colors of roving to create two-toned flowers, and well, the possibilities are endless.

I LOVE working with the UNIQUE Craft roving, and did I mention that I now want the rest of the colors to make more flowers!

I’ll finish off the cushion tomorrow and share my second roving project (totally different style).

Get your thinking cap on and see what you can come up with, using wool roving!

Have a great day!

Ciao!

This is part 2 of 5 in this series

Go back to part 1: Cotton or Rayon: Which Gütermann Thread Should You Use