How To Make Felted Wool Dryer Balls
Felted wool dryer balls - to help dry your laundry faster, keep it free from static, and to give it a little something to play with while it’s rolling around in the machine. To be honest, I didn’t expect this one to work out so well, because I fudged a bit and didn’t follow the tutorials I found to the letter. But let me tell you something, sister, these are amazing.
I’ve done three loads with them now, and my clothes are soft, wrinkle-free, and I’m pretty sure they came out poppin’ fresh long before they ever have in the past. What Are Felted Wool Dryer Balls - And Why Do You Want Them, Instead of loading your laundry - that soft, precious fabric that touches your skin every day - with stinky chemicals that are in dryer sheets, these felted wool dryer balls will do the same job in less time.
In a nutshell: The wool soaks up some of the moisture in your laundry as it dries, but then evenly distributes it into the air - helping your dryer stay humid longer, which exponentially reduces static cling. In addition, this “soaking and releasing” action makes your clothes dry faster. And all of these things together mean fewer wrinkles.
Best of all, if you make them tight enough and awesome enough, they’ll last up to 5 years. That’s 5 years without having to worry a single bit about static, dryer sheets, wrinkles, buying supplies, and failed presidential debates (you shouldn’t ever worry about that last thing, anyway). This is the best part of felted dryer balls. 5 total. For five years of drying pleasure.
Compare that to what the average household spends on fabric softener sheets, why don’t you, So what are they exactly, Pretty much just what I said. You can go about making them several different ways, but each way is going to involve … dum dum dum … WOOL. And that’s pretty much it.
You can use wool roving (which is why my balls look the way they do) or wool yarn - and you can even reuse/recycle an old wool sweater for the middle if you want. Wool roving, however, is my favorite “look” for these babies, because it stretches and pulls and gives a very unique felty look, something you’re probably not going to get as much of with wool yarn.
Note: You can see the burn from last week on my arm there. ’s almost completely healed, I bought my wool roving from the lovely Etsy seller Ingrid Moss, because it’s all hand-dyed (by her) and comes from a farm in Canada where she assures the animals are well loved.
But this Etsy seller has some absolutely lovely roving, too. Or, you could look for it in a local craft store, if that’s what floats your boat. From start to finish - not including washing time - this project took about 15 minutes. I know, I know. SO much time to ask you to take out of your day. Like I mentioned, I went about this in a bit of a wonky way.
I didn’t want to use all my wool roving on dryer balls that I wasn’t completely sure would turn out right, so instead, I went hunting through the closet for something old and 100% wool. 3 a few years ago, thinking it was a kitschy thrift store find. It was not. It was just big, and alpaca, and everyone who saw me wear it (the ONE time I did) covered their stupid laughing mouths and turned their dumb heads away, embarrassed for me.
