One of my daughter’s friends just turned two, and I was looking to buy her a birthday present. I settled on play food, since she has a toy kitchen and decided that something she could stir around in her pots would be perfect. Anything non edible would be better than her serving me up a plate of dirt and cheese crackers… Anyway, I looked at the HABA soft pasta, and had a duh moment when I thought, I could just make my own pasta! Out of nice wool felt! Then I had a second duh moment when I realized she was allergic to wool. So I had to use some thinner acrylic felt, and somehow the project turned into ravioli.
Recipe for 12 felted ravioli (2″x2″ each):
Ingredients:
- 2 rectangles of felt cut 6″x8″, one for the top, one for the bottom
- 12 1″x1″ squares of batting, or stacked felt for the filling
- Needle felting tool and block of foam or other base for felting on
- Pinking shears
- Temporary spray adhesive (somewhat optional)
- About an hour of your time
Spray the felt for the bottom of the ravioli with temporary adhesive and space out the ravioli filling. If you don’t have any spray adhesive you could use a small dot of craft glue, or cut your felt into 2″x2″ squares and felt them each individually. I did that for my first test ravioli and it worked fine, but I think to do them in a batch you need to stick them down somehow, basting the filling down might work too.
Spray the top piece of felt with adhesive and carefully stick that down over the filling, lining up the edges with the bottom felt. Once the edges are lined up pat down in between the filling to stick the top and bottom together.
Using your needle felting tool baste the top and bottom together by punching the needle felting tool through sporadically, every half inch or so in the rows and columns between the ravioli filling (don’t felt the filling). This is important to keep things from moving around too much, since needle felting shrinks the felt and pulls things around.
Spend 10-15 minutes thoroughly felting the rows and columns between the ravioli felting. Felt tightly around the ravioli filling to give it definition, and be sure to felt all the way to the outside edges too.
Once the top looks fairly well felted flip it over and go at it for another 10-15 minutes from the other side for good measure. When you get through with that tug the felt around in your hands to make sure it feels good and solid. If you think it needs some more felting give it some more.
When you’re good and sick of felting cut down the center of the rows and columns in between the filling. You can just slice them apart with the pinking shears if you want, but they are so clunky I was afraid I would cut too close to one side or the other, and this way you can finesse the corners.
Pink around each of the ravioli squares. After pinking the first side line up the shears with the cut corner for the next side so that you don’t get wonky shapes at the corners. Unless you want wonky shapes at the corners. That would probably be more realistic. (^_^)
Done! Hurray! Now I need to make some farfalle pasta.
One of the most practical of winter traditions, next to food preservation, is making things to keep your family warm. This project uses the cast off calves of blue jeans turned into cut-offs, an old towel destined for the rag bin, and some suspiciously old rice or dried beans from the back of the pantry. This would make a great gift for a significant other with freezing bed feet, and since you probably have two legs on your blue jeans you can make one for yourself at the same time. (~_^) Hurray, happy feet!
