Choose a wool roving that is suitable for wet felting. I used merino for this satchel. Place a piece of plastic over top of a towel to make your wet felting surface. Gently pulling off small wisps from the edge of your roving, being to form a triangle, approximately 5 inches across the top. Add two more layers, placing the wisps evenly but in different directions.

Dry the wool. If you want it to be more smooth you can press it with an iron.

Fold in half. You can pin the two sides together, slightly overlapping the nicer edge. If you don’t have a pin just use your fingers to hold them in place while stitching.

Continue to sew all the way, tugging slightly as you go if you want your satchel to have a bit of a curl.

Braid some wool roving or embroidery floss together into a long strand about 4” in length.

Place the satchel on your faeries back and measure how tight you want it to be and how far down you want the other end of the braid to sit in order to have it fall in the way you would like it to. Make a mark, and sew the braid on. Now gently (lifting your faeries arms up) slide it onto her back. If you find it easier you can sew the second half of the braid onto the satchel while it is on your faeries back. Sometimes this is easier if she has a lot of hair or you are worried about the wings being damaged.

Pour a cup of very hot water (be careful not to burn yourself) add a little squirt of dish soap. Sprinkle some hot soapy water over top of your triangle with a spoon or a squirter. Lay another piece of thin plastic on top of your triangle and sprinkle with more hot soapy water. With soapy hands begin to massage the plastic over the triangle, applying pressure. Massage for a few minutes then flip and massage on the other side. Peel back the plastic, squeeze out the old water, sprinkle fresh hot water (reheat if necessary, as it won’t felt if it’s not hot enough). This time massage the wool directly (with soapy hands) without the plastic on top. Flip again. wring out and squirt more water onto the triangle. Get your hands all soapy again and massage the wool between your palms, applying lots of pressure, paying special attention to the edges. . Wring out. Rinse several times, alternating hot and cold water, this will help to felt it some more.

Choosing the top edge that you like the most, trim down the sides until the top is 3” across. I usually have my satchels between 3-4 inches in length depending on the size of my faerie.

Starting at the bottom, sew a tiny wrap stitch around the edge, closing the seam. I always try to keep the end as pointy as possible.

I used a contrasting colour because I like the added detail of being able to see the stitching.

Decide which side of the satchel you want to be facing out and sew one end of the braid a cm or two below the edge.

You may find that once the satchel is on her back you needle to actually tack it to her body in a place or two in order to have it stay in the position you want it to. Depending on what is going in your satchel you may or may not need to tack it gently in place. If I am adding a needle felted branch of berries, because of the weight I often tack it where I want it to sit. Loose bracken is usually fine when tucked securely in.

Alternatively, you can sew two tiny shoulder straps on. This satchel was made with a merino base and some curly locks laid down on the final layer to give it more texture. Once it was felted I sewed dozens of tiny stitches all the way through it to add even more texture, and so that it looked like something made by tiny faerie hands :)