Review: Felties: How to Make 18 Cute and Fuzzy Friends

Felties: How to Make 18 Cute and Fuzzy Friends
by Nelly Pailloux

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Felties: How to Make 18 Cute and Fuzzy Friends / 978-0-74078-511-5

When it comes to crafts, sometimes it seems I've done them all. Lately I've gotten into crochet and amigurumi because I *love* the cute little toys, but the overall effort is still very time consuming for me because I'm so new at it.

Well, these felties are all the fun of the crocheted amigurumi, with a fraction of the time, effort, and cost. Seriously, this is the cheapest new craft I've ever taken up - the little panda bear I made took all of four colors of felt (four sheets for a dollar, and I only used a fraction of each sheet), two colors of cross stitch floss (also four for a dollar), a touch of craft glue, some sharp, comfortable scissors, a needle and stuffing, and a little bit of artist's tracing paper. These felties are easy to make, too - it probably took me about 30 minutes to trace the pattern, another 30 to cut all the felt shapes out, and about 45 minutes to assemble the actual feltie doll, and I've no doubt that the process will be much faster the second time.

Pleasantly, the patterns in this book are very varied, not just the same repeated dog/cat/bear with different ears on each page. No, this book has Russian dolls, lions with crazy manes, the CUTEST panda bear ever, a mushroom person, a rat with cool sunglasses, a polar bear with child, a wild-eyed cartoon rabbit, an adorable sleeping fox, a puppy with a sailor outfit, a "messenger" bear with a pouch for tiny letters, a cute little chihuahua, a curly-horned ram, a samurai, a mummy cat, a pirate mouse, an adorable alien, a strange...squirrel thing, and a wolf with a hoodie. My definite favorites are the panda (I've included a picture) and the sleeping fox, but what I like best about this book is that the explanations are so clear and simple that I think it will be extremely easy to make my own patterns - something that I rarely feel confident in doing.

It's worth noting that these felties are SMALL. The panda bear nestles into the palm of my hand - it's that small. Although everything is simple felt and thread, I wouldn't leave these around small children or animals - they're probably a choking hazard if the child decided to scarf the feltie down. Having said that, the instructions are so clear and the construction process is so simple, that it would be incredibly easy to enlarge the pattern and make a larger, less 'edible' feltie.

I've attached a picture of the panda bear I made, along with the picture included in the book (I only had gray felt instead of black, so her feltie looks better!). I received this book free through Amazon Vine for purposes of review, but this hobby is so fun and addicting that I'm now interested in buying more feltie books - I just hope they are all as good as this one!

NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through Amazon Vine.

~ Ana Mardoll

View all my reviews