DIYW Wool Dryer Balls
Josh and I have been trying to live as eco-friendly and as self-sustainably as we can but sometimes that can be harder than it sounds. Today is Earth Day and there are TONS of things that can be done everyday to reduce your carbon footprint or to take care of the environment and the wildlife in the area that you live in. Plastic is obviously a huge issue so doing things like using reusable grocery bags, reusable straws, and reusable ‘cling wrap’ (might end up doing a DIYW project for that one in the future) can help a great deal in cleaning up the environment and keeping your local wildlife safe.
Today, I’m going to show you a way to cut down your electricity and chemical use while drying your clothes! Laundry is something that’s done in my house almost every single day of the week which can rack up a pretty decent electricity bill within a short period of time. We also usually use dryer sheets when drying our laundry to help reduce static cling and it also makes the laundry smell good, but the problem with using dryer sheets, is that they contain chemicals that can not only be harmful to people but they can also be harmful to the environment by creating unnecessary waste. One solution to both of these problems is wool dryer balls!
Josh and I have been looking into wool dryer balls for a pretty long time. There’s a local store near our town that sells handmade goods and their dryer balls are pretty expensive. You can also buy cheaper ones online but sometimes I’d rather know exactly where the products I’m using are coming from. For these reasons, I decided to make my own!
Wool dryer balls are awesome because they reduce waste, reduce drying time which can reduce energy bills, are chemical free, save you money, and do the same job as a dryer sheet but even better!
They are super easy to make so here we go!
What you will need:
100% wool yarn
Stockings/ pantyhose
Scissors
Embroidery Needle
The yarn I used was Paton’s Classic Wool- Roving which I purchased at Michael’s. It has to be 100% pure wool yarn which can be a little more expensive than regular yarn so dig out some of those Michael’s coupons to help reduce the cost a little bit. I bought 2 skeins of yarn and with two 40% off one item coupons, I only spent $9 which is honestly not bad at all.
The first step in creating your fancy pants-y dryer balls is to wrap the yarn about 15-20 times around 3 fingers and then slide the yarn off your fingers. I did 20 for the first one, decided that the extra 5 loops were kind of unnecessary so I started the others off with 15 loops.
Next, you wrap around the middle of your yarn loop bundle about 15 more times to make it look like a teeny bow tie (super cute!).
After you create your little yarn bowtie, start wrapping yarn around the entire bowtie in order to create a little round ball.
Keep wrapping your yarn around into the shape of a ball until it’s approximately the size of a tennis ball or the palm of your hand. I just wrapped mine until I felt as though they were a decent size. Keep in mind that as you felt your balls into the finished product, they will shrink down a little bit. As you are wrapping, you can add drops of essential oils so your clothes will smell good when being dried.
Then you want to cut your yarn leaving a 4-5 inch tail. You need to thread the tail tightly under the yarn at multiple locations of the ball so that the ball won’t come undone. In order to make this process a little easier, you can thread your yarn tail through the ball using an embroidery needle. I, however, didn’t have one so I just used my fingers and it turned out fine.
When using wool dryer balls, you normally have to put at least 3 balls into the dryer at the same time so make sure you get enough yarn to create at least 3 balls. I was able to make 4 balls of my desired size out of 2 skeins of yarn, but I could have made them slightly smaller and ended up with 5-6 balls.
After all of your balls are made, place one all the way into the toe of your stocking or pantyhose. Make sure you stretch it as much as you can so it is tight around the ball and then double knot the stocking at the top of the ball. Keep adding balls and double knotting the stocking between each one until all of your wool balls are snug as bugs inside.
Then you need to put your balls through a process called felting. In order to felt your wool balls, you have to go through a series of washing and drying them. I wanted mine to be super felted so I washed them twice with warm water and dried them twice on the normal setting of my dryer. This didn’t really produce the results I wanted so I actually wet them in the sink and then threw them in the dryer one last time on high heat and heavy duty. I would say that wetting them in the sink, drying on high, wetting in sink, and drying on high again would probably give you good results. I imagine that repeating the wash and dry cycle as many times as you want in order to get your desired results will be fine, but don’t get too crazy. I was trying to multitask by washing other clothes at the same time so drying on high heat wasn’t really an option the first 2 times. It’s times like these that you will start to understand why this is called a “Do It Your Way” project, because I always end up doing things my way and not following instructions.
After you’re done felting the balls, you have to carefully cut them out of the stockings. They will felt to the stockings a little bit but it’s not that hard to peel the stocking off the ball and it doesn’t ruin the ball at all.
I absolutely love how mine turned out! They look so perty. I’m really excited to use them and I might even try adding some essential oils to make my clothes smell good. If you decide to try this DIYW project for Earth Day, let me know how your wool dryer balls turned out and what essential oils you added to them, if any.
REMEMBER: There is ALWAYS something you can do to help make our planet a cleaner and safer place to live no matter how small or large that action may be.
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