The making of the Minibeast Felt Wall Hanging

Here's how we did it:

I laid down a 130cm square of World of Wool natural prefelt - it comes in 1 metre widths so behind the joins I put a bright green merino to act as sticky plasters!

This was my only job - the kids did all the rest in groups of 6.

 (I'm sorry that I can't include the children in the photos but nowadays you need permission from the parents).

The first group laid down the background from merino wool. It looks yellow in the photo but we used three shades of bright citrus greens. This was so the grass and leaves they placed on top would show up better.

The second group used the prefelt they had made, World of Wool prefelt and yarns to make grass and leaves.

The third group then started to lay down some of the flowers that had already been made and also cut out extra leaves. Two of the boys had made dragonflies so they wanted to put them on.

The fourth group then started to put on the minibeasts that their class had made.

And the last group (forgot to take their photo!) positioned the minibeasts made by the Year 6 class and put legs on the ants - as well as a crown for the Queen Ant which was so small it got lost later! And generally checked that everything looked okay.

So all the children had some input which I think is important. Positioning everything took about one and a half hours.

A lot of the children were really keen to wet it! The first group even missed part of their lunch time to wet the piece and then the other four groups took turns rubbing it and they also had a go with my water sprinkler in a washing up bowl, if they wanted to - which they all did!

It's surprising how much they enjoyed rubbing the piece - the thin plastic which we laid on top was very soapy at times! We rubbed for about an hour - I really wanted to make sure that everything was secure before we started rolling.

Rolling clashed with their weekly golden time where the children get to choose a special activity but even so sone of the children wanted to roll instead!

We rolled it in bubble wrap, securing with velcro ties fairly gently for five minutes - turning 90 degees four times and then we turned it over and did the same again.

I was left to rinse it myself and took it home to dry. It shrunk another 5 cm whilst drying and ended up about 108cm - which was perfect for a 1 metre by 1 metre canvas.

I was hoping for a sunny day to take some better photos before I took it in to the school yesterday but it was very wet so couldn't take it outside - did take a few with the sun shining on it through the window though which shows some of the sparkly angelina thread (Tip for next time: put the angelina and bamboo fibres on both sides when making the prefelt - some things were positioned upside down!).