How to Make a Felted Soap Pin Cushion

Felted soaps make great pin cushions! They are a safe and secure place to keep your sharp pins and needles, plus the natural oils in the fiber prevent rusting. Here’s how you can combine wet-felting and needle-felting techniques to make a rustic pin cushion.

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If you are someone that sews, embroiders, or crafts, keeping your pins and needles safe, secure, and easily accessible is important. You’ve got to have a good pin cushion!

I’ve found that the best pin cushion is actually a bar of felted soap!

I came about the idea of using a bar of felted soap for a pin cushion when I was getting ready for an online fiber show and starting a weaving project. I had felted soap out and my tapestry needles everywhere, and they just came together and solved a problem I didn’t even know I had. It works amazingly, and it is cute too!

The felted soap pin cushion keeps my needles in one place. Now I don’t have to search through my craft basket to find them, and they stay rust-free from the natural oils in the fiber.

Let me tell you how I made it!

Materials Needed for Making a Felted Soap Pin Cushion

A bar of soap
½ ounce of natural fiber
Nylon stocking
Bowl
Hot and cold water
Optional: Felting needles and colored fiber

You can use any kind of bar soap to make a pin cushion. I make my own soap with milk from my Nubian dairy goats, but you can also use Ivory, Irish Spring, or whatever is your favorite. If you are using handmade soap, make sure that it is completely cured before you felt it.

You will want your felted soap pin cushion to sit flat and not roll around, so starting with an oval or rectangular-shaped bar with a flat bottom is best. Soap bars with sharp corners are harder to felt, so rounding them with a vegetable peeler helps make the felting process easier.

You will need 100% natural fiber to create a felted soap pin cushion, synthetics or synthetic blends will not work. I have access to mohair from my Angora goats, but any type of wool or alpaca is great too! You can use roving, combed top, or a batt of fiber to create felted pin cushions. Preparations that do not align the fibers work best for felting.

A nylon stocking helps you begin the felting process and adapt the fiber to the bar of soap. You can use a knee-high or just cut an old pair of nylon stockings down to size.

You will start felting with a bowl of hot water and then can rinse your felted soap in cold tap water from your sink.

If you want to decorate your felted soap pin cushion, you can use felting needles and colored fiber to needle-felt a design on the top. Any size felting needles will work and you can use a single-needle tool or a multi-needle tool.

I recommend using felting finger protectors because felting needles are extremely sharp and it is easy to stab yourself! I wear them on the thumb and index finger of my non-dominant hand while I am needle-felting. Mine are made of leather and they work well and are comfortable.

There are templates that you can buy to help you make basic designs on your felted soaps. I made the mushroom shape that you see in the picture with a template. You can freehand your own design too!

Directions for Making a Felted Soap Pin Cushion

Select a bar of soap for the felting project, if it has sharp corners, round them by using a vegetable peeler
Weigh out the fiber that you want to use, a half ounce is the minimum that I use to cover my 4-ounce bars of square-shaped goat milk soap. You can use more if you wish, but it may take a little extra time to felt.
Get the bar of soap wet at the sink.
Wrap the bar of soap in your fiber, make sure that it is completely covered and you can’t see the soap through the fiber. If you can see soap still, add more fiber. The fiber should stick to the wet soap bar.
Put the fiber-wrapped bar of soap into the nylon stocking. Push it down to the toe and tie a knot in it so that it is closely adhered. You can tie a slip knot so that the stocking is reusable! (See image below)
Run hot water into your bowl.
Submerge the stocking with the fiber-wrapped soap into the bowl of hot water.
Take it out and with your hands over the bowl, begin massaging the fiber and molding it around the bar of soap. It will get sudsy, so use the bowl to catch the lather that comes off your hands.
Continue massaging the bar of soap in the nylon stocking for at least 5 minutes.
Now you can remove the bar of fiber covered soap from the stocking.
Continue massaging the soap in your hands for at least 10 minutes. You should feel the fiber begin to tighten around the soap and it will have less “squish” to it when it is completely felted.
When you are done felting the soap, rinse it in cold water. The cold water will “shock” the fiber and will help with the final felting process.
Allow your felted soap to dry, undisturbed for at least 24 hours.
Now you can use your felted soap as a pin cushion, or you can needle-felt a design onto it.
If you want to make a design, use felting needles, finger protection, and colored fiber. A template is helpful to get started. All you have to do is stab into the felted soap over and over again until the added fiber is flush with the original fiber.
Stick your pins and needles into your felted soap pin cushion and craft on!