How to Make Pasta Out of Felt! | Fun & Easy DIY Craft Project | Faux Food

For this Instructable, I'm going to show you how to make a variety of pasta shapes out of felt. You can use these to make brooches, magnets or other embellishments, (and they’re just fun things to make) ...or they can be play food – just make sure you don’t give these to children who would try to eat them :D

Bon Appétit!

1. Yellow felt - maybe a couple of A4 sheets worth
2. Ruler
3. Fabric scissors
4. Iron and ironing board
5. Hand sewing needle & yellow thread
6. Disappearing or ‘magic’ fabric pen
7. Pinking shears
8. Glue that’s suitable for felt
9. Toothpick
10. Bulldog clips
11. A rod or dowel of some description that’s roughly 5 mm in diameter if possible
12. Small amount of stuffing

If you have a rotary cutter and cutting mat as well, they’ll be very handy as they make it easier & neater to cut the felt in comparison to using scissors.

To make the penne pasta, you essentially need to make a tube.

The first step is to cut a couple of strips of felt, each 3 cm wide. I just used the centimetre markings on my cutting mat to show me where to cut, but if you don’t have that option then mark out the width with your disappearing fabric pen instead, before you cut.

I did this with a rotary cutter and ruler, but you could use scissors instead.

If you want to try and add ridges to your pasta for extra detail, the best way I found to do this is to use the edge of the narrow end of your iron to draw parallel-ish lines along the length of the felt strip, whilst it’s on your ironing board. Just be very careful when you do this, don’t use steam, and keep your fingers well out of the way of the heat.

If you have some kind of rod or dowel to help you shape your tube, that would be useful...but make sure you don’t mind getting glue on it! I personally used a cheap knitting needle.

You want to curl the felt around the dowel to make it easier for you to apply glue to one edge and then join the long edges together.

If there are any gaps, use a toothpick to apply glue in those areas so the seam is nicely joined.

Once the glue has dried, you can then cut the tubes into pieces. First, make a diagonal cut at one end that’s 1 cm wide. Then make another diagonal cut, again 1 cm wide, 4 cm along the tube.

Keep repeating this all the way along.

As you can see, my Fusilli pasta is just an approximation of the store-bought version, as the shape of the real thing would be impossible to recreate, So instead, I went with how I’ve seen homemade Fusilli pasta made in YouTube videos!

First, cut strips of felt 1 cm wide.

Attach a bulldog clip at each end and twist the strip as much as you can whilst keeping it straight.

Take it over to your ironing board and steam the twisted felt a few times.

Make sure you only hold the iron just above the felt and don’t press down on it, as you don’t want to flatten the felt.

Once everything has cooled and dried, you can then cut these twists into 4 cm long pieces.

Note: I'm just using mine decoratively, but if you wanted to handle these, I would recommend using starch (or similar) on the felt to help it hold its shape.

For Farfalle or bowtie pasta, start by cutting 3.5 cm strips. Then cut these strips every 2.5 cm to make little rectangles.

Use pinking shears to create zigzag edges on the short sides only.

You next need to stitch in the centre of each rectangle, so first feed a length of yellow thread into the eye of your sewing needle.

Fold the rectangle in half twice to find the centre point and take your needle in and out of the felt at this point, to make a tiny stitch. Pull most of the thread through, then tie a double knot to fix the thread to the felt. Cut off the excess thread.

Then concertina the rectangle, making 3 even, lengthwise folds, and stitch these into position. Just go in and out of the felt, creating backstitches, working from the front of the pasta to about halfway back. Stay in the centre throughout.

Make sure to secure your thread at the end. To do this, I took the needle through the centre to the back, then went in and out of the felt to make a small stitch, pulled the thread until there was just a small loop remaining, took the needle through that loop, twice, and pulled tight. You can repeat that again to make sure if you wish.

Then cut off the excess thread. Repeat this for all of the rectangles.

Next, for the Ravioli, cut pairs of square shapes which measure 6 cm along each edge.

Hold each pair of squares together and cut all around the edges with the pinking shears.

Then backstitch each pair of squares together, approx. 9 mm from the edge, all of the way around.

First thread your needle, then knot the end of the thread onto the felt where you want to begin. To do this, make a tiny stitch, then make a double knot with the thread. Cut off the excess thread.

Aim to make your stitches all a consistent length – perhaps 4 or 5 mm long - and stop when you’ve just started stitching the last edge. You need to add a small amount of stuffing into the ravioli at this point, before completing the backstitch.

At the end, make sure to secure the thread on the back by again doing a small stitch, taking the needle through the thread loop, twice, and tightening. Then cut off the excess thread (after trying to hide the end by burying it inside the raviolo.)

To make the Tortelloni shapes, you’ll once again need squares that are 6 cm along each edge.

Then place a small amount of stuffing in the centre of a square.

Thread your needle, fold the triangle in half to encase the stuffing, and then backstitch along the 2 open edges to close the shape.

I stitched maybe around 5 mm away from the edge, and secured the thread at the beginning and the end.

I then folded the points to the front so that they overlap, and stitched these in position aswell. I chose to have the neatest stitching on the outside, but you could have it on the inside instead if you wanted.

The folding technique I’m using is the same technique I saw the Pasta Evangelists use on YouTube, but tortelloni are often made slightly differently, where the ‘points’ are wrapped under the triangle (rather than in front), so feel free to make them that way instead if you prefer. It’s only the last stitching step that’s a bit different.

Then just repeat this process for each of the squares.

And lastly we’ll make some Fettucine, which is very simple because you just need to cut 5 mm wide strips.

Once you’ve cut enough of them, you can make a very loose knot and create a pasta nest.

For Linguine, you would instead cut 4 mm strips, for tagliatelle you would cut 7 mm strips, and for pappardelle you would cut large strips about 12 mm wide.

And now you can see all the pasta shapes we’ve made!

I found this a fun project and I think the results look fairly accurate – I’m happy with them! I hope you follow along yourself :)