DIY Wet Felted Cat Pendant (Using Real Cat Fur)

Make your own DIY wet felted cat face pendant using fur brushed/combed from your cat. It’s a cute and fairly easy way upcycle your favorite feline’s shed fur.

You can make it into a necklace, make 2 for earrings, use it as an ornament, or even try it as a bag charm. (It might be a little delicate for a bag charm.)

1. cat fur collected from the brush or comb
2. 2 seed beads for eyes
3. needle (make sure the eye fits through the seed beads)
4. glue
5. scissors
6. wire cutters
7. needle nose pliers
8. water (one container or hot/warm, one of cool/cold)
9. soap
10. towel/rag (not pictured)
11. felt
12. pen or something to mark the felt
13. thread
14. whisker color
15. eye color
16. fur/felt color
17. jewelry findings or whatever else you need to make it into the final product

Roll the fur into a ball with your hands.

Add a little soap to the warm/hot water. Dip the ball into the warm/hot water.

Take it out of the water. Roll it into a ball, flatten it some, then shape ears.

Place it in the cold water.

Take it out and continue to shape it.

Repeat the warm/cool water and shaping process as needed. I think the first pass I didn’t have soap in the water, but added it for the second warm water dip. The cool/cold water should not have soap added.

Allow to dry on a towel/rag. You can press it using your hands and the rag if you want. (I don’t remember for sure if I did that.)

Once dry (give it plenty of time to fully dry), trim the extra hairs.

Sew the beads on for eyes. Instead of using a regular thread knot, you can leave a tail and tie the working thread and tail in a double knot.

Trim up long threads, but don’t worry too much about how the back looks. It gets covered in a later step.

Embroider whiskers with the thread you chose.

Push the head pin up through the bottom. Add a little glue near the bottom, then pull the head pin so that the head is flush with the bottom of the pendant.

You can add a little glue at the top now or later if you want.

Once dry, trim and shape the top of the head pin into a loop. Make sure the loop is big enough to thread the chain through if applicable (oops).

Also make sure the loop is positioned in the desired direction.

Trace around the pendant onto the felt. Cut the felt and adjust to fit the back of the pendant.

Glue felt to back of pendant, covering the thread tails.

Using the thread that matches the cat fur and felt, blanket stitch around the pendant, sewing together the felted fur and felt.

Add your findings.

(This isn’t really a necklace in the photo, it’s just a little chain [probably salvaged from a necklace or bracelet or something]. I didn’t check the size of the loop to make, and I couldn’t get it threaded on a necklace. 🤦‍♀️ If this happens to you, you can reshape the loop and/or add jump rings.)