Wool Roving for Felting: Tops, Batts and What to Actually Buy
4 min read Beginner
What roving is, how it differs from tops and batts, which breeds are sold in it, and how much you need before you spend money on the wrong fibre.
Wool roving is the form almost all felting fibre is sold in: a long, soft, unspun rope of cleaned wool, ready to pull apart with your fingers. If you have bought felting wool at all, you have bought roving, whatever the label said.
The confusion starts because three words — roving, tops and batts — get used interchangeably by shops and precisely by spinners. Here is what actually matters when you are buying it to felt.
Roving, tops and batts
- Tops are combed. Short fibres and vegetable matter are removed and everything that remains lies parallel, like a hank of hair. Smooth, slightly slippery, and the standard for coloured merino.
- Roving is carded, then drawn into a rope. The fibres mostly run the same way but are not perfectly aligned. Slightly airier than tops.
- Batts are carded into a flat sheet rather than a rope. Fibres run in every direction, which makes them fast to felt and ideal for filling volume. Covered in detail in wool batting for felting.
For felting purposes: tops and roving behave near enough identically, and batts felt a little faster because the tangled fibre arrangement gives the barbs more to catch. Buy on price, colour and breed rather than on the word used.
Which breeds come as roving
Nearly all of them, but four cover most of what a felter needs.
- Merino — fine, soft, brilliant colours, felts smoothly. Slow under a needle. The default for anything worn against skin and for the outer surface of sculptures.
- Corriedale — medium, grippy, felts fast. The best all-round needle felting fibre and the usual choice for beginners.
- Shetland and Romney — coarser, felt very fast, hold detail well, feel scratchy. Good for animals and anything textural.
- Core wool — undyed, coarse, sold cheaply by the kilo. Structure only.
Our fuller comparison is in the best wool for felting, and the case for and against merino specifically is in merino wool for felting.
The one thing that will not felt
Superwash. It is treated to strip or coat the scales on each fibre so it survives a machine wash, and those scales are the entire mechanism felting depends on. Superwash roving is sold widely to spinners and dyers, and it looks exactly like everything else on the shelf.
Read the label, and if a bargain fibre seems unusually cheap for merino, check twice. More on the symptoms in why wool refuses to felt.
How much you need
- Small needle felted animal (6–8 cm): 10–15 g core plus a few grams of colour
- Felt ball, 3 cm finished: 3–4 g
- Wet felted scarf: 60–100 g depending on length and thickness
- Felted bowl or small bag: 80–150 g
- Felted hat: 100–150 g
Wool weighs almost nothing and looks like a great deal more than it is. A 100 g bag of merino tops is a surprisingly large armful, and 10 g is about the size of a fist of loose fibre.
How to handle it
Never cut roving with scissors. Hold the rope with your hands about 20 cm apart and pull gently — the fibres slip past each other and you get a wispy, tapered end that blends invisibly into the next piece. A cut end leaves a blunt line that shows through the surface of finished work.
Pull thin veils off the outside of the rope rather than lengths off the end when you want a fine layer. For wet felting, thin even layers are the whole game.
Buying: what is worth paying for
Split your budget. Cheap undyed carded wool by the kilo for cores and bulk, and good dyed tops in small amounts for anything visible. A kilo of core wool costs about the same as 100 g of hand-dyed merino and lasts ten times longer.
Colour packs of 10 g samples are excellent value when you are starting and have no idea which shades you will reach for. They are poor value once you know, because the colour you actually use runs out first.
Check for vegetable matter — bits of hay and seed left from the fleece. Cheap roving often carries some. It picks out with tweezers, but on a pale project it is tedious.
Storing it
Keep roving loosely in breathable bags or open boxes, out of sunlight, and away from moths. Compressed wool in a sealed vacuum bag comes out flat and lifeless and needs teasing back open before it will felt evenly. Cedar or lavender in the box is worth the trouble — moths eat unspun wool far more happily than they eat a jumper.
What to make with the odds and ends
Roving ends accumulate. Small quantities go into felt balls, felt beads, blended colour experiments (see blending wool colours), or the core of the next animal. Very little of it is genuinely waste.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between wool roving and wool tops?
Strictly, tops are combed so every fibre lies parallel, and roving is carded so the fibres are aligned but still slightly jumbled. In practice most shops label both as roving, and either one felts. Tops give a smoother surface, roving felts marginally faster.
How much wool roving do I need for a project?
Roughly 10 to 15 g for a small needle felted animal, 3 to 4 g per 3 cm felt ball, and 60 to 100 g for a wet felted scarf. Buy at least 100 g of any colour you plan to use as a base — running out mid-project rarely ends well.
Can you use wool roving meant for spinning?
Yes, provided it is not superwash. Spinning and felting fibre come off the same machines; the only preparation that will not work is superwash, which has had its scales removed precisely so it cannot felt.
Is cheap wool roving worth buying?
For cores and bulk, absolutely — nobody sees the inside of a shape. Buy cheap coarse Corriedale or undyed carded wool by the kilo for structure, and spend the money only on the thin outer layer that shows.
