Needle Felted Solar System

The Year 5 Solar System Science Project: what a rite of passage!

I have literally been planning this for years. Every year, the school foyer is decorated with a marvellous installation of immaculate solar systems. I knew I had my work cut out.

Most parents (because, who are we kidding here?) make theirs out of polystyrene balls of different sizes, painted with acrylic paint. These are then mounted in a variety of ways.

When I discovered needle felting as a craft, I was pretty sure that this would be a) different, b) achievable, and c) for bonus points – something that the child could actually help with.

It turns out that she took to it like a duck to water. She jealously guarded her right to needle felt all the planets. She wanted it to be her work, and I tried to be supportive of that.

These are the planets we made, in chronological order:

Mercury

To start, I helped her research the right colours and sizes for each of the planets. I also guided her towards working smallest to largest. So she started with Mercury. I showed her how to tear up the roving and mix strands together for colours. Mercury was a mixture of two different greys to give a rocky, mottled effect. Since it is so tiny, it was a pretty speedy stab to get a viable planet.

Mars

Next up was Mars. This one was a combination of dark brown and a touch of deep red. She kept it to the same quantities as Mercury to get the size about the same.

Venus

Venus weighed in at 5 grams to Mercury and Mars’ 3 grams. This was a much more involved colour mixture: gold, silver, cream, light pink and light brown. I think it is too mottled, but Owner-of-the-Solar-System says it is just what she wanted.

Earth

She really hit her stride here. We weighed the roving to get the right quantity of blue for the base sphere (5g) and made up a plain blue ball. Little sis helped here too. (The planets will likely be handed down in 2 years time.) I showed Big Sis how to make a flat shape and she went ahead and made up some dark green for the continents, added all sorts of land masses and some wispy clouds over the top. I think Earth looks lovely and I am very proud of her for how she made it happen. Earth's moon was depicted with a pin, stuck into the planet. Sorry moon.

Uranus 

Next we started on the Gas Giants. Our commitment to scale was stretched to its limits by this point. Jupiter is so enormous that we would need to felt a ball the size of a basketball to make it accurate. The four rocky planets would be lost against the others. I tried to find my old polystyrene balls to cover, but I have no idea where they are, so on we felted, using up almost all the roving.

Neptune and Uranus are quite plain, and pretty colours too so were not terribly daunting. 

In her words, "Uranus was made plain pale blue wool with not much interesting pattens or colours. Little Sis helped too much in my opinion."

Neptune 

"Neptune was made dark purple with darker patches here and there."

Both weighed in at about 13 grams.

Saturn

With Saturn, we went for plain yellow roving, filling in the inside with leftover greys and silvers. Eventually it was large enough. I cut out a disc from yellow felt and drew circles on it with a pencil to give an impression of rings, then I hand sewed the disc to the ball.

Jupiter

Jupiter with its distinctive markings, gave me the most concern. It came out not too badly, but the eye/red spot is more like an ugly mole, rather than a gas storm. This is the only planet I made without the children helping. I built up the ball and then added strips of cream and different browns to get the stripes, then the red spot, which I should have done earlier and made much flatter. But it was recognisable enough as Jupiter. (We didn't attempt the moons!)

Sun

I ordered a large polystyrene ball, which came in two halves, for the Sun. Painting it and sprinting yellow glitter was really easy and fun and I wondered why, exactly, we were not painting all the planets on polystyrene balls. We kept the paint uneven colours and splurges with paler areas where the white shows through.

Mounting the planets on the Sun was a major pain. The assignment notes suggested that the whole project not take more than six hours. Well, Mr Science Teacher, hanging the planets from the sun took me more than six hours, and untangling them took about the same again. Twice.

My mistake really. I should have used wire, not cotton thread, to hang them. Or yarn at the very least. But I wanted them to be as invisible as possible and on long strings so that the spacing would work out. I'm pleased to say that, once all the untangling was done (twice), the piece looked how I wanted it to, and hung from the ceiling at school marvellously.