How much can you charge for a handmade needle-felted figure?

Lately, I’ve been getting the same question more and more often: how much can I charge for a needle-felted figure if I want to sell it?

It often comes up naturally. You make a mouse, a little dog, a frog, or another felted figure and someone says, “I’d love one of those too.” Or you post a photo of your work online and someone immediately asks if it’s for sale.

Lovely, of course. Until you have to decide what to charge.

A small felted figure may only contain a few euros’ worth of wool. At the same time, you can spend hours poking away with your felting needle before the head looks right, the legs are in proportion, and that one eye finally stops looking slightly wonky.

So do you base your price on material costs? Do you charge for every hour you worked? Or should you mainly look at what other people charge for their handmade felt work?

When I first started needle felting, I sold my felted mice and frogs on Etsy for a while. I absolutely loved carefully packaging my little animals and sending them all over the world.

Start with what your felted figure actually costs to make

Material costs are the easiest place to start.

Look at what you actually used, rather than everything you bought for the project.

For example, if you buy a bag of carded wool for €8 and use roughly a quarter of it, there is about €2 worth of wool in your figure.

Then add the other materials you used:

• pipe cleaners or wire;

• eyes;

• curly wool;

• accessories;

• any other small materials.

Let’s say your materials come to €5 in total.

At least now you know roughly what the figure cost you to make. But that still tells you very little about what you should actually charge for it.

With needle felting, also known as dry felting, most of the cost is in the time it takes to make something.

How much should you charge for your time?

Let’s say you spent five hours making a figure and you would like to earn €15 per hour for your time.

Your calculation would look like this:

€5 materials + 5 × €15 = €80

That can feel like quite a lot when you’re looking at a figure that is only ten centimetres tall.

But five hours of work is still five hours of work.

Building the shape, poking the wool with your felting needle, adding more wool, felting some more, creating the details, checking the proportions and probably redoing a few things along the way all take time.

Ignoring your hours completely just because wool itself isn’t very expensive gives you a rather unrealistic idea of what your work actually costs.

Do you have to charge for every hour?

Not always one-to-one.

Especially with needle felting for beginners, experience makes a big difference.

The first time you make a particular animal, it might take you eight hours. Make the same design ten times and you may be able to finish it in four.

I would still keep track of your hours. If you want to sell felted figures more often, that information is incredibly useful. You’ll quickly see which projects take a lot of time and which designs you become faster at making.

But don’t use your hours as the only way to decide on a price.

In the end, a buyer is mainly looking at the finished figure.

What determines the value of a felted figure?

Two figures of exactly the same size can have completely different prices.

Things to consider include:

• the size;

• how neat and detailed the finish is;

• how unusual or original the design is;

• whether it is custom made;

• how much demand there is for the work.

A simple felted character that takes two hours to make is very different from a pet portrait that you spend days creating from photographs.

That’s why a rule such as “a 10 cm felted figure should cost €35” doesn’t really work.

(A little reindeer Christmas scene I made waaaaay back :))

Look at similar handmade felt work

Before choosing a price, I would always have a look around. Etsy is a good place to start, as are other online marketplaces.

Search for makers who create similar needle-felted figures. Don’t just look for the cheapest one you can find. Look for pieces that are genuinely comparable to yours in size, finish and technique.

Also pay attention to where the item is being sold. A small figure at a flea market may be priced very differently from a handmade art piece in an Etsy shop or at a craft market. Where you sell and the type of customer shopping there can both affect what feels like a reasonable price.

Looking at a few good examples side by side usually gives you a fairly quick idea of the price range your own work fits into.

What if you calculate a price that nobody wants to pay?

Let’s say you add up your materials and your time and arrive at €95.

And your first thought is:

No one is ever going to pay €95 for this.

You could immediately decide to charge €40 instead.

But take another look at the calculation first.

Perhaps that particular design simply takes a very long time to make. If you need eight hours to create something that people value at around €40, it will be difficult to earn a reasonable amount per hour from it.

And that doesn’t have to be a problem at all if you are mainly felting for fun.

If you would like to sell your work more regularly, however, it can be useful to look at where all that time is going. Could the design be simpler? Will you naturally become faster with practice? Could you prepare certain parts in advance?

Not every needle-felting project has to make a good product to sell.

When can you raise your prices?

You don’t need a complicated formula for this.

Imagine you offer a few figures for €35 and they sell quickly every single time. Try €40 or €45 next time.

Are more people asking for your figures than you have time to make? That tells you something too.

Your price does not have to stay the same forever.

As you gain more experience with felting, work faster and improve your finish, your prices can grow with you.

On the other hand, you may notice that a particular design hardly sells at all. That doesn’t automatically mean you need to make it cheaper. Maybe it doesn’t suit the place where you are selling it, the photos could be better, or another design simply appeals to people more.

A simple way to decide on your first selling price

If you want to sell a handmade needle-felted figure for the first time, I would put these three amounts next to each other:

1. How much did I actually use in materials?

2. How much time did I spend on it, and what would I consider a reasonable amount for that time?

3. What are people charging for comparable handmade felt work?

That already gives you much more to work with than simply looking at the cost of your wool.

Then ask yourself one more question:

At what price would I genuinely be happy for this figure to go and live with someone else?

If someone pays you €25 and afterwards you realise you didn’t really want to part with it after spending two evenings felting it, €25 probably wasn’t a great price.

Can you sell a figure made from a The Wool Family pattern?

Yes, absolutely. I love that.

If you have made a figure using a pattern, book or kit from The Wool Family, you are welcome to sell the figure you made yourself.

So if you have been felting Sunny, Flop, Frodo, Ollie, Cato or another The Wool Family character and someone would like to buy it, that is completely fine.

The Wool Family patterns, photographs, text and video tutorials may not be copied, shared or resold. But the handmade figure you create yourself can be sold.

That also applies if you make the same figure again specifically to sell.

Frequently asked questions about selling needle-felted figures

How much does a handmade needle-felted figure cost?

There is no fixed price. Materials, size, finish, the time involved and the type of work all play a part. It also helps to compare your figure with similar handmade felt work.

Should I charge an hourly rate for dry felting?

You don’t have to charge every hour one-to-one, but it is sensible to take your time into account. Otherwise, it is difficult to judge whether a selling price is actually worth it for you.

Is dry felting the same as needle felting?

Yes. Dry felting is another name commonly used for needle felting. With this technique, you use a special barbed felting needle to repeatedly poke loose wool until the fibres become firmer and hold their shape.