Felt is easy to glue. Most household glues will work on it, but different glues have different properties. Let’s find out which glue is best for your felt project.
No time to read? The best glue for felt is:
Best Glue for Felt to Felt or other fabrics: Aleene’s Fabric Glue
Best Glue for Felt to Wood or other solids: 3M 77 Multipurpose Adhesive Spray
Best Glue for Needle Felting: E6000 Craft Glue.
Table of Contents
How to Glue Felt
There are two types of felt: Wool felt and Acrylic felt.
Acrylic felt is cheaper and is usually the type of felt you find in craft stores. Wool felt is more expensive and usually only found in specialist fabric stores.
Since we have two different fabric materials, we need to be careful about which glue we use for felt projects.
Some glues would work well on wool felt (like Hot Glue) but would melt Acrylic felt and create a mess.
For both wool and acrylic felt, I recommend Aleene’s Fabric Fusion fabric glue.
It’s cheap and flexible, and it can go through the wash without disintegrating, unlike regular PVA white glue.
If you don’t need the final product to be waterproof, I recommend you just use Elmer’s School Glue or some other regular PVA craft glue. It’s safe and non-toxic, dries quickly and bonds felt strongly.
Best glue for Felt to Fabric
If you’re gluing felt to other fabrics, you probably want it to be washable, and flexible.
For that reason, I would not recommend using PVA or craft glue, as it will dissolve in water and won’t remain flexible after it cures.
Instead, use some good quality fabric glue like Aleene’s Fabric Fusion, which works well on felt and all kinds of fabric.
Crucially, fabric glue stays flexible once it’s dry, and it can be put through the washer/dryer without coming apart – which is ideal for fabric projects.
If you are making something decorative that you know you’ll never need to take outside or wash, you can also use many other household glues, including PVA craft glue or regular superglue, however, these will make the felt inflexible, and superglue is quite brittle, so it won’t take much to break the bond once it’s cured.
Best glue for Felt to Wood
Attaching felt to wood is incredibly easy. You can use just about any household glue you can think of.
Since Wood is not flexible, it doesn’t matter if you use a glue that dries solid or remains flexible. And since you probably won’t be putting anything wooden through the washer, your glue probably also does not need to be waterproof.
The easiest solution for this problem is just to use some cheap PVA white glue. Elmer’s School Glue would work, all PVA bonds very strongly to both wood and felt.
Make sure not to use too much, so it doesn’t soak through the felt and ruin the texture of the finished project.
If you are worried about it soaking through and ruining the finish of the felt, you may opt to use a spray glue instead. 3M 77 Adhesive Spray works very well on wood and fabrics. It’s the cheapest spray available from 3M too, so it won’t break the bank!
PVA glue sticks are another option, which make it easier to apply a very thin layer of PVA.
Best glue for Felt to Plastic
PVA will not adhere to most plastics, so the best choice here is to use a contact cement or an epoxy.
Luckily, 3M 77 spray contact adhesive adheres to plastic as well as felt, and makes it easy to apply a thin layer so that it won’t soak through the felt and ruin the finish.
If you don’t have 3M 77 available in your country, you might also choose to use E6000 craft glue, although it’s difficult to get a thin layer.
Best glue for Felt to Cardboard
The best option for gluing felt to cardboard is to use an adhesive spray like 3M 77 multipurpose adhesive spray.
3M 77 adhesive spray will not soak through your felt and will adhere very strongly to both cardboard and felt.
Since it’s a spray, it’s easy to get a nice uniform, thin coating on the cardboard for a perfect finish.
If you don’t have 3M 77 spray available, you may also opt to use regular PVA crafting glue like Elmer’s School Glue. It adheres easily to both cardboard and felt, but it’s more difficult to get a thin, even coating.
Be careful not to use too much PVA glue, in case it soaks through the felt, ruining the fabric.
Best glue for Felt Flowers
Making flowers from felt is a common project in arts and crafts circles.
You have loads of different choices here, depending on your requirements for your finished product.
If you’re planning on attaching your small felt flowers or patches to your clothes, canvas, or any other fabric:
- Use a fabric glue like Aleene’s Fabric Fusion fabric glue. Don’t be tempted to use Aleene’s felt and foam glue, because it is not flexible and is not waterproof. Make sure you use the fusion fabric glue instead!
- Fabric glue remains flexible once dry, usually comes in a spray bottle making it easier to apply, and can be safely put through the washer and dryer without coming apart. (Vital for clothing projects!)
For strictly indoors decorative-only felt flowers:
- You can choose almost any adhesive you like. Elmer’s School Glue is extremely cheap and will work just fine. Just bear in mind your finished product will not be as flexible as if you had used fabric glue, and it won’t be waterproof.
Best glue for Needle Felting
The beauty of needle felting is that you don’t need glue at all, however you may sometimes want to attach small decorations made from glass, plastic, metal or some other non-felt material to your needle felting creations.
In this case, your best option is to use E6000 Craft glue.
E6000 works on glass, plastic, metal, and fabric, dries clear and remains flexible once it’s cured.
It’s a bit tricky to apply, but you can use a toothpick to apply a tiny amount to small decorations.
It’s viscous enough that it won’t seep into your felt too much. Just make sure you needle the felt well so it’s quite dense before you use it.
Conclusion
Felt is an easy material to glue.
The best options for most circumstances are to use Aleene’s Fabric Fusion fabric glue for fabric projects, or to use a strong spray adhesive like 3M 77 Spray Adhesive for attaching felt to solid objects.
The best glue for attaching decorations to needle felting creations is E6000 craft glue.
Hope this helped! Thank you for reading.
-Bill