I made both the “Dryer Ball” pattern by Ashley King, and the “Dryer Balls” pattern by Meredith McFarland, as well as making a solid wool ball by just winding the wool into a ball using this tutorial.

Overall, I preferred this pattern (the one by Ashley King), and it’s the one I’ll use for the remainder of the dryer balls.

My notes below cover all three versions:

Neither of the two knitted patterns really gave me any idea of how large they were, so I decided to make one of each.

With both, I filled them with a core made of a ball of acrylic yarn that pretty much filled the “jacket”, leaving it loose enough to seam and not be really tight (to allow for shrinking as it felted).

After I made them, it occurred to me that because of the acrylic yarn core, they probably wouldn’t be as absorbent as if I’d use all wool. Will that matter? Probably not for fluffing and softening the laundry, but 100% wool ones might be more absorbent, and allow the laundry to dry more quickly. That’s when I decided to make the all-wool one.

In the photos, this pattern made the larger of the two gray balls. The small gray ball is the pattern by Meredith, and the gold ball is the solid wool ball.

Dimensions of each:

• Ashley pattern: about 10” in circumference, 3” in diameter.
• Meredith pattern: about 8” in circumference, 2.5” in diameter.
• Gold ball: about 9” in circumference and about 2.75” in diameter. (I used about 2.2 oz of Cascade 220 for this.)

Thoughts on the three projects:

I like the finished size at around 2.5” to 2.75”. If you’re using all wool, they’ll continue to shrink a bit, so you may want to be closer to 2.75” to allow for future shrinkage.

My first try at this pattern came out a little larger than I would like (3” in diameter), but I didn’t know how big to make the core, and it was probably too big. If I had made a smaller ball for the core, the outer layer would have felted down to fit. I have since made more, and this jacket size worked out great over a 2.5-2.75” core. It did take two trips through the washing machine and a trip through the dryer before the jacket really felted down around the core, though. I think casting on 2 less stitches (8 instead of 10) would probably be perfect.

The “Dryer Balls” pattern by Meredith McFarland was about the minimum size I’d like, but after felting, the jacket was pretty stretched out and some of the core was peeking through, so the core should probably have been a little smaller to allow for better shrinkage of the jacket. It probably would have been fine if I’d added two plain rows between the increases and decreases.

With either of the two patterns, if you want to use acrylic in the core, I’d do what Ashley suggests: start with an acrylic core, but also wind some wool over that for the outer layer of the core, in addition to making the jacket from wool. That would give a little more absorbancy than having a 100% acrylic core.

If you have plenty of wool to spare, and don’t want to be bothered knitting a jacket, the wound wool ball was quick and easy - though until it has been through the dryer a few times, it might be possible to snag the individual wool strands.

Bottom line: Either of the knitted jacket patterns is fine, depending on the size you want.

The solid wool balls are simple, since they don’t require any knitting, but it depends on whether you like the look of the wound ball of yarn or the felted jackets. After a few uses, though, it looks a little ragged. I prefer the looks of the ones with the knitted jacket.