Category: felting

Needle felting has become my go-to craft when I want instant gratification (instant craftification?). It’s low pressure and quick. I know eventually I’ll start working on larger scale and/or more detailed pieces and they won’t be done in a sitting or two, but right now I’m just experimenting. Today’s experiment #1 started with rolling some coarse wool into a cylinder and testing out the process of making an indentation around it by needling repeatedly on a line. It grew from there.

Partly because I was having trouble making a flat piece with nothing under it, and partly because I am curious to experiment with nuno felting ideas, my next project was to needle felt colorful wool onto a piece of unbleached cotton muslin. I decided to add black wool in between, since I love stained glass, and after a trip to White River Yarns to acquire some, I immediately sat down and had this:

I love how fuzzy the back is, but I’ll be applying some wet felting techniques to make it both more secure and thinner overall. I wish I had taken a picture before I added the leading so you could see the huge difference in appearance.

On the occasion of my mother-in-law’s birthday I took the plunge into needle felting with the llama fleece she gave me for Christmas. Using a small cookie cutter as a mold, this was the result:

The stem is one-third of a length of cord (the cord I used for Stumpy’s belt when he was dressed as an Assyrian king); the rest is llama fleece. I am fairly pleased although it is a bit shaggy (and I even gave it a haircut). I acquired a three-needle pen but the needles were a bit fine for catching the smooth, slippery llama fibers, so then I got a set of heavier needles and made this little guy:

I started out trying to make a teddy bear, which is why he’s dark brown, but I couldn’t get the shape right so I changed direction. His eyes are coarse sheep’s wool, which was much easier to work with than the llama fleece, but the llama was easier on this one than the previous one. I think I’m getting the hang of the necessary manipulations.

After looking at an online preview of The Complete Photo Guide to Felting, I’m going to try to smooth the penguin-creature a little. She suggests four approaches: felting densely, applying the needle almost parallel to the surface, wet-felting by hand (dip your fingertips in warm water and rub the surface of the item until the loose strands are felted in), and giving the creature a haircut or a shave (with an actual safety razor). I think the middle two options are my best bet, especially as I already tried the haircut option. You’ll see him again in a while!

My mother-in-law gave me a needle felting kit for Christmas, along with some supplemental fleece. I had long admired needle felting but expected my reaction to wool would be even worse if the wool was in loose form and there were pointy implements involved – but this fleece was from llamas!

I was nervous about diving right into the loose fibers, though, and after looking at some projects online I thought I’d try needle felting with acrylic felt, the sort that comes in sheets. It works pretty well, although I expect the fleece will be easier to work with, in part because the fibers are longer.

Here’s my first try:

Here’s the second:

Here’s the third:

For that third one, I felted the orange squiggle down from the top, and then the hot pink backing up from the bottom. That gave it its hot pink hairs.

Earlier this week I went to White River Yarns for a needle felting pen, with three needles. This was partly so I can work a bit faster when I start on the actual fleece, and partly because I’m pretty sure the acrylic felt is ruining the original two needles.

It’s ruining the original backing material also, because I have to stab really hard!

As a final acrylic try before moving on to llama fleece, I wanted to try to make something three-dimensional. I started with a square that I rolled into a cone, and it reminded me of the paper that’s rolled around bouquets. I thought I could make my husband a bouquet – he brings me quite a few – so with a long thin strip I rolled a rose. That was enough to fill the tissue paper by itself, so I felted it into place and left it on Matt’s place at the dining table.