Tag Archives: needle felting

Welcome, Lucy!

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I think I have found my One True Crafting technique in needle felting. It’s like sculpture with therapeutic stabbiness and without the messy clay.

Here is my newest little creature – a lovely lady who’s name is clearly Lucy:

Lucy

Standing at just about 4″, she is small in stature but big in heart, all soft and warm in her wooly cloak. Her staff was the only really challenging part – I took some medium-gauge copper wire and poked it through her hand, and then felted the wool onto the wire. It was very stabby, but not so therapeutic – I managed to poke my index finger pretty sharply several times. Other than that, she is all wool. I was going to shape her face more, and maybe even add some embroidery for her features, but in the end I liked the Amish doll simplicity of her face so much that I didn’t want to change it.

Now all she needs is a flock of mini sheep to frolic and gambol around her.

 

Felt for regular needles, too

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Last year I put together a little sewing kit for myself, after getting tired of having more and more clothes that I couldn’t wear for a missing button or the like. (We have a collection of  random mini-sewing kits that have multiplied over the years, bunny-like, but they hide whenever it is time to come out and play.)

I “splurged” in a few places because I knew that under normal use, I was going to be irritated at best to even need a sewing kit (because buttons have no sense of timing when it comes to randomly popping off one’s clothing), and so maybe having something cute or nice would help soften the blow and make me an ever-so-slightly nicer person during such repair work. So: Sweet little glass jar? Check. Cute little wooden spools? Check. Pretty stork scissors? Check. Cheap plastic insert to hold the needles? Check. Wait, what?

Last week I had a neat idea to replace the cheap plastic insert with a little felt pin cushion attached to the inside of the jar lid. So, after some theraputic stabby-time with my felting needles and an even more satisfying stint with my hot-glue gun, I can now reveal my latest felt adventure:

In order to create a core that was dense enough to hold the needles, even when upside down, I started with a small amount of roving and just stabbed the heck out of it with my largest gauge needle until it was very, very dense and maybe 1/3 the size that it started. (And about half the size of my final pin cushion.) Then, I added layers, carefully shaping the cushion as I went. Finally, I put a light layer around the outside, and using my smallest gauge needle, created a prettier, cloud-like effect.

I’m going to give this a few months of testing, but assuming it continues to work as it does now – I’m claiming victory. And I think I will now even SMILE while sewing rebellious buttons back on. (I’m not making any promises about darning, though. I think “darn” is just not quite a strong enough term to cover it.)

Further fun with felt

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Redbeard is just shaking his head, but I’m rather pleased with my most recent adventures with felt. I got it into my head about a week ago that what I needed to do, what I really need to do was, I needed to try to make needle felted tulips. I finally got a chance to give it a try, and am pretty happy this first effort. Of course, I didn’t think to take pictures until I was nearly done, but here is one in-progress picture and the final product:

Bulb flowers are for sale everywhere here, usually in small pots that have just enough soil to let them grow, but not enough to let them grow very large. There are lots of pygmy daffodils here. 🙂 Anyway, my idea was to do the same thing with these felt flowers. So, rather than a vase, they are in a little pot.

The small scale of these was a bit challenging, and I am still thinking about how to best shape the flowers themselves. The thing that I thought would be a problem – having stems that were strong enough to stand upright – turned out to be no problem at all. I figured I’d have to somehow put wire into the stems, but they are easily standing on their own.

Also, I’d like to pretend that I planned for this, but I have to admit that it is sheer dumb luck that I picked tulips instead of some other flower. Because tulips have a naturally thick stem compared to most other flowers, I think my tulips look better than if I had started with, say, roses. In short, chunky is okay here. I think.

The Netherlands also has these traditional tulip vases that have small holes for each individual stem instead of a big opening at the top. I may have to try that for my next set.

Felt penguin

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Here is my first attempt at a felt creature made from an actual set of instructions:

My fantastic grandmother (the recipient of my earlier alpaca) got me Laurie Sharp’s Wool Pets, which had this pattern, along with a bunch of other equally neat creatures.

I actually made this right after Christmas, but have only gotten to post it now – things have been a little crazy in the lead up to my current status: ex-patriot living The Netherlands. It’s a temporary gig – 5 months. But that’s plenty of time to track down some yarn shops!

Making new friends

Fiber,

Almost literally in this case…

This little alpaca is my second attempt at needle felting, and I think it went pretty well. This took a little longer than my sheep, but was still a nice project for someone with a short project-attention span (like me). I really, really enjoyed making this, in fact. The only thing that was a little frustrating was getting the wool to cover his feet. I think that this is something that I will just have to get better at with practice. Lots and lots of practice.

Good thing these are small, or I would already be worrying about how they would all fit in my house. Though, in this case I already have a new home in mind for this little fellow …

Not baaaaaaad!

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Sorry, I couldn’t resist. That was a friend of mine’s response to this, my first attempt at needle felting:

This took about an hour or so from start to finish, which included fussing around with the armature (read: pipe cleaner stolen from my children’s craft supplies) and a few false starts figuring out how much wool I needed for each stage of building up the body. Oh, and endlessly poking the legs to get all trace of the armature hidden.

Toward the end, I couldn’t help but feel a little like I was making some sort of demented voodoo doll, and that somewhere there was a poor little sheep thinking it had suddenly developed arthritis and migraines all at the same time.

Like I need another hobby

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But this one is fiber related, so that’s okay, right?

Last weekend I went to a local artisan’s festival here in town, and our local Waldorf-inspired school had a table filled with fantastic and fantastical things. I ended up buying a couple of lovely magical wands for the daughters of friends of mine (coincidentally made by another friend of mine, though I didn’t know that at the time). But, the thing that really caught my attention was the population of felted gnomes. Unspeakably cute and cuddly, I handled them way more than is decent. Yet, in the end, I could not quite bring myself to buy one. Something in my heart made me understand that I wanted – needed – to make my own, although I didn’t have the faintest clue how they were put together (fairy dust and love?).

If you aren’t familiar with this type of felted project, let me direct your attention to Felting Dreams (an etsy store), which has wonderful examples.

How I love the internet. Within 48 hours, I now know that what I want to learn how to do is called needle felting, and I have identified two books and about five websites that look promising. Oh, and I ordered a set of felting needles and a felting pad. Because what do I need? Another hobby. (And my very own felt gnome!)