Needle Felting

For those who have seen my flickr photos recently you may have noticed my latest obsession - needle felting!

I received a book for Christmas called "little felted animals" by Marie-Noëlle Horvath (click here for the Amazon link), and this inspired me to try my hand at needle felting, which up until then I had been completely ignorant about if I'm totally honest!

For those who may equally be in the dark, in simple terms needle felting is the art of making shapes out of wool fibres (carded or combed). You need a special felting needle for this which has little barbs which cause the wool fibres to knit together when you jab into the wool with it. I bought myself a little starter kit on ebay (click here for the listing link) which is ideal for beginners.

Above I have shown some of the things I have made this week. My first item was the mouse (Marty) who wasn't initially supposed to be a mouse but just an experiment, but strangely enough a mouse started to appear!! Then I made a toadstool - just because I love toadstools!! Then I made a piece of cheese for Marty, see the steps below which show how this turned from a cloud of yellow wool into a slightly strange looking piece of emmental!! My last piece was a corsage flower which I attached happily to my new grey woolly jacket today - can't wait to make more of these, can see these being a favourite of mine!!

You can buy so many different colours of wool - or if you are feeling adventurous you can dye your own - might leave this to the experts though!!

The great thing about needle felting is how quick and easy it is. You will probably end up stabbing yourself a few times along the way as you do jab quite quickly once you get the hang of it - but it helps to keep your eye on the ball!! Before I started, I watched a few videos about needle felting on Youtube as I couldn't quite believe that all you had to do is jab at the wool - it seemed too easy!! And there are no hard and fast rules, just the more you jab the denser the shape gets - simples!!

There are some amazing felt artists out there such as Kit Lane, Lil Fish Studios (Lisa Jordan) and Vria Lee (Victor Dubrovsky) to name but a few - please do check out their links - you will be amazed!!