Needle felt a fox, hare, squirrel or deer with this selection of Wildlife colours, or use the browns, black, whites and greys to make subtly coloured marbled felt balls, beads or felt wrapped soap. The wool fibres can be needle felted or wet felted to make an effective wall hanging or 3-dimensional object. This wool tops multi-pack includes 10g each Lightning White, Natural Undyed, Silver, Pewter, Black and Tan, plus 20g each of Chestnut and Brown. Each of the colours are also available from this website in quantities of 50g and 100g.
To get you started with felting, we include below a tutorial on how to needle felt.
Needle Felting an Object
- Both the angle and the depth of the ‘poke’ are important for shaping. The fibre goes exactly where poked; directly down from the surface carries the fibres straight down, and at an angle, they are carried sideways. Poking only a small distance works only the surface fibres. This toughens the top layer and forms a ‘skin’ while the interior fibres stay loose and fluffy. Deep poking (burying the needle ¾ of its length) forms deep indentations. This is the key to three dimensional felt shaping.
- Do the deep shaping first. Too much shallow work locks the surface fibres, and they are then resistant to moving. Start by deep basting using deliberate, deep pokes spaced 0.5 to 1 cm apart along the shaping line. Have a foam pillow under your work to take the end of the needle stroke. Go back over the line with deeper pokes, until it is the depth you want and stays roughly in place. Then get down to the line holding the fibres on each side with the index and middle fingers in a ‘V’-shape and the needle with the other hand.
- Now start detailing. As you poke, some of the initial shaping may soften; go back over it later. It helps to rough shape the entire outline, then go back a second and third time to refine and define the shape, rather than needle a single feature from basting to finish before starting the next feature. Poke with ‘angles’ to give depth to a feature; for a nose, poke all around aiming at an imaginary centre.
- After the deep basting, use a ‘shorter stroke’ for the refinement. Finish up with a very short poke all over to give the final ‘skin’. Apply any final colour with mid-strokes to attach, followed by short strokes to push/pull it into shape along the edge and finish.
- Where stubborn fibres stick straight up, work the needle in a small circular motion around the fibres, and then poke down so that they catch in the needle’s notches. If there are still fibres sticking up, trim them with scissors.
