Needlefelting Class

I taught another needle felting class. The yarn shop, Recycled Lamb, the class is at has moved to a beautiful new building with an actual class room with great views and shoppers can come and see what we're doing and get inspired. A great atmosphere! I'm liking doing just a full day rather than the typical 4 evenings once a week. I took some pictures of some of the finished works.

Needle Felting Class

Needle Felted Gnome

I taught another needlefelting class - this one in one day, rather than dividing it up into 4 evening once a week classes. Everyone is different and I love seeing the differing personalities created!

I did the typical starting out with doing a flat picture so they could get used to the barbed needles. I should have taken pictures of them. Once they were well along and could fine tune them at home to their heart's content, we started on three dimensional wool sculpting.

I always have them start with the head, then the body and attach it to the head and then clothe it. I have them think about whether it'll sit or hang from a wall. Standing is harder - the legs and torso need to be heavily needled so stiff enough to stand. That would take more time.

They start out with a slight idea of what they want - usually a female. But as they go along, usually the face will take on a personality and lets you know it wants to be a male, or a fairy, or a gnome, or old, or young ...

The next one is the one I made as we worked the stages together. Since everyone pretty much goes with flesh tone wool, I choose to go out of the box with working with another color. I actually love this creature! I love it's expression.

My needle felted example unfinished - but I love it so far!

Nuno Felted Scarves

Some day I'll show tutorial steps in nuno felting. I'm still working the art and perfecting it, if there is such a thing. These are some of what I've done ...

Nuno Felted Scarf on cotton gauze

Nuno Felted Scarf on cotton gauze

Felted Wreaths

This is my second Christmas of making these wreaths. This year I wet felted the wool to the styrofoam wreath, then needle felted on the details. Some are wrapped with a coordinating wool yarn. I'll make the leaves and some other details separate, needling on a foam pad, then adding them to the wreath.

Felted styrofoam wreaths

Felted styrofoam wreaths - 2 stacked

I've mentioned before, probably in the felted egg post, that the styrofoam needs to be the rough, not the smooth kind for needlefelting.

Felt and Jewelry

In my current felting jag, I made this jewelry set. I'd bought the jewelry blanks at Hobby Lobby. I needle felted a long strip of the blue-green background, then cut it in squares to fit the bracelet blanks and one to fit the necklace blank. Then I needled in the small designs in colors that would go with an outfit I wear. The picture shows the jacket. I'm going to be making more felted jewelry!

MOPS NeedleFelting Craft

I've been a MOPS Mentor Mom going on 11 years now. I led the needlefelting craft for my MOPS group today. It was so fun and the gals were gabbing away while creating beautiful felted pictures. Most of them were needled onto craft felt that I provided. I'll glue these onto cardstock and use as cards.

Felted Lariat Flower Necklace

Felted Lariat Necklace

I've been having so much fun exploring more wet felting techniques. There's a lot of felted jewelry ideas to explore. For this Lariat necklace I first needlefelted the flowers and leaves. Then I wet felted the green rope. Then I needled on the leaves and flowers. I might want to add some beads.

Felting Over Styrofoam - Eggs and Wreath

Wet-felting over styrofoam

Just like felting over soap, you can felt over styrofoam. Just like my felted soap tutorial, I'm using the plastic sandwich bag for felting over the eggs. At the time, I only had the smooth styrofoam. I wanted to experiment again. I'd totally needlefelted wool Christmas ornaments and found the styrofoam needed to be the pourous rough styrofoam. This time I wanted to wet felt the initial wool layer to the egg - so much faster. In fact, once blotted in a towel, you can needle your design details with the still wet wool ... if you need to, which I did need to when I did another tea crafting party ... but that's another post ...

So start with the coarse styrofoam for balls, eggs, wreaths, whatever shape ... when you want to needlefelt. The only way I could get design details on the smooth styrofoam wet felted eggs was to needle the flowers on sideways catching the designs into the wool - so don't even mess with the smooth styrofoam. I order most of my wool from HalcyonYarns.com. The Babooshka Soup bag has lots of wool strings and other fun fibers that make for decorating ornaments and eggs very easy. I love the Peace Fleece fiber and the Harrisville wools.

Tightly cover the styrofaom with thin layers of wool. Carefully squish into a corner of a plastic sandwich bag, put a drop of dishsoap on the wool, let the water get hot and put a bit in the bag. Squeeze the bag around the egg and then start slowly rubbing the plastic around (I still have not tried doing this in a nylon stocking). Then rub the plastic more and more all over the egg so the fibers can migrate and tangle together tightly. The soap will disperse all thruout the wool. You'll eventually need to squeeze out the excess soapy water and rub some more. At this point I'll often rinse the wool, squeezing out excess, but a bar of soap over it and then rub over bubble wrap for another form of agitation. I don't do this for long because needling on a design will tighten things up more. This whole process probably amounts to just a few minutes per egg. Rinse them well and blot in a towel.

Then needle on your design details. I didn't take a picture of the finished eggs ... I'll have to do that and post.

Wool DreadLocks

I LOVE dreadlocks. I'm attracted to dreadlocks. I think I would like dreadlocks. But I wouldn't want to shave my head when I tired of them. So if anyone can tell me differently, let me know ...

Wool Dreadlocks

I made wool dreadlocks and attached them to a crocheted headband I made. Monte would rather I make dreadlocks that match my hair coloring - looking more natural. So maybe I'll make a wig of them someday ... But here's what I made so far ...

I pulled long stands of wool, wet them with hot soapy water and gently rolled them on bubblewrap. That's it. I left one end unfelted. I stuck these ends through the crochet holes and wet the headband and soaped it up and rubbed it on bubblewrap. This secured the wool locks to the headband.

Needlefelted Hair Clip

I wear hair clips a lot and wanted a felted flower one. So I needled the wool into leaves and flower petals, needled them together into a flower and sewed it onto a hair clip.

Spring Visuals

Every year I used to make a "Firsts of Spring" chart - it is so ingrained in us now that I don't need to make a chart. My kids are adults, yet will text me they saw ... They know how that first bluebird and crocus flower lifts my spirit. YEAH! Winter is over - tho not so winter weather, still to come thru May, tho the in-between days are longer and warmer! Robins have come. I've cleaned out my bird houses for this years tenants. Aspen catkins will soon be budding. Then I look forward to the first hummingbird sound mid-May. I don't look forward to the first smell of a stinkbug.

Years ago too I made some little felt flower people and bunnies. I got the idea from a book I have from the UK. Waldorf schools always have these visual aids for the seasons - like having a seasonal table that is always changing. Kids can go on nature walks and add things to the table. Our kitchen table is usually the seasonal table. I have a wreath hanging over the table that I'll often hang seasonal or holiday things from. For the Fall I made little trolls. They remind my heart that tho nature appears dead in winter, beneath the scenes, nature is regrouping for the next year's new birth to life.

Spring is a fertile season. No baby chicks for us this year, as in years past. No kids are around and I want to have the freedom to go places with Monte and not find caretakers. But in the future? ... I do miss my chickens. Little Johnny Jump-up Violas are some of the first flowers to bloom, along with the crocus. The other little lady is trillium. Then there's the little brown seed-pods.

Nuno Felting

Nuno felted silk scarf

I've done felting for years - starting with wet felted pictures, hats and slippers. I've done knitted items that are then wet felted by throwing them in the washer with towels or jeans. I've done lots of needlefelted pictures and sculpting. But I've never done nuno felting.

Nuno felting utilizes a sheer type of fabric with wool. It's wet felted very gently and with cooler temp soapy water so that the wool fibers will slowly get worked into the fabric. Once the wool has migrated into the material, then the soapy water temp should be hotter and you can roll and agitate the material more.

'Shingle' the wool onto the sheer material

The first thing I tried was a silk organza scarf and varieties of wools in coordinating colors. I put the painting blue tape on the table first so I'd know the original outline of the scarf. This is only important if you are going to be laying out wool for both sides of the scarf. I put down plastic, then bubble wrap, then a mesh curtain material, and laid out the wool, and then the scarf and then more wool fiber on top. All this was encased in polyester sheer curtain material, wet with cool/warm soapy water. Roll up in bubblewrap and gently roll - like 100 times, turning the roll. Unroll and roll up again from the other end of the scarf and gently roll another 100 times. Unroll and roll tighter and rolling tougher. Check to see if the wool is migrating through the material. Squeeze out excess water and do it all again with hot soapy water. Then I started squeezing and rinsing at the sink with changing water temps, and even throwing the scarf into the sink. (I found some great tutorials on YouTube.)

Finished silk scarf

After making the scarf, I did some practice pieces using cotton gauze material and black merino wool. The wool does shrink, pulling in the material some, and I wanted to test the amounts of wool, so did a variety of designs. I might make a blouse with these test pieces.

Nuno felting on cotton gauze material with merino wool

I want to practice this technique more.