Needle felting

Hi guys! This is my post on needle felting that I have recently learnt at college.

What you will need:

Felting needles

Needle tool/handle

Foam mat

Felt

Wool

 First the health and safety for needle felting the needles are very sharp so make sure they are always stuck in the foam mat when your not using it. When pulling the needle out of the handle don't pull your fingers down the needle as it will cut you. Finally keep your eyes on what you are doing and don't accidentally stick yourself in the finger with the needle.

Felting needles

Needle tool and foam mat

To needle felt you lay your flat piece of felt that you are working with onto the foam mat. Then taking your wool lay it where you want to needle felt it and then with the needle start stabbing/pushing the fibers through the felt. After this carefully pull the felt piece off the foam mat. This is all you need to do there are also handles that can have multiple needles in so that you can needle felt bigger areas. 

This YouTube video is a quick demonstration of this technique. 

Needle Felting Video

First needle felted piece

This piece I had 15 minutes to do and I was told to do a sunrise as a sample. It was also a way to get comfortable with the technique and experiment with different shapes, blending and sizes of felt. I think my piece went well apart from the fact that some more of the felt fibers needed pushing through the felt to make the image less blurred.

Second needle felted piece

The second needle felted piece was done on top of a wet felted piece the picture above was taken when it was half done. I did then felt a bike on top of this but unfortunately forgot to take a picture. It does look very french and I found that the two techniques work beautifully together if you stick to a theme.

This process is good to use for more solid images and next time I would like the chance to embroider on top of pieces like these. I hope you have enjoyed this post x