Needle Felting: An Introduction to the Art and Craft of Making Wool Felt with Needles

Needle felting refers to the process of making wool felt by means of poking the fibers thousands of times with one or more barbed needles.

Animal fibers like wool from sheep or rabbits are unique from synthetic fibers in that their fibers can be agitated by the tiny barbs on a needle, which then forces them to tangle and bond together, basically creating tons of tiny knots and tangles which, after much repeated agitation, thickens more and more to form a solid fiber known as felt! It's really quite incredible to watch it come together.

Technically, you could felt with many different types of animal fur, but the most common is sheep's wool. Needle felting can reduce a big handful of wool roving (the term for the soft fluffy wool you get before it's spun into yarn or felted) into a small, tightly felted piece of art, from a needle felted animal figurine to a decorative felt brooch, beads for jewelry, small wool felted bowls, you name it!

Some artisans take their felting a step further and use a technique called 'wet felting' to further bond fibers once a design has been started. This involves washing the wool in hot water to make the fibers bond even more closely and tightly to create a more hardy product. (Ever wonder why your wool sweaters shrink in the wash? They're not actually shrinking, they're felting!)

Here is a brief set of step by step instructions to help you get started with needle felting. We'll start by just making a small needle felted ball to help you get the hang of it. So grab your materials and let's get started!

Materials

• Wool roving in your choice of color(s)
  
• Optional: Wool Carding Brushes. (in a pinch, wire pet brushes work really well, actually!)
  
• A barbed needle or multi-needle handle
  
• A thick sponge, piece of florist foam or other foam to place under your work in progress
  
• Band-aids, just in case!
  
• For future projects, you may want some wire for an armature or wool batting for a basic shape, if creating a sculpture.
  

Instructions for Needle Felting a small ball or felted marble

Wool roving often comes rolled up almost like a piece of batting. If your wool is like this, take a long strip of it 1-2" wide and about a foot long. If your wool is more of a ball or wad rather than a roll, tear off a chunk about the size of a golf ball.

Roll your wool tightly into a more compact shape. If you have a strip, roll it like a cinnamon roll, but continuing to tuck the sides under as you go so it forms more of a ball shape. If you have a ball, try to flatten it and fold it in on itself to make your wool mass more compact. The more firm you can compress your wool before you start poking with the needle, the less time it will take for your needle felted sculpture to thicken and hold itself together.

Now, the careful, repetitive but satisfying part, start poking! Laying your squished-together wool on top of your foam, begin piercing your wool with your needle as many times as your hand can do before getting tired.

How deep to poke the needle into the wool - You want to feel your needle going through your wool and into the sponge or foam, but not so far that you risk going through it into the hard surface below (or your leg, if you're doing it on your lap. Ouch!!). Be sure to rotate as you go, turning your sculpture all around so you get all sides. This also prevents it from fusing to your foam. If you poke through it into the foam too many times in one place, it will begin embedding your wool fibers into the foam!

How quickly to poke the needle while needle felting - Different people go at different paces. Some go super fast and others are more careful and slow. For your first time, don't rush it. It can be easy to feel impatient and want to see results, but you don't want to miss and jab your finger (I have done this many a time. It is quite painful!).

As your needle felted sculpture takes shape - Continue poking your ball, rotating frequently to poke at different sides so you get an even shape all the way around. See how it's coming together and you feel more resistence under your needle? Eventually, you will no longer need to poke all the way through into your foam, and you won't want to at risk of breaking your needle. Technically you could continue for longer and longer until your felt is so thick you can't poke through it!

Finishing your needle felted marble - If your marble isn't completely round, don't be hard on yourself! It's your first try and this is very exciting. You can always wrap more of your wool around it to even it out and continue poking with your needle felting needle to bond the new fibers into the surface. You may also want to get creative and make your marble really look more like a marble by taking another color and adding 'swirls'. You can do this by taking small wisps of another color of wool roving, wrapping them around your marble and poking with your needle to bond them but not completely embed them.

Tada! Congratulations! You have just made your first needle felted project! Addictive, isn't it?

As with all arts and crafts, it's always nice to have someone show you how it's done. I've included some great tutorial videos I found on the Web below to guide you on your way to needle felting mania! :)

There are some really great needle felting kits out there that give you neatly rolled handfuls of wool roving all tucked into a box, ready to felt whenever you are. These also tend to be a bit more expensive because the preparation work has been done for you.

If you get more raw wool or just have a ball of wool that's looking a bit matted, you'll want to card it first to get all of the fibers going the same direction. This will give you the best wool roving to start with because all of the wool in your hand will have aligned fibers, giving you endless possibilities once you start felting, without the worry that it will already be knotting up before you've decided how you'd like to lay out your design or sculpture.

To card wool, you'll want a set of wool hand carders. These look like big slightly curved flat square hairbrushes, but they're actually specially made to card wool.



The carders featured here are from schachtspindle.com and you can see their curved backs and the many wires used to gently separate the wool fibers.

To card, you basically swap the wool roving back and forth between your hand carders, pulling one carder over the other in one direction until the wool is transferred, then flipping over and repeating the process with the other carder. Eventually, all of the knots and tangles will release and you'll be left with silky wool roving you can pull out of the brushes and use for needle felting! Pretty cool, huh?

As I mentioned before, pet brushes can work well in a pinch. Just make sure they're flat and have lots of wires rather than the wider, rubber-coated ones.

If you're confused, (which is totally okay!) there's a great carding video below that will show you exactly how it's done.