Cretur Fetur

What is needlefelting?

Needle felting is a sculptural technique invented at some point in or around the 80's, a spinoff of industrial dry felting. It works by poking wool repeatedly with a specially barbed needle, which makes the fibers lock together and increases the density of the fiber. You can make 2D appliqué embellishments like this, or you can build upon it sculpturally by adding more and more wool, manipulating the shape by poking more here and less there and/or adding a little more wool in places. It's really easy to pick up on, easy to fix mistakes, intuitive and flexible.

Resources:

• WC Mercantile - A wide and excellent selection of dyed and undyed merino, corriedale, silk, all sorts of high quality stuff. I get all my merino from them.
• Zeilinger Wool Co. - Their 100% White Craft Wool/Felting Batt is great as a core wool. My personal favorite. It is also available at Dream Felt, in smaller quantities to help you save on shipping.
• American Felt and Craft - All kinds of needle felting supplies. Their wool is fun to work with, I used it for this alebrije.
• Living Felt - A great resource all around, with supplies and tutorials aplenty.
• Felt Alive - A lot of great information here; tutorials, materials, more resources, and also the home of the Felting Forum, which has many golden nuggets of information in its many posts.
• Mielke's Fiber Arts – Good place to get cheap NZ Corriedale top, huge selection of colors. Sells the Fiber Artist's Bag of Candy, a sampler bag with 50 different colors of perfectly evenly dyed Corriedale top, for $32. Great for playing with color.

Recommended Books:

• I Felt Awesome, by Moxie
• Needle Felting to the Point, by Harlan
• The Complete Photo Guide to Felting, by Ruth Lane