I started this before my needle felted mouse, but left it half finished when I didn't feel like working on fiddly details. It's been finished for a few days now, so I'm blogging it. =)
It's jointed with seed beads, so I made all the parts separately. The scarf was knitted by my mother, who wanted to help. I think it's about 5 stitches in laceweight yarn. I added the extra beads for a bit of bling.
There's a tail, but it's not very visible.
And as it is jointed it can be posed:
Tagging along, here's an unfinished flamingo. I did this just after my needle felted wren but it's not yet complete; I haven't yet decided what to do about the base. I was playing around with wire armatures with this, although the legs came out a bit thick. And as my wool choices are currently limited I shaded the feathers and beak with acrylic paint
Here's another angle:
Merino wool with 'fine' and 'coarse' needles, and misc plastic and glass beads.
I have a needle-felting kit, and enjoy stabbing wool, but mine never seems to felt completely, instead staying thin and rather knotty-looking. Do I just need to felt it longer, or what?
ReplyDeleteYour creations are lovely. I especially like the bear!
Hi Victoria,
DeleteI'm pretty new to needle felting, but in my experience you need to continue stabbing for quite some time. I have two types of needle at the moment, neither of which have a number attached to them, but I use the coarse needle to start with and when everything's pretty solid I use the finer needle to smooth everything out. You really need to keep felting until you can squeeze the shape with a bit of force and it stays looking like it should, rather than squishing. I've got pretty strong fingers (years of piano) and squeezing my bear's body quite hard I find there's a bit of give, but only of a couple of millimetres. It's firmer than a stressball, for example.
Also, as far as I'm aware you shouldn't stab the needle right the way through the shape and out the other side, which just pulls the fibres out, rather than entangling them; if you do that too often it just won't end up solid.
If I've got a rough, uneven surface (especially common with my white wool, which is handcombed rather lazily =P) when I'm nearing completion I put a thin layer of roving over the top and felt that in to cover up the snarls. I like to have everything nice and smooth, not being a fan of the really hairy-looking needle felted items.
I hope that was of some help!