Total Art Soul - for artists

 

Today I felt like sharing the needle felt technique as I love to do so during autumn. So here we start. Needle felting is different from wet felting. With wetfelting you use water and soap, with needle felting not. It is sometimes also called dry felting.  This is everything you need:

• some wool fleece , (if you have roving it will be taking longer to get such a nice and even result. but it is usable too )
• feltingneedle (this needle has barbs , which get a fiber down and another one up)
• a sponge or styrpohor
• glue, can also be a hotglue machine
• acorncaps

things you need to make needle felted acorns

Step 1:

Divide your woolfleece into long pieces of  approximately  10 cm  (3.9 inch) or longer or lesser if you want thicker or thinner balls.

make it smaller to get the desired thickness of the acorn

I made them like this

a 3cm (1.2inch) wide "lock" is perfect

Step 2:

Start rolling it up from one side to the other. It makes it easier if you do this on a table as you should try to get it as tight as possible, saves you time later:)

start rolling it up tightly

This is how it looked like when I finished rolling

ready to get to the next stage

Step 3

Now place this fluffy ball of wool on the sponge and get your feltingneedle. I mostly use two:  one to stab into the wool  and one which holds the wool on the sponge. I can also hold it with my fingers but it is quite painfull when you stab into your fingers. So the second needle prevents me from doing so as my fingers are higher:) You can also use  a little stick or  fork for this.

stabbing time! be carefull with your fingers

I stab it from all sides, I mostly start at the side my wool ended. Stabbing from the tops makes it get more round instead of longwise.

stabbing from all sides

Step 4

You are ready when your ball feels hard and no woolfibres come out anymore. Now it is time to search for a nice acorn cap which would fit perfectly.

searching for the perfect cap

Step 5

When you have a cap; fill it with glue, make sure to add enough at the sides and stick your ball to the cap.

use enoug glue as the wool and cap will absorb some

after adding it into the cap hold it tight for a few seconds

Step  6

You are now finished, start making a new one or find a nice place to present it. Enjoy!!!

a nice spot in my house:)

Enjoy trying this out!!
If you have any questions please contact me!!

PS1 , I have enoug of this wool and will upload it to my supply shop: www.feltalakim.etsy.com if you want some:)

Comment (2)

• (chiffon) silk

• wool

• soap

• water

• 2 pieces of bubble wrap where the scarf fits in.

• blind/ beachmat

your hands you can use a spray bulb or a bottle, with holes in the lid, but you can also do this with your hands. Step 1: Lay out the bubble wrap  (A) on a table, take the silk (mine was 180cm x 55cm ) and make it wet with only cold water. Step 2.: Make sure there aren't any wrinkles in the silk. Now you can start laying out the wool fibres. You can start in the middle, but I wanted to have a felted edge so I used 2 layers of wool at the edges. These layers are cross -wise placed upon each other.

Step 3: Place wool on the silk there where you want it. You can make what ever you want: leaves, flowers, figures, abstract, etc. Just note that the fewer wool you place on the silk, the harder it will shrink and more wrinkles will appear after felting.

Step 4: Now make everything wet with soap and cold water, make sure you use enough water as the wool need to be totally wet.

Step 5: Place the second piece of bubble wrap (B) upon the wool and put some water/ foam on it and gently start pushing all the air out of the wool. No circular movements!!!!!!

Step 6: As I want the edges to be a bit thicker as 2 layers wool, I fold it double so I get 4 layers of wool. Therefor I fold over both  bubblewraps with the silk and wool inside. After that I carefully remove the bubblewrap (A) and fold over the wool. When I am finished with this edge, I place the bubble wrap back on it and turn the whole packet back.. Now I start it all over on the other  3 sides.

Step 7: After all the edges are folded over I make sure there's soap and water everywhere on the wool and very very gently start rolling the wrap with the silk and wool up. To make sure my wrap doesn't unfold as long as I am rolling it I secure it with 3 pieces of thread.  The rolling should be done about 500 times , unroll it , and uproll the other side in. Try to do this after every 50 times.

Step 8: After about 300 times You can check if the wool comes through at the back side of the silk. If you see "hairs coming through you can now roll on with a bit harder  material as bubble wrap. I use a beachmat made of "raffia". Still keep on rolling, opening, rolling etc. till about 500 times.

Step 9: If you have done it well, now you can see the scarf starting to get shorter and maybee also starts wrinkling again. Make sure you have some  hot or boiling water. The wool is now ready to get a shock, so it shrinks. I put my shawl in a bowl and put the hotwater on it. Try to get it out and aggitating the shawl, by letting it fall down on the table. Note: Wear a plastic apron and you'll be dry......

Comment (2)