Yep, I was on a wool craft kick a couple weeks ago. You already saw my felted bead necklace. I planned more posts about Houston, but I'm super jazzed about these three needle felted abstracts that I finally popped into some inexpensive Ikea frames - I couldn't wait to share. It is hard to capture on camera, but the abstracts are three-dimensional, and really vibrant.
I used my favorite of the three paintings I made for the bedroom as my colour inspiration:
Here's the how-to.
Supplies:
- A square piece of foam
- Felting needle
- Piece of felted wool (you can felt an old wool sweater, or buy felt in fabric or fibre stores - the piece will act as your "canvas")
- Wool rovings
 |
| Felting needle and foam block |
 |
| Wool rovings |
How-to:
Needle felting is super simple. Just sketch out your plan on a piece of felted wool (or free-hand it). Lay your piece of wool on your foam block and grab some wool rovings. Tear pieces of the wool roving off, like you would cotton candy. Then you use the felting needle and pierce the wool roving through the piece of wool, using the foam as a surface to stop the needle. Just keep piercing again & again (& again & again - this is a good craft for tension relief!) The felting needle has barbs and it catches the wool roving, pushing through the piece of wool which tangles the fibres and locks them. Like paint, you just build up layers of rovings - you can layer different colours to create depth or just to mix new colours.
 |
| What the back of your piece will look like |
 |
| The felting needle has sharp barbs - so be careful |
Here are my pieces unframed. I used a piece of paper with a square cut out to help me frame up the composition as I worked.
 |
| My "faux" matting for framing up the composition |
Some other felted wool pieces I have made:
