Is Needle Felting Difficult?

Felter Skelter - Needle Felt Art Inspiration

Welcome to Felter Skelter, your essential guide for needle felting inspiration and ideas!

What Is Needle Felting?

Needle Felting is the art of creating forms out of fibres like wool by stabbing them repeatedly with barbed needles. The fibres eventually matt together and can be shaped into a broad range of soft sculptural forms. You can needle felt by hand but there are also a range of tools that can help speed up the process.

Maria Filipe Castro boy needle felted
Maria Filipe Castro – Crying Lil Boy

What Tools Do I Need?

To get started you will need:

Wool Fibres

You can use a variety of fibres and textures depending on what you are creating, many artists use a combination of wool and silk fibres to create unusual textures.

Felting Needle

There are many styles of felting needle. A felting needle is a long needle with structures called barbs that agitate the fibres and bond them together. This needle does not have an eye for thread, it is hand held, generally with a handle to hold to make it easy to stab the fibres with.

You can’t use a regular needle for needle felting, find out what you need in our separate post Can I Use A Regular Needle For Needle Felting?

A Felting Surface

This is needed to avoid hand injuries. Sponges and foam pads work well, as long as they are at least an inch thick.

Artist Inspiration

For some Needle Felting inspiration to begin your journey with the craft, we have compiled a list of featured artists from our Felter Skelter column.

Nocik

Needle Felting artist Nocik works with animal taxidermy ideas and creates fun and unusual characters.

Nocik needle felt taxidermy
Dino inspired needle felted taxidermy

In terms of their technique, the artist explains how ‘tools vary from piece to piece, but usually there is a foam armature, core wool and wool top all needle felted. I also include polymer clay horns, etc and reclaimed eyeballs salvaged from old stuffed animals’. So if you start to get confident needle felting, layering materials and creating a structure to work around is a good place to start!

Maria Filipe Castro

Needle felted melting heart in red with a pink background

Maria creates similar unusual creatures and explained to us how; ‘Since I began Needle Felting my main concerns were on how to create a sturdy piece with a smooth surface and how to make it in less time. The Needle Felting process is quite slow, but throughout the years, with much trial and error I have been trying to find ways to facilitate the whole process

When I’m working with wool in roving, before I apply it to the core of the piece I like to mess up the fibers and make them look a bit more like the carded batts. I find that this helps speed up a bit the process of adding wool and also make the direction of the fibers less noticeable.

You can learn more via Maria’s Website and her Instagram.

The Gentle Man Felter

The Gentle Man Felter is a Northumbrian artist who focuses on hyperrealistic pieces.

The gentle man needle felter robin on a stand
The Gentle Man Felter with their lil Robin.

We asked this artist if they had any tips for us. in which he replied. ‘I don’t use too many tools to create my pieces. Bog standard felting needles, scissors, pipe cleaners (my cats fave) and a very sophisticated top of the range eye putting in tool which is blu-tac on the end of a cocktail stick…and tea, lots of tea.’

So there you have it, you can create striking pieces with pretty everyday materials.

Can All Wool Be Needle Felted?

Most wools can be Needle Felted, however some are easier to use than others. As a beginner it is safer to use merino wool roving as it is smooth and easily holds together when agitated with the needle felting tool.

Where Can I Learn More?

We have over 100 posts about Needle Felting at Mr X Stitch, so that’s a great place to start. There are also a good number of needle felting books available, and we’ve reviewed some here. Check out all our Felter Skelter posts for loads more felty action!

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