Fiberfill Stuffing - Needle Felt a Mushroom and Save Fleece and Time
You thought your fiberfill stuffing was just for stuffing toys. Well, we have a great way to use it and save yourself using up all of your precious alpaca fiber. It felts up faster than alpaca fiber, too, so you can make a core center quickly saving time on your project.
You just need 100% polyester fiberfill, some animal fiber, a foam pad, and a felting needle to create the mushroom pictured below.
It's very easy to work with. There are different brands. We used Hobbs bonded fibers called "Simply Stuffing" to make our needle felted mushroom.
Polyester fiberfill is cheap and it works great. It's clean, washable, and non-allergenic. It's best to get fiber fill that is not in a batt, but if that's all you can find, you can pull it apart and use it, too.
Using fiberfill for projects will make them lighter than using alpaca fiber for your core, too. As long as you needle it firmly, your projects will turn out great!
Create a Stem
The first thing you do with your fiberfill stuffing to make your mushroom is pull some out of the bag and make a roll for the stem.
Use your 36 gauge needle to felt the fiber fill. Use it just like you would on wool. Needle straight into the stuffing and continue until the stuffing has shrunk and is firm.
Once you have a nice core that is firm, you can add more fiberfill to the stem to make it the size you want. Remember that it will increase in size when you add your wool, so you want to make it a little smaller than what you want your finished size to be.
Needle the roll until you have a firm shape. We made ours approximately one inch in diameter and 4 1/2 inches around. It's a little over 3 1/2 inches in length.
Creat a Cap
Set your stem aside. Now you need to make the mushrooms cap.
Form a round shape with your fiberfill stuffing for the cap. Once you get a round firm core shape, you can begin adding more polyester fill to the top of the cap.
Don't forget to add to the sides of the cap, too. Be sure and needle this cap until it is firm, but not hard. Our cap is about 3 1/2 inches across the bottom (diameter) and about 1 1/4 inches high.
Make sure you indent the cap on the underside where the stem will be attached.
This is the innards of your mushroom. It should be nice and firm.
Using fiberfill stuffing is a great way to make a nice product without using wool for the center. If you wish to make the pproject pictured, fill out the form for our course on how to make a needle felted mushroom.
Return from fiberfill stuffing to alpaca wool.
Return to owning alpaca home page.
|
