NEEDLE FELTING TIP

Craft Felt to Enhance Alpaca Wool Projects

We wanted to pass this needle felting tip on to you. Have you ever been in need of a small amount of a specific color for one of your projects? We think this tip might give you another option.

You all know that craft stores carry those felt squares for crafting, right? Did you know you can use them for needle felting your 3D sculptures?

We have used it before as a flat piece in needle felting and for hats for our characters, but we wanted to see if we could use it in more of a sculptural form.

We needed a very small amount of deep red to make pants for a Mickey Mouse we were creating. Not wanting to dye that small amount of fleece, we began wondering if we could use the craft felt squares for our project.

We wanted more control over how we applied the craft felt for sculptural detailing than the flat piece allowed. We tried it and it worked great! Here's how it was done...

You will need:

• Felt square from a craft store of color of your choosing

• Felting needles - 36-38 gauge triangle for starting the felt and 36-38 gauge star for surface finishing.

• Wire dog slicker brush

Lay the felt square on your leg (wear jeans or other long pants to protect your leg from the wire brush) and hold it with one hand. With the slicker brush in the other hand, begin brushing the felt square.

It will start pulling apart and collect in the brush.

Remove the material that has collected in the brush. Continue brushing and gathering the material until you have the desired amount.

This loose material can now be needle felted just as you would alpaca wool. Be sure and watch out for thin areas and fill them in. You will need to surface felt the material to get it to hold together.

Now doesn't Mickey look great? That red was the perfect color for his pants and we didn't have to go to the bother of dyeing our fleece.

Mickey was created by working from pictures to practice transforming 2D into 3D. We think he turned out pretty close to the real thing. He was fun to make and we learned a lot, including this needle felting tip we are sharing.

We still prefer the alpaca fiber for most of our work but, this is a great alternative material for details or for small amounts of colors that you don't have on hand.

We hope this needle felting tip provides you with another tool to allow you to be as creative as you can be with your alpaca fiber.

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