Needle felting workshop

 Last Sunday afternoon, I spent a very happy two hours learning how to needle felt little animals and birds.  A colleague at work had arranged for a feltmaker called Eve Marshall to come and give a workshop at her house.  I had seen a bit about needle felting and of course, Robyn from America had made me a needle felted Scruffy, so I knew what it was, but had never tried it.  Our first project was to make an owl and Eve took us through each stage with a lot of patience and help. Apparently, if you can make an owl, you have all the basics to make anything else.  (That seemed a bit ambitious, but I went with it).

 Needle felting does have some benefits over wet felting.  It is not messy and doesn't take up a whole table.  You don't need so many pieces of equipment either - felting needles (which are barbed and do hurt if you inadvertently get your fingers in the way), foam and wool, preferably natural and not dyed and in this case, merino is not quite as good to use as it is too soft and slippery, as natural undyed wool, which is a bit coarser and binds together more easily. We used Shetland wool for our menagerie.  At some points, my owl resembled a penguin, but it all came together in the end.  To bind the wool into shapes, you push the felting needle in and out of the wool into the foam (for basic shapes) and move the shape around to create a rough sausage which you then refine using the finer needle and just going into the wool, not the foam underneath.  It is much easier to do, than to explain!

 Feeling a bit more confident, I attempted a rabbit, or possibly a hare, as the ears were rather long.

 He did seem to develop a character as I went along.

 The pupils in his eyes aren't the same size as I did find putting little dots for details, such as eyes and noses, the trickiest part.

 The back view of my rabbit - he ended up looking quite sweet.

 The finished owl...or was that a brown penguin?

Here they are together, the owl looking rather startled to see such a huge rabbit in relation to himself!
I really enjoyed learning how to needle felt and can see opportunities for adding detail and texture to the surface of a piece of wet felted work, but I am not sure whether I shall make any more animals...although, never say never!