Needle Felting in Three Easy Steps

Needle felting is a craft that is catching on fast. Felting with a needle is easy, cheap, and fun. You can create flat felts or 3 dimensional projects.

For those unfamiliar with needle felting, it is a dry method of felting animal and other fibers. Using special needles with barbs on the tips, you punch the fibers down locking them together forming felt.

The supplies you need are very few. Dense foam rubber is needed to place the fiber on to felt. You need the type of foam used in chair cushions not styrofoam. The foam pad should be at least two inches deep. The foam keeps the needle from breaking, gives you a surface to work on, and protects you if you work on your project with it in your lap.

You will need some clean, carded sheep or alpaca fiber. These would be the best type of fiber to purchase to learn needle felting. Medium to fine fibers are easiest to work with. Coarse fibers are hard to felt but not impossible.

Felting needles come in different gauges and have different shaped tips. Gauge is the thickness of the needle. The lower the number the thicker the needle. A 36 gauge needle is thicker than a 38 gauge needle. The two different tip shapes used by needle felters is the triangle and the star. The triangle shaped tip has three sides with barbs and is used for general felting. The star tip has 4 edges and is used for surface felting.

Starting felters can purchase a 36 gauge triangle needle to begin. It is a general all purpose needle. Or you can purchase packs of needles that have a variety of gauges and tips.

Now that you have the necessary equipment gathered, follow these easy steps to begin needle felting.

1. Place the foam pad in your lap or on a table. Place a small amount of carded fiber on the foam pad.

2. Fold the fiber in half and began lightly jabbing the fiber with your felting needle (be sure and keep fingers out of the way). The barbs are on the tip so you do not have to penetrate the foam very deeply. Keep punching and moving the needle around the fiber to turn it into felt.

3. Pull the wool fiber off the foam rubber periodically to keep from felting the wool to the foam. When it is felted completely remove it from the foam pad.

Pretty simple. Once you get the hang of it, you can move on to making wall hangings, placemats, 3 dimensional characters, and pretty much anything you can imagine.