Needle Felting Tutorial

Now I don't profess to be an expert on this, but Louise asked if needle felting was hard, so I'm going to show you how I do it. I didn't use an armature on Hyacinth, but I am using one here for this dog. Cut two pieces of pipe cleaner 4" long and one piece 3 1/2" long. Bend them into the shapes shown.

It should end up looking like this. See, two leg parts and one head/body/tail part.

Now twist the leg parts around the body part.

With a few bends in the right places it's already starting to look like a dog. It almost takes on a life of its own.

"Bad dog, stop that! Don't embarrass me in front of the nice ladies."

Now take a piece of roving about 5" long and starting at the hip, wrap it around the leg working down to the foot. At the foot turn and start wrapping back up the leg.

Now a word about the needles. I'm just a beginner and only have two needles. I don't know anything about size or type, and even with my little pink glasses, I can't see the barbs, but apparently there are barbs on these wickedly sharp things that sort of "tangle" the fibers together. The barbs are up a ways from the tip so you have to poke the needle through the fibers at least 1/2" to make the magic happen.

Now start poking through the leg from all angles to secure the fibers. Try to avoid poking the pipe cleaner because that's bad for the needle. You can use the foam block to work on the little parts, or if you're brave and like blood, hold it in your hand. Because I guarantee, sooner or later, you will poke yourself. And like I said these things are WICKEDLY sharp. So be careful if you work in hand.

Repeat that routine on all the legs, then do the tail and head and maybe two layers on the body. Your dog should eventually look like that bad dog's sister here.

By the way, she is quite well behaved and would never embarrass me in front of you nice ladies.

So this is the first part of making a felted dog. Tomorrow we'll start the details and work on house training here Amongst The Oaks.