Having discovered the joys of needle-felting, I was keen to have a go at its soggier, less pointy cousin, Wet Felting.

The online beginners' guides that I found tended toward the make-your-own-scarf end of felting, which, while tempting, was a bit more than I wanted to get into on a first go round. Quite apart from the sheer quantity of felt required, I figured that the rest of the household would be less than thrilled by my filling the bath with wool.

Luckily, the ever-crafty Jane Cameron found Wee Folk Art's guide to making wet felted wool cookie cutter ornaments, and was willing to trade felting supplies for my photographing her silk scarves.

We substituted the wooden skewers for metal forks (working on the principle that extra pointy bits equals faster felting), and the 'patting them dry with a towel' with 'wrapping them in a towel and stomping on them'.
How much the extra violence speeded up the whole process, I couldn't say, but it certainly added to the entertainment factor.

And here, following an hour or so of beading, is the finished item:

(The antennae are those little sticks that one uses for making dangly earrings. Alas, one of them got lost somewhere in the bowels of my book pile about ten minutes ago.)

I haven't quite decided whether I'm brave enough to wear it as a brooch yet - I've certainly lost a lot of other nice things to inadequate brooch pin tenacity - but the vague plan has always been to pin it to my sun hat for festivals and other fancy occasions.

We shall see...

Coming eventually to SqueeBlog: Fun with marzipan, with special reference to a website that should be in everyone's bookmarks.

I promised you felt owls in the previous post, and felt owls you shall have!
But first...

Needle-Felting: A Very Brief Introduction

Needle felting is a craft that uniquely combines the fun of making adorable fuzzy ornaments with the catharsis of voodoo dolls.

Basically, it involves turning wool into felt by stabbing it vigorously with a special barbed needle. The barbs cause the wool fibres to matt together - the more you stab, the firmer it becomes, until finally you end up with a solid piece of felt. The technique can be used for embellishment (such as the bunnies on this beautiful felted bag), sculpture (like this fluffy needle-felted fox), and, as I discovered in the process of researching this post, 'wool painting'.

It's a tad scary to begin with (the needle is a thoroughly evil-looking piece of kit), but once you've got the general idea it's all fairly straightforward. I found rolling the wool into balls the hardest bit - the actual felting seemed to be mostly a matter of persistence.

The Owls

Here we have Owl Attempt #1 (left) and Owl Attempt #2 (right):

(Owl #1 is a little unsteady, hence the paper stand.)

I used the same amount of wool for both owls: the only difference was that I was less tentative the second go around and stabbed more thoroughly.
As you can see, it made quite a dramatic difference to the size!

Owl #2 also feels a lot firmer and more structurally sound. That said, both of them have proven capable of surviving being trundled around in my bag-on-wheels, so I reckon Owl #1 has every chance of making it on to next year's Christmas tree despite the more tentative felting.

I didn't time myself, but reckon they must have taken about twenty minutes each.

My Verdict

Overall, I'm very taken with needle-felting.
It has the major advantage that you can be up and running making simple cute things within the hour (ideal for us impatient beginners!) - and for the more ambitious crafter, the possibilities seem virtually endless.

I haven't yet decided what my next felting project will be (the smart money's on it involving some kind of woodland creature), but I think it's safe to assume that there will be some kind of kit winging its way to me in the very near future!

Credits

My owl kit was bought from Etsy seller Fancy Tiger, who does many other felting kits ranging from bunnies to Barack Obama. Well worth checking out!