Tips for Making Needle Felted Animals
Felting needles
Polyester Batting for Base Shape
Making Animals Fluffy
Limbs
Types of Wool
Dyeing/Drying
Thin Legs
Glass Eyes
Ruining Wool Fibers
This is not a complete tutorial, just a small collection of my preferred techniques for making needle felted animals.
Needles
1. My favorite brand of felting needles are '#38 medium star'. These are all-purpose needles with extra notches that make them felt faster (more fibers matted per stroke). Although felting needles come in a wide array of shapes and gauges, I use '#38 medium star' for all sorts of work, including felt miniatures. You can buy these needles on eBay, just query for 'star felting needles', without quotes.
2. There are 'needle holders' that combine several needles for faster felting. These can be especially useful at earlier felting stages to create the base shape. You can buy them on eBay as well or make your own holders by tying several needles together with a string or a thread.
a three needles 'holder'. my brother Grisha who also makes felted toys taught me this trick.
I usually start with a bunch of three needles, then switch to two, and only then to one. The longer you work on a sculpture, the harder it gets, so at some point felting with three or even two needles becomes difficult.
Miniature toys and parts like limbs may be easier to do with a single needle right from the start.
3. To avoid breaking your needle while felting, don't jitter it from side to side, but push in a straight line (not necessarily perpendicular to the shape surface, but with no lateral motion). Needles break when you drive them in and then move sideways, even slightly.
Wool
4. When I make larger animals, I use polyester batting or polydown for the base shape in order to save wool. These synthetic materials are cheaper, but are almost as easily needle felted as wool. I make a shape using one of these materials, and then cover it with a thin layer of wool.
polyester fiber; for the base shape, use any cheap wool or synthetic material that can be felted, if you want to save high quality wool.
5. The base shape should not be felted too hard. While you felt the base shape and then add layers of wool, the felted material becomes harder (the more needle strokes, the harder it gets). It's possible to make wool almost rock hard by felting, after which you won't be able to shape it with a felting needle.
If your piece got too hard through overfelting, you can sculpt by cutting pieces off your shape. This is an extreme shaping technique, often inflexible and time-consuming, but it can save your work in emergency situations.
base shape covered with wool
6. At a certain stage in the felting process you can start shaping with your hands instead of a needle -- in the same way in which you would be working on a clay sculpture. The animal needs to be hard enough to keep the shape that you give it by hand-sculpting: if you try to sculpt an under-felted piece in this way, it just won't keep the shape that you give it. Another tool that is quite useful at this stage is a long needle or an awl. For example, if you wanted to decrease the size of a part - say, a cheek - you'd push it with your fingers or thumbs, and if you wanted to make it bigger, you'd stick the awl in and pull the material up. Then, after you have hand-sculpted your animal, you can reinforce the shape by additional needle felting, if needed.
8. You can cut pieces off your toy or decrease its size by brushing with a dog brush and then pulling out or cutting off extra piled wool. These are extreme shaping techniques that should be used as a last resort when you have overfelted your animal and can't change its shape in any other way.
'extreme shaping technique' example: a section of the neck was cut out, then the two sides were sewn together with a thread; after that, the seam will be covered with fresh wool
9. Your finished toy can be as soft or as hard as you like, but soft sculptures have to be handled carefully as they don't keep their shape well. Make your toys harder if you want them to preserve every minute detail in shape and expression.
10. A dog brush with metal bristles can be used to make felted animals fluffy. Felt the surface hard enough first to avoid ruining your toy when brushing it.
There are special needles for creating fluffy surfaces. They have reverse barbs that pull fibers out of the shape instead of felting them in. They are easier to use than a dog brush and create a little different effect (shorter, tidier, curlier hair). An Etsy shop that sells these needles. Other possible names: 'reverse needle', 'inverse needle', 'reverse barb needle', 'inverted needle'. Here is a toy with hair created using one of these needles:
the hair was made using a felting needle with reversed barbs which pulled fibres out of the pig. no synthetic fiber was added inside this toy to avoid it coming out as hair. by adding a combination of wools of different colors inside the sculpture you can create spots when using this technic.
11. Wool can be matted even without a needle, just by rubbing, so to keep its fiber structure intact, it should be handled carefully before being felted.
For a super smooth surface, use wet felting technique. Dip your finished piece in soapy water and rub its surface thoroughly to mat any stray hairs left after needle felting. The success of this step depends on the type of wool used: finer wools create smoother surfaces. Wash your toy thoroughly after wet felting to avoid a yellowish tint from soap.
12. Limbs can be created separately and then needle felted to the body at any moment. Just leave (or add) some unfelted wool at the end of the limb to attach it to the body with.
It may be recommended to use wire frame in legs for heavier animals as even hard felted limbs may bend under weight over time.
13. I use undyed carded wools or batts (sheets of wool) that are available in a wide range of natural colors. I also use raw uncarded wools.
When I need to mix wools of different types or colors, I use carding paddles (also called 'wool carders'; available on eBay).
For horse manes and tails, fleece works fine.
Felting wool can also come in the form of sliver, roving, or top. As far as needle felting goes, these types of wool are not as good as batting or raw wool as they have a more parallel fiber structure (especially tops) that may be difficult to hide.
undyed carded wool
this piglet was needle felted from uncarded wool (washed raw wool). the wool had some guard hair in it (black hairs in the picture)
Down is more difficult to needle felt, but it can be used as well.
this hare was needle felted from the down of Angora rabbits which is more difficult to needle felt than sheep wool.
As you see, all sorts of wool can be needle felted, although some are not as easy to use as others.
14. If needed, wool or finished sculptures can be dyed with acrylic or other textile dyes.
If you soak your toy in a dye solution (as opposed to applying dyes by dabbing), pay attention to its orientation while it's drying. The color will be most intense on the down side of the toy. For instance, if you turn a felted quadruped upside down to dry, its back and the top of its head will be affected by the dye the most. Even if you just wash your animal after an unlucky dying attempt and then dry it, the down side may get slightly colored as any dye leftovers will accumulate on the lower surface.
Pictures
15. Sketching and making clay sculptures helps figure out particular details in animal anatomy. If you get stuck, it may be a good idea to make a sketch or a clay sculpture/detail sometimes.
Using pictures as a reference is inevitable but not always helpful, as a 2D picture (or even a set of pictures) often tells surprisingly little about a 3D shape. Figurines, toys, sculptures, and - best of all - live animals can be a much more useful source of information.
Process
16. Much of the felting process is tedious; before you even start sculpting, the base shape needs to be completed. This preliminary work, as well as some other stages in the felting process require very little concentration, so audiobooks can prove useful.
17. Be careful: it's easy to hurt your hands with needles, especially when felting miniatures or miniature details.
Addendums:
Thin Legs
For thin legs, I create limbs from pieces of wire (or in some cases, I may create a whole wire skeleton).
I apply some glue to a leg 'bone' and then wind a piece of wool around it tightly.
If after that I need to add more wool to the leg, I do so using a felting needle to attach new wool to the first wool layer. The needle will scratch against the wire, but this is okay as long as you can spare a needle.
Avoid using rusting wire as it will stain your sculpture when/if you wash it.
Bird Legs
To create bird legs, do the same as above, but use a thread instead: apply some glue to the wire leg, then wind thread around it tightly.
Glass Eyes
I buy eyes on eBay: search for 'glass eyes' within the 'Bear Making Supplies' category: http://www.ebay.com/sch/Bear-Making-Supplies-/50253/i.html?_nkw=glass+eyes and in this shop http://glasseyesonline.com/ (on eBay, you can also find vintage glass eyes sometimes). Try to order several different sizes to find out what works for you.
Ruining Wool Fibers
Smaller shapes, like limbs, may become softer instead of harder with over-felting. This happens when you ruin the fibers so that they no longer hold together. Then it's almost impossible to reinforce the shape without adding much more wool to it, which will make it oversized.
Pushing the needle all the way through the shape is most likely to create this unpleasant effect. As long as the needle does not come out the other side while you felt, the wool will usually only get harder. When you push the needle all the way through, it pulls fibers out of the opposite side, you felt them back in, they come out again and so forth until the fibers break and can no longer be matted. You could use a wire frame or even glue as a last resort, but it's not always practicable.
If you have any suggestions for improving these instructions, please let me know. Thank you.
Victor Dubrovsky (vriad_lee@chushka .com)