Needle Felted Animals

For a while now, I’ve been wanting to learn needlefelting. I kept seeing all these adorable little wool creatures on Etsy like this and this, and really wanted to give it a try. Since a new skill requires new tools and materials, the easiest way was to get a kit. I found this great bunny kit from fancytiger and was lucky enough to get one for Christmas (after I sent my husband an email asking for one and then reminded him to check his email – ok, I guess that’s not luck, but that’s the only way I can avoid gifts like travel flashlights).

I made two projects from the materials in the kit, and discovered a couple of things about needlefelting.

First let me say that these things take longer to make than I thought. One little bunny (about 3” tall) took me about an hour. Now, maybe this amount of time would go down with practice, but that’s a chunk of time for something so small. On the other hand, once it’s done, it’s done – you don’t need to paint it or sand it etc. like you would with another media, so that’s nice.

Second, there’s the pain. Yes,it’s true I’m a bit of a klutz, and I’m not as carefull as I should be when handling dangerous objects (on my left hand alone I am currently sporting a large burn mark from baking Christmas cookies not to mention the permenant scar from a wood carving incident), so of course, I hurt myself. Your working with a very sharp needle and jabbing it into a small fluffy object that you are holding with your other hand – it’s kind of inevitable that you’re gonna stab yourself. It wasn’t really that bad though, I barely drew blood, so no big deal.

Overall, I found the experience kind of fun, not necessarily something I want to do lots more of. Yes, the creatures are cute, but there are so many other ways to make creatures. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll try it again. I’m kind of hesitant to go and buy a bunch more roving (raw wool) at this point, but I’m gonna hang on to the needle. It may come in handy for voodoo dolls and such.

Child's Butterfly Rocking Chair

Whew! This one took a while, and I'm really glad it's done.

It all started early this fall when I saw this child's rocker at a furniture exhibit. It was so simple - just four pieces of wood. The idea of making one for Z just kept nagging me - how hard could it be? I've worked with wood before, I'm not afraid of power tools. It wouldn't even take that much wood. Well, it would have been easy if I would have stuck to a simple design, but of course, I couldn't do that, that would be sensible.

Never able to leave well enough alone, I of course had to redesign the whole thing first and make it far more complicated before I was happy with it. Oh, and of course, don't forget I’ve never made a piece of furniture before or even made anything out of birch plywood more complicated than a painting panel, but that’s never stopped me before. That’s the problem with obsessive crafting disorder – there’s no reasoning with it.

Whenever starting an unfamiliar project, my first step is always to find a completed project that is similar (at least in structure) to what I want to make. I had the inspiration chair, but I wasn’t able to take measurements of it. For the size of the seat, angle of the back, curve of the rocker, etc., I needed more information. Luckily, I found this instructional to fill in those gaps. All of the structural measurements I got from that chair. As long as I kept those the same on my chair, it would function properly and I could change everything else to fit my own design.

My next step is always to plan. This can go on for ages - anywhere from a couple of hours to months. I make sketches and measured drawings. After staring at the inspiration chair for a while, the sides started to remind me of wings. Eventually, the idea of a butterfly came into my mind. I found some examples on the web butterfly chairs, including this one. After blending all these ideas, I came up with the basic design for my chair.

My next step was to go to the computer and overlay my design and the structural drawings from the instructional using a scanner and Photoshop. Once I was happy with these, I bought a 1/4" thick piece of MDF and made a pattern for one side and one half of the back using a jig saw.

For the finished piece, I chose 3/4" Birch plywood. I rough cut the outside of each piece using the jig saw, and then finished cutting them by clamping the pattern to the underside of the birch and using a flush trim bit on the router (after first drilling pilot holes in each section) which copies your pattern exactly. After each piece was cut, I rounded over every exposed edge with the router and cut dadoes for the pieces to fit together per the instructional using a straight cut bit.

It was a lot of work, but I'm pretty happy with it. The finish isn't exactly what I hoped (amber shellac), but I can always go back and paint it later it it's still bugging me. For now, I'm just happy to call it done.

Merry Christmas and happy crafting!

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What I'm working on now: learning needle felting

What I'm thinking about working on after that: birch lap desk