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.