It is amazing how pieces of raw wool can be transformed into sceneries, animals, creatures and people, all with the poke of a needle. Felting itself, as a method of making cloth, hats, slippers and other shapes has been around since the domestication of sheep, but needle felting as a way to make 3D objects is a new art.
In the 1950’s industrial felting machines started making sheets of felt for industrial purposes (lining pianos and other types of applications) but it was only in the 1980’s that the needles were used separately and individually by hand and that sculpting with wool became a possibility. Needle felting can now be explained as the process of making an object out of raw wool by poking it repeatedly with a very sharp barbed needle that tangles, mixes and eventually compresses fibres. Making a 3D object can not only take hours, but can take thousands and thousands of pokes. It is a time laborious method but the more pokes the denser the product and the less fragile it becomes.
Below is a Gallery of creations that I have made and you can check out my Etsy Shop to see what I have for sale…
