Sunday, November 30, 2008

Needle-Felted Sheep

In an attempt to find new ways to make fun, salable items out of small amounts of scrap wool that I would normally just throw away, I've recently taken up a new craft: Needle-felting.

To do needle felting, you just get a lump of wool and poke it repeatedly with this barbed needle, and the wool magically felts.

It's really cool---you can do amazingly precise flat things like this:

But you can also do 3-D sculptural things like this:

http://www.woolpets.com/galleries.html

Here's my first attempt at needle felting: a little Icelandic ewe. She is 100% raw, unwashed Icelandic wool throughout, except for her 2 beads for eyes and her bell on a ribbon. Her body, head, neck, and legs are felted hard, and then soft loose wool is applied like hair over that to give her a fluffy fleece. Because I used unwashed wool, she even smells like a sheep!


8 comments:

Anonymous said...

She is adorable! I love her! WOW!
What a neat "thing"/craft! :)

Nancy Chase said...

Thanks Heather! If you come visit me sometime, I'll show you how to make something. It's really easy.

Rhea said...

I haven't been by in so long! How are things?! I lost your link for a while.

Kelly said...

I love your ewe. It turned out great. I will have to try that when we get the sheep.
Kelly

Anonymous said...

Looks really great Nancy.
cheers
Ann

pussman and co said...

waw you did well!
:)

Adam Byrn "Adamus" Tritt said...

Okay, so I want to learn to do this. First, I need to buy sheep. I have a seventeen year old boy. Will that do?

And a bigger house. One where they yard grows something besides cenchrus. Oh, and I'll need to drug my wife.

All so I can have one of those needle sheep.

Can I do this with manatee fur?

ann said...

I do not know what the previous poster was going on about but I like the felted sheep. What a great way to get some use out of the bits of "left over" wool. I have not seen your blog in a while - had computer problems. Is it your busy time of year - do you have lambs yet. Looking forward to an update