Holly Felt Notebook

A friend had asked me to make a present for his wife with some winter leaves on, since she had liked the autumn leaf bag he'd bought for her a few weeks ago. So I of course thought of holly, as you would. I'd saved these Christmas cards from previous years since I liked the design, and so used them as my starting point, minus mice!

Being quite brave and foolish I had a go at cutting holly leaves out of pre-felt and tried wet-felting them onto a background. I never really thought it would work since wet-felting blends all the edges so much, but you never quite know until you try - I thought I might end up with some spiky bits of leaf left, but all I ended up with was oval shapes with fuzzy edges, should have known better really.
So I made another wet-felted flat piece, let it dry, and needle-felted my design onto it. I've not done this before, I've just done 3D birds and a cat, I broke 4 needles (definitely more practise needed) but in the end I was happy with the way it looked. Here is the reverse where you can see all the coloured fibres having been poked through by the needle - when I was finished I lightly wet-felted both sides of the design just to blend everything together.
With the red berries and ribbon to brighten it up I hope it'll be just right for a Christmas present.

A friend for the robin.

Son no. 2 kept asking me to make a penguin friend for his robin. Here he is,

not very sophisticated compared with the many amazingly detailed needle-felted sculptures out there, but he is very pleased with himself as he can stand up properly, because he has feet. The robin has no feet and falls over a lot, on his beak. In fact my son made one of the penguin's feet almost all by himself without stabbing his fingers once!

Needle Felting a Robin

Here is my second attempt at needle felting, I'm not sure what the proper technique is but all I did was keep on stabbing the wool with a felting needle as I wrapped it round into a vaguely robin-like shape. Felting needles are so, so sharp with tiny barbs at the end which push the wool fibres through each other on the down-stroke, anchoring the fibres together. I have wet-felted balls before which have turned out very densely packed. For the robin though I didn't think he had to be so dense, so stopped stabbing him when he felt firm but still with a bit of give. I shaped the beak and wings by needle-felting tufts of wool, then firmly needled them onto his face and sides. I then just wetted and slightly felted his outside layer to smooth the surface a bit, and finished him with two beady black eyes. He is about 6cm tall and keeps falling onto his beak as I didn't shape his base quite flat enough, but I've already started to make some more. I only stabbed myself twice, which I was quite pleased with as I'm fairly clumsy.