Thursday 5 April 2012

Needle-felting: Adding Some New Twists



The first few years that I was making needle-felted Creektures, I wanted to make them totally by needle-felting - no using embellishments such as glass eyes, or armatures, or sewing etc. Everything was needle-felted, including the eyes, tails, legs etc. I did sometimes use yarn and uncarded curly wool for mains and tails but these were applied by needle-felting. Partly this choice was to make sure that the "guys" were safe for small children, but also to avoid the distractions of sourcing and learning a bunch of things at once. Besides, it felt a bit like cheating at that point. This was a great learning process and forced me to figure out what is and is not possible - it is amazing what can be achieved in terms of detail and structure using this single technique.

Now that I know these boundaries, I have added some techniques that allow me to do things that cannot be done by needle-felting alone - hence, not cheating in my mind!
I have been reading and taking some courses on wet felting which is another whole story. I have used wet felting to make clothing for some Creektures (e.g. a coat for a wizard, leaves for a modest wood-elf). Wet felted "points" work very well for porcupine quills and spines for fish, unicorn horns etc.  
It is possible to make supportive legs with needle-felting alone, but I find that thin legs get wobbly with time. It requires a lot of needling to get the wool very tight and works best with thicker legs - for example elephant legs. Armatures add a whole new range of possibilities. They do not have to be complex and can take only a few minutes to make if you keep them simple. Burrito has a simple armature of 22 gage galvanized steel wire to support his legs.  

A series of squirrels, tree-frogs and geckos got me thinking that it was time to defy gravity. Rare-earth magnets help them clammer around my house.   
It is all fun and great to have a broader repertoire!

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