Heather Mann January 20, 2009

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Shocking Discoveries about Needle Felting

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Tags cheap, felt, yarn, dollar store, felting, needle, wool, cupcakes, felted, roving, batting



Inspired by this needle-felting tutorial at Dabbled by Sally from Pollywog's Cakewalk, my mom and I recently embarked on a needle-felting odyssey*. We're still refining our technique, but it is a fairly simple process, and also much more fun than you might expect. The thing that has kept me from needle-felting before this is the cost of the supplies, namely the felting needles (we got 5 fine needles for around ) and the cost of the roving ( for half an ounce at our local yarn store). I am always tempted to buy in bulk when starting a new technique or project, but who wants to drop when you don't know if you will enjoy it or not?

Legit needle-felters might roll over in their, um, studios, but we have some unorthodox findings to share with you. If you have been hesitant to jump into yet another craft because you don't want to invest in yet another stash of new, and spendy, supplies, listen to this:
  1. You can needle-felt polyester batting. Yes. That cheap polyester batting. It works well for creating an initial shape that you can then cover with wool roving.
  2. You can also use the polyester batting as is, and let it show. The white on these cupcakes was made using polyester batting. You can needle-felt it just as stiff as wool roving (as in the white cupcake liner, center), or leave it a little puffier, depending on the effect you want. It behaves almost the same as wool roving, except maybe easier to work with!
  3. You can needle-felt non-roving stuff like wool yarn onto a polyester batting base. So, if you have a stash of wool or partially wool yarn, you can use it to try needle-felting out. We tried Lion Brand Wool-Ease and it worked.
  4. Wrapping yarn around the polyester batting and felting it works. Cutting shorter pieces of yarn and unraveling it into "roving" works better.
  5. You can needle-felt polyester felt pieces together. Felt sheets like the ones that cost a quarter at the craft store.
  6. If you try to needle-felt polyester felt to polyester batting, the little batting fuzz comes through the holes in the polyester felt, so it doesn't work as well.
I haven't found info anywhere else on the internet that tells you the shocking truth about polyester batting and needle-felting. If I were teaching a class on needle-felting, I would hand out polyester batting to start with. It is great for practicing your technique.

I even had visions of dyeing the polyester batting for a huge supply of colored felting material. I did a bit of detective work and found that you can use a dye called iDye Poly to dye polyester. I haven't tried it, and have found no info on actually dyeing polyester batting, but it would be worth a try, and it seems like it would work. Just imagine dyeing a huge bag of batting and having all that material to needle-felt with for less than .

Your world has been officially rocked!

For more shockingly cheap discoveries and hip crafts made from dollar store stuff, check my blog: Dollar Store Crafts.



*So what are we working on? We're needle-felting figurines for a nativity set or three for next Christmas. We've already completed a few characters, including Mary, baby Jesus, a manger, Joseph, a sheep, and last night I worked on these two wise men. The second one is supposed to be wearing a turban, not having a Ronald McDonald afro.


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