Needle Felting

I’ve wanted to try needle felting for about a year. I keep seeing all these amazing little felted creatures and I want in on the action. (I also got my kiddo hooked on them, which wasn’t hard because so many of them are almost unbearably cute.)

But how to get started? Thankfully, my wife found some kits on Amazon and bought a pair of them.

"UOOU Needle Felting Kit for Beginners"

The process is wild and certainly takes a heap of patience.

My first kitty:

My kiddo’s first kitty:

Starting my second kitty. It looks like I’ve made a walnut. I love how some loose wool fluff (right) slowly forms into a dense shape (left) using just a felting needle (middle). It feels like nothing is happening until it’s happening:

Kitty has a face now! The only not-felt thing here are the little button eyes which came with the kit:

Next day: Added the stripes to this tabby. Feet come next:

Next day: Front feet felted and attached! Back feet felted and awaiting attachment. The body gets condensed further when I attach appendages through more of the felting process, so I’ll probably add another layer of the main body color and touch-up the stripes on the side after adding the back feet:

Next day: Legs on (and filled-around)! I also felted a bit of white wool for a tummy decoration. Thought it would be cute. I was right. Next is tail:

Over the weekend: This orange tabby (I might keep the name "Walnut" - see above) is done:

…​And I’ve started the next. I’m going to try a longer, thinner body this time. Dare I say, a more realistic cat shape? Note the concerned citizens looking on from a warm, comfy bed of unfelted wool. I don’t know if this will work out:

I made kind of a "head" with another blob of wool on the front of the body. It looks better with ears. I made these a little differently this time: basically making a completely flat piece of traditional felt, cutting it into the triangular shape, and then I did my best to curve them like ears when attaching to the head. Not feeling confident about my experiment here, but I’ll pursue it to the end:

Five days later: I added grey wool on the back of the head and back of the body. Then took a deep breath and started adding wool to the face, slowly adding little bits until it started to look fairly catlike. I think maybe I’m getting the hang of this. Here you can see that the nose and cheeks are pretty well defined:

Next weekend, kitty’s got some stripes. They look a bit messy where they transition from the head to the back. I guess I’m going to have to pay more attention to real cat stripe patterns now. Also, can’t wait to put eyes on that face! Here’s kitty now: