Needle Felted Bunny

So how cute is this bunny?

Pretty cute, right?

He started with one of those needle felting kits.

I love those.  

They come with a mold.

After you make the front and back, you just felt them together.

When you finish your bunny, you can make more bunnies.

Since you already have the mold, you just need to purchase more wool roving.

You can make a bunny any color you want.

I love this brown roving the bunny came with.

I like the way he turned out but I think I was hoping for a more natural bunny.

Like a real bunny.

This one is like a cartoon bunny.

Still, he is a cute bunny.

I felted him much better than the dog I made last year.

This bunny is very firm.

He fetched a second place ribbon at the fair...

Yay, bunny!

Thanks for stopping by....

Linking up with these great blogs.

Workbench Wednesday...Felted Wool Dryer Balls

A couple weeks ago, I was doing some needle felting with friends.

We spent the afternoon poking wool, talking and eating.

Ahhh...good times...

After they left, I decided to make some wool dryer balls before I put the wool away.

Here is a peek at the process.

I use raw, clean wool, wool yarn, wool roving and nylons for mine.

I start with the raw wool and wrap it into a ball.

Then I wrap that with either wool yarn or a wool roving.

I try to cover as much of the white wool as I can.

I used multi-colored yarn for some and multiple colors of wool roving for others.

I bought a couple raw fleeces a few years ago.

I washed and cleaned the wool, dyed it and carded it to make my own wool roving.

It is not as vibrant or consistent as purchased roving.

But I am so proud that I did it myself.

After each ball is rolled, wrapped and ready, I tuck it into a nylon knee high and tie it off.

I continue to add balls and tie the nylon until it is full.

Generally I get 5-6 per knee high.

The next part of process will be the wet felting...

Not at all difficult.

I will add these to the next several loads of laundry washed in hot water.

Come back to see how they turned out and learn more about what I do with them when they are done.

Thanks for stopping by...

Linking up with these great blogs.

Needle Felting...All Warm and Woolly...

One of my favorite winter crafts is needle felting. 

Have you tried it?

Very relaxing...

I love needle felting by hand...

The rhythmic tapping of the needles through the fabric....

But I must confess...

I also own a needle felting machine which is much faster and easier.

The drawback is that with 12 needles loaded in the machine, when they break it is a pain to replace them.

And expensive.

However, you can achieve really cool results quickly.

Let me show you.

This was a piece of wool felted sweater.

I just machine felted it onto a scrap of burlap a little bigger than the piece of wool.

Then I wrapped it around my jar to see where I would need to stitch it.

I stitched it with some cotton string.

I love those little primitive Xs.

This little purse came from the thrift store.

I needle felted the little wool butterflies on by hand.

Just get a little cookie cutter in a shape you love.

Put your felting mat inside the bag under where you want your shape.

Lay the cookie cutter on top.

Add some wool roving inside the cookie cutter and needle felt it.

Be sure to do the edges extra to give your shape definition.

Then remove your cookie cutter and continue to needle felt it until it looks like you want it to.

You can add details with more wool like the lines down the center of the butterflies.

I used a scrap of wool yarn for the butterfly trails.

Just needle felt it in place too.

I added a wool butterfly to this little wool hat as well...

A sweet fun touch that can take a simple gift from nice to much more personal.

A project I have been wanted to try is a machine felted landscape pin.

This one used scraps from a blue sweater, green sweater and a black sweater as the base.

I cut my shapes and then machine felted them together.

 

I learned that the piece grew quite a bit larger when it was felted. 

 

This is quite a big pin, but it started just the right size.

If you try it, make yours smaller than you want the final product.

After I machine felted the sweater pieces together, I added little wisps of wool roving in green to the hills and white for the clouds.

While I had the felting machine out, I did a little experimenting.

I had this doily from the thrift store and wondered if the felting machine would work on it.

It did.

I did have one little place where the machine sort of ate a little bit of the doily.

But it was on the edge and not super noticeable.

I felted it on a piece of wool and then trimmed the wool afterwards.

A successful experiment.

  WooHoo!

Hope you got some new ideas for felting.

Thanks for stopping by....