Advice for New Needle Felters

I teach needle felting.  I have learned through the years to give the same advice to beginners. 

Needle felting can be a very mesmerizing activity.  You push the needle into the wool roving and pull it out.  In and out, in and out.  But if you don’t watch what you are doing, you might go in and out of your finger.  I tell my students to do as I say not as I do.  I have been needle felting for a long time so I have trained myself to always know where the needle is and my fingers are even when I am not watching what I am felting. If you watch what you are doing, you can easily move the needle before it strikes your finger. (I also have learned to bring Band-Aids to my classes, just in case.)

Another tip to avoid stabbing yourself is to go slow.  You don’t need to felt at supersonic speed to get results.   You will be felting if you felt slowly.  Try the thousand counting technique.  One one thousand, stab and lift, then two one thousand, stab and lift, three one thousand, etc. Yes it will take longer to felt but you will get it done without injuring yourself.  When you get more experience, you can speed up the felting. 

I also teach beginners with a simple design.  I usually do something like a tomato or a pumpkin.  It allows the students to practice the felting with a simple shape and one where your fingers don’t have to be close.  And then with the leaves and stem you learn on an item smaller.  Usually by the time they have completed the round shape, they have developed the felting technique and have learned to watch where that needle is in relation to their fingers. 

Having the leaves and stem with both also teaches students how to attach one item to another which is often what is done when felting something.  You might be adding leaves to a tomato, or centers to flowers, or facial features to a doll, or adding another color to a bead for jewelry.   It would be fun to start off with an intricate jewelry design but remember you are new felters and you should learn the basic technique before you try anything complicated.

If you just remember to watch what you are doing and go slow, you will learn needlefelting in no time. And actually that is good for any new skill one might learn.  Happy felting.

© 2021 Cheryl Fillion

The Flamingo Yoyo Necklace

I’ve written in this blog about how I like to make and use fabric yoyos.  I recently did a program for my local quilt guild on making and using yoyos.   I had examples of many ways to use yoyos but I did not have a necklace made of yoyos.  I had seen in books and online of different jewelry with yoyos.  Some pins had just one yoyo.  Some necklaces had layered yoyos.  Other ideas used buttons and rhinestones.

 I have a bag of flamingo buttons that jumped into my basket at a fabric store one day.  You know those items you really don’t need and have no idea how you will use them but you just have to have them. (a lot of times it is candy at the grocery store that jumps into my shopping basket.).   So I took some of the ideas I had seen and created a necklace to show at my program.

I really wanted to use the flamingo button as the focal point of my necklace.  So the first yoyo behind the button I thought needed to be a very light or very dark color so the button would be very visible.  I decided a white yoyo would look nice.  And to be a little different and because the button was slender in shape I used an oval yoyo. Behind that I decided I needed a bright color and since the flamingo is pink I chose pink and then finally another white yoyo.

The yoyos graduated in size from the back to the front so that you could easily see the yoyo colors.  And they ended up being about a ½ of an inch bigger than yoyo in front of it.  Now if you have read my blogs on yoyos, to determine the size of the fabric to cut you have to know what size the finished yoyo will be.  You then have to cut a circle or oval twice the size of the finished plus ½ inch for seam allowance.

Once the yoyos were made, I sewed the button to the top, in this case,  the oval yoyo (but you could use a round yoyo as the top one).  I thought it would be easier to sew it through just one yoyo.  Once that was secure, I then sewed the top yoyo to the middle one.  I did it almost like an applique stitch so I only went through the gathered area of the pink yoyo.  And then sewed that pink yoyo (with the oval and button attached) to the bottom yoyo in the same way (just sewing through the gathered area).  I then took some rayon cording I had, cut the length I wanted for the ‘chain’ to go around my neck and sewed it to the back of the last yoyo   . 

It turned out really nice.   It is a great idea for anyone who has some pieces of broken jewelry they want to still wear, or a crystal or polished rock.  It would also work as a wonderful necklace for a little girl if you find a button that might match a pattern on a favorite dress or t-shirt.  Or for those times when a bag of flamingo buttons jumps into your shopping basket at a fabric store.

©2021  Cheryl Fillion