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