Hello and welcome to my Beginner’s Guide to Felting! Several people have asked me to write tutorials on wet and needle felting and so here we go...
Let’s start at the beginning - with the alpacas, sheep, lamas and other small, wooly beasts.
FARMER FOR THE DAY
Visiting an alpaca, lama, or sheep farm is not only a fascinating day out, but it enables kids (and grown-ups) to see the wool process from start to finish.
From meeting the alpacas, to helping to clean the fiber and turn it into roving, my girls were ready to buy some wool and start creating.
BUYING ROVING
Most of the wool you buy directly from a farm is not dyed. Roving is also available in many beautiful and rich colors and you can buy it locally from high-end wool or fabric shops. It is also widely available on-line.
Bella Luna sells packs of colored wool roving and needle felting kits.
The Felted Ewe is a wonderful resource for greater amounts of wool, and they ship world-wide.
World of Wool comes highly receommended from The Monko, of Taming the Goblin, in the U.K.
INSPIRATION
I have created a Pinterest board with lots of lovely needle and wet felted ideas for you to look at. I will be continuing to update it with tutorials, ideas, and inspiration. You can follow the board here.
LET'S GET MAKING
We will explore both wet felting and needle felting techniques over the next few weeks and I'll post lots of tutorials for kids and adults along the way. By becoming a fan of Curly Birds on facebook you'll be able to join in the fun.
IT'S FUN TO SHARE
If you have projects that you have already made, please add a link in the comment section so we can all have a look. And if you're motivated to make something inspired by the series, please send pictures to [email protected].
Facebook: Behind the scenes shots and first to see new projects. You can also upload your pictures to the Curly Birds facebook page.
Pinterest: Follow along with felted projects and ideas.
Grab some roving and let’s get making... I'll post the first project in a few days and it will be wet felting with kids.
