#felting technique

[myarmcanfly]

I've recently been wanting to properly get into needle felting, any tips or tricks? (Also your work is super good! Genuinely love how the colors work together.)

Hey! Sorry for the delayed response, it takes a lot of driving to get from New York to Texas and back! First off: welcome to felting, it's so much fun!

My main tips are to take care of your body and be patient. When I say take care, I mean both protect your fingers from stabs by wearing thimbles or some other type of stab-proof hand protection and protect your wrists from carpal tunnel by moving primarily from the elbow when you stab. Try to hold your wrist straight at all times - the sooner you build that habit, the better! Most problems you'll encounter in felting can be solved with more stabbing, but a big thing folks tend to miss is that you want your pieces to be solid from the center out. Soft cores mean squishy, indistinct color areas and are frustrating to work on. Don't ball up a big bunch of wool and start stabbing; start with just as much as you can get your needle all the way through, and then build up bulk over time by wrapping more wool around each time it gets reasonably solid.

Those are the big things that jump to mind, but I've answered lots more specific technical questions under these tags!

[myarmcanfly]

i am obsessed with your pond felted creations!! the kitties are so cute. I got my own needle felting kit a while ago in order to make destructible cat toys, but after seeing your stuff I really want to explore dolls and sculptures. What i'm wondering is how you get your surfaces so smooth! I work with corriedale/merino most of the time but no matter how long i spend stabbing the surface is still quite fuzzy and never has the definition I see on yours. tell me your secrets pretty please?

The answer is basically "more stabbing," but maybe I can explain it better than that! There are three ingredients to a nice smooth surface with crisp definition: Solid core, the right needle sizes, and patience.

I just mentioned the core component in another ask, but basically if the center of a piece is squishy everything on top of it will be squishy and moosh out of place easily. Small markings will sink in, edges will be easily distorted, it makes everything harder. But if your core shape is solid, I usually aim for tennis ball firm, you can put things on top of it and they'll stay where you put them! The same goes for fuzziness; those loose fibers need somewhere to be anchored so they don't stick out, and a tight, solid base will hold them better than soft one.

Second, I recommend using at least two and ideally three different sized needles and working from thickest to thinnest. My thick needle is a 36 twist, although I've used 34 for the job, and it does a great job building a solid core but leaves huge indents in the surface. My medium sized needle is a 38 star, which does a great job locking surface colors down but won't work as fast as the thick one. It also still leaves pretty visible "pores" in the surface. Finally, once everything is in place, my last smoothing pass is with a 40 twist or 42 triangle needle. This will even out those indents and leave everything looking uniform, but they're VERY slow to work with so I like to do as much as a I can before breaking them out.

And finally, felting is a slow craft that takes time. Most fuzzy surfaces happen because you're tired of going over the same spot, and I don't blame you! But patience is your friend, and taking the time you really need will always give the best results.

[myarmcanfly]

Hi, just found your blog and your work is incredible!

I was wondering if you have any tips on how to make clean thin pieces for felting? I am new and have been making cartoon felts of my friends cats but making the ears the fibers just go into my foam pad and then it gets all fluffy when I take the piece off the foam, but if I only stab a tiny bit the fibers don't catch. Are there special needles for thin felting or is it a patience and skill thing? Thanks ❤️

Hello, and thank you!

For thin things like koi dog ears, what I do is use a piece of 100% wool sheet felt (the kind you can buy in a store) to build the shape on - that gives you a solid base with very little bulk. Once you're done adding to that, you have two options. The simpler one is to just shave off the fuzzy bits to smooth out the back side, although this does leave a different texture from the side you were working on. I do this when I layer several colors of sheet felt together, like in my koi dog ears.

The second option is to move onto what I would call a "hard surface," usually a self-healing cutting mat or plastic cutting board, and work almost parallel to the surface to sort of tuck the fuzz back into the middle. The hard surface prevents the needle from coming out the other side while still offering some cushioning vs. just the table (and prevents the table from being damaged!). You have to go pretty slow and careful to do it that way, but it results in the neatest final appearance. Finger protectors are absolutely MANDATORY with this technique, you'll poke yourself a lot if you're not careful.

I hope that helps, and best of luck with your felting endeavors!

[myarmcanfly]

Hi! I'm getting started in needle felting as more than a hobby and really want to improve my skills. It's really hard to find reference and resources for needle felting at this level of professionalism and I was wondering- HOW do you get such a clean finish on your dolls?! They're so neat and there's no extra fuzz!

Thank you so much! I answered a similar question a little bit ago (https://www.tumblr.com/myarmcanfly/717045422101757952/) , but basically: Just keep stabbing! Stab carefully, but stab a lot. You want a firm core to give you a solid base to build on, so don't leave it squishy. You should also start with large needles and move down to smaller ones to reduce the size of the needle marks in your surface.

The type of wool you use will also affect finish. Soft wools with lots of crimp will lay flatter than coarse wools or wools with very long, straight fibers. I like targhee best myself, but different folks enjoy different fibers! Experiment with different breed-specific fibers if you can and see which results you like best.

There's also no shame in doing a bit of trimming or shaving at the end if you need to! I tend not to because I'm happy with my surface as it is, but you can certainly make final touch-ups that way as needed.

[myarmcanfly]

Any advice on felting thin round pieces like legs and tails? I have trouble getting them firm, especially if using an armature. Your critters are super inspiring and I love the definition and shape you get on each of your pieces!

Hey there! Sorry, Tumblr didn't tell me I had an ask.

The best tip I can offer for thin parts with armatures is to do as much of the felting as you can BEFORE assembly. For thin legs like the flox, I felt a sort of "blanket" of wool on my surface, usually flipping and felting three times, then wrap it around the wire. Once it's on the armature, working with your needle parallel to the surface of the leg/tail helps a lot - that way you're tangling the fiber up and down the length of the part, right than pushing it out the back and creating a fuzzy spot you'll need to correct later on.

For thin parts without armature, I often cut out a piece of sheet felt to form a nice solid base - this is the technique I use on Figment legs. It gives the wool something solid to stick to from the start, and lessens the overall work a bit. Then the tip is pretty much the same, working along the length instead of in one side and out the other. I also find it very helpful to work on a 'hard' surface for thin parts. This means something like a cutting mat or piece of bookboard - you still want a barrier between the needle and your table, but it doesn't let the needle go straight out the back and leave fuzzy areas. You have to be careful, since it's easier to break a needle on a hard surface, but with a gentle touch its doable and I generally prefer it.

I hope that helps!

[myarmcanfly]

hello, i love your creations! <3 if i may ask, how do you firmly attach the felt feathers to the body of your animals? for some reason whenever i do that they're super fragile and rip out really easily, no matter how much i secure them.

Hello! Thank you so much.

I’m afraid I don’t have any great and terrible secrets when it comes to feather attachment. The best pieces of advice I can give are to leave yourself plenty of surface area on the end of the feather to attach (I try to cut groups out of a single piece and use the excess between and below them to attach, or add a small ‘tag’ on the end of a single) and to add multiple layers of wool on top. Usually the first layer shows a bit of the edge of the cut felt, so I keep going until you can’t see where the end of the feather is at all. 

Other than that, persistence and patience are always the key to felting. If you find that you’re getting a lot of fibers through but they’re just slipping out when you pull on them, you might try a coarser wool (corriedale, norwegian C1, and bhedawool are my go-to rough fibers), but I use merino a lot of the time and haven’t had any particular trouble with it.

[myarmcanfly]

Hey there, I was just wondering if you've ever heard of the poseable armature that Mohair Bear Making offers. It's a thousand times more poseable than wire, meaning it would take a lot more rough handling to snap than wire. And please just ignore me if I'm being obnoxious; I just feel like more artists who want to make poseable art and produce creations at high quality should know about this product. (I would like to acknowledge that you make art dolls, not children's toys.) Thank you.

Hi! Yes, I am aware of plastic style armature, and it really is great stuff. Not a rude or obnoxious question at all! Unfortunately, it’s not a viable option for needle felted creatures the way it is for a plush doll. Needle felting relies on a firm core, and that means that the wool in the center of the piece is packed very tightly around the armature. With wire, you can maintain some flexibility, although the thicker the part the less it can move. With plastic armature, however, the wool would be packed in between the individual “beads” and eliminate all possible movement. 

In addition, hitting a thin, smooth wire with my needle is a momentary inconvenience. I hold my needles lightly, and just pull back and try again when they stop short due to wire. Navigating around the bumps and curves of a plastic armature, which has a rougher texture more likely to catch the point of the needle even without the shape, would be an absolute nightmare and result in a lot of broken needles. 

I have a lot of concerns about durability with my work despite the fact that they’re not intended for heavy play. Fortunately, the nature of felt actually helps preserve the wires. Most of the time, wire breakage occurs because a wire is bent repeatedly at a sharp angle, which weakens it significantly. When the wire is tightly wrapped in wool as in a felted piece, there’s a limit to how sharply it can be bent because the wool cushions it. I’d say 90 degrees is an optimistic upper limit on most of my wires, and that’s only possible in very thin areas like Flox legs and ankles. Body and tail wires can only flex a little bit, enough to give the overall pose a bit of a curve but not enough to put significant strain on the wire. Over-play can still wear the wires out eventually, but it would take a pretty good bit of hard bending to really put them at risk. For now, I feel that’s the best option for the medium. Someday, though, I do hope that a more durable solution can be figured out!

[myarmcanfly]

Hi how do you make your felted creatures so clean? I'll stab & stab & stab but I still have so many flyaways

Hi! Sorry for the delay answering, I didn’t see this message right away. Even the cleanest felted piece will still have a few stray fibers here and there, but the short answer is: keep stabbing! It takes ages. I felt my pieces REALLY hard, and that makes it easier to lock down stray hairs–they usually have about the same amount of resistance as squeezing a tennis ball when I’m done. But for fiber types that are extra flyaway-prone (alpaca comes to mind!) I do occasionally go over the surface with either an eyebrow trimmer or a small pair of scissors and trim those wild ends.