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Organza Quiz
Nov 7, 2009


Let's talk felting!

Needle felting is a craft where you take industrial needles like these



and unspun wool like this



and you stab the wool with the needles until it turns into something like this



or these:



If you want to get fancy, you can felt around pipecleaners (or other wire) and make things like these:







(chocobo and salad fingers made by forums user RandomFerret)

If you want to get very fancy you can make things with almost lifelike detail:





or if you have a lot of spare cash you can buy those two here and here.



How does it work?

Wool has special fibres which lock together when you stab them enough, so literally the entire craft consists of stabbing wool. You stab wool to shape it, you stab it to compact it, you stab it to join it together. Keep stabbing it until it's the shape you want, or cut bits off and start over again! It's a very forgiving medium, and one that you can make cool poo poo with almost instantly as soon as you start playing with it. I personally have basically 0 artistic skill and that first dragon up there was about the fourth thing I ever made.


Aren't those needles uncomfortable to hold?

The needles are designed for machines, not human hands. Thankfully you can get needle holders which give you a nice handle to grip. Some are even designed to hold multiple needles at once so you can felt bigger projects faster.


How can I get started doing this?

Since it's still a kind of obscure craft, it can be difficult to find the materials at your average craft store. I recommend buying a beginner kit online. That should come with some wool, some needles and instructions on a project or two to get you started (although there are no patterns involved and if you're brave you can make your own stuff right from the get go).


Stabbing things sounds very therapeutic

It is. And you get better at not stabbing yourself as you go, or at least not stabbing yourself hard enough to draw blood.


Can I talk about wet felting in this thread?

Sure! I know pretty much nothing about it so I'm not going to talk about it but since there isn't a thread for that either, go right ahead.

Organza Quiz fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Aug 7, 2016

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flavor.flv
Apr 18, 2008

I got a letter from the government the other day
opened it, read it
it said they was bitches




I'm glad there's finally a felting thread because it's easy and it barely costs anything to get started. It's more like sculpture than anything else, there's no patterns to follow and no little pieces to cut and keep track of. If you want to make plushies and find sewing is a bit too intimidating, give felting a try. You can fix any mistakes you make and you can put in a lot more detail than anything that requires a needle and thread.

It can even be lucrative! I've been making custom felt dolls professionally for a little while now, and my personal technique starts with making a pipe cleaner skeleton and then winding wool over that before felting on the details:



This lets me do really thin and strong extremities that wouldn't be possible with wool alone, and the finished piece ends up being posable:



You can even make full-on action figures with tons of movable parts!

flavor.flv fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Aug 15, 2016

Comrade Quack
Jun 6, 2006
Witty closing remarks have been replaced by massive head trauma and general stupidity.
I have no pictures to add, but I can confirm stabbing things repeatedly is very cathartic.

Organza Quiz
Nov 7, 2009


RandomFerret posted:

This lets me do really thin and strong extremities that wouldn't be possible with wool alone, and the finished piece ends up being posable:

I've been doing some stuff with pipecleaner skeletons but the feet cause me a lot of trouble. It always seems like I have to make toes thicker than the pipecleaner in order to cover up the pipecleaner properly and securely, and the wire likes to stick out the end unless I either curl up the end of it underneath (which makes the toe even thicker) or make the pipecleaner part of the toe quite short and then extend outwards with pure felt, which is really finicky and doesn't always work very well either. How'd you get the ends of the chocobo's toes to work?

flavor.flv
Apr 18, 2008

I got a letter from the government the other day
opened it, read it
it said they was bitches




I pulled the wool out into a thin strand and wound it around really tightly. That scale effect on the legs was actually entirely by accident!

I bent the end of the pipe cleaner around under the top of the toes after I'd already finished felting, and closed the wool around it.

Bananachin
May 1, 2010
Oh excellent there's a thread for this - agreed about stabbing things being therapeutic (until you perforate a nice little tunnel through the pad of your index finger.)

I've lately been more into stampmaking but when I do felt, I mostly make pokemon. The scolipede was my first project and it took something like a month, which in retrospect is a depressingly decent turnaround for my projects :sigh:





(Pokemon Sun/Moon spoilers)



Not a pokemon

Organza Quiz
Nov 7, 2009


Bananachin posted:

I've lately been more into stampmaking but when I do felt, I mostly make pokemon. The scolipede was my first project and it took something like a month, which in retrospect is a depressingly decent turnaround for my projects :sigh:

Those are really cute! I've made a few pokemon too, I think it might be inevitable. I kind of wish I had a favourite pokemon so I could make it for myself but I'm too indecisive, I'd want to make half of them. One of the first things I tried to do was make an umbreon for a friend but I had absolutely 0 idea what I was doing and screwed it up pretty badly, so I revisited it once I had a little more practice and ended up with this:




This was back when I was using synthetic stuffing as a core, which was actually not a terrible idea for making a whole bunch of stuff really cheaply. It doesn't hold a candle to actual wool if you want to make anything quality but all I had at the time was small amounts of coloured wool from the starter kit I bought and I didn't want to shell out for lots more wool before I knew I was going to stick with it as a hobby. It makes things very, very stiff and you can't really do it around pipecleaner.

Tears In A Vial
Jan 13, 2008

This looks super cute, and I'm well up for trying it, I often need a break between big cross-stitching projects. Can anyone link me to a decent starter kit on Amazon UK or something?

Either of these any good?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00K2YS...76FG663TB017FXK

https://www.amazon.co.uk/heidifeathers-Needle-Felting-Kit-handle/dp/B009T7SUP2

Organza Quiz
Nov 7, 2009


Tears In A Vial posted:

This looks super cute, and I'm well up for trying it, I often need a break between big cross-stitching projects. Can anyone link me to a decent starter kit on Amazon UK or something?

Either of these any good?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00K2YS...76FG663TB017FXK

https://www.amazon.co.uk/heidifeathers-Needle-Felting-Kit-handle/dp/B009T7SUP2

That second one is almost the exact one I got! I just got a slightly cheaper version with less needles and (I think) less colours. It's served me very well, the handle is comfy to use and I've only broken one of the needles so far. The instruction booklet wasn't terribly useful since it wants you to guess exactly how much felt you need to make a given shape right from the start and doesn't tell you that you can build up a shape in layers until it's the size and shape you want it, but otherwise it's been a really good kit.

Bananachin
May 1, 2010
Seems pretty solid; my only addition would be a larger bag (50g or so?) of neutral-colored wool for constructing bases. Makes your colors go much further especially if your sculptures are on the larger side.

flavor.flv
Apr 18, 2008

I got a letter from the government the other day
opened it, read it
it said they was bitches




See if you can find a bag of polyfill to use as core material. It's super cheap and felts really easily. In fact, you need to be careful with it because it'll get hard if you work it too much.

Hoplosternum
Jun 2, 2010

:parrot:
How do you do the colours?

Looks cool, I may have to try.

Organza Quiz
Nov 7, 2009


Hoplosternum posted:

How do you do the colours?

Looks cool, I may have to try.

You buy wool in the colour that you need! Or dye it yourself if you're feeling very crafty and adventurous. It is supposedly possible to mix two colours together to make new colours but it is pretty time consuming to mix them to the point that they look like a new colour rather than just two colours mixed together. Not that you can't get some pretty cool effects with two colours mixed together, I play with that a lot these days.

Basically your best bet is to just buy the colours you need though. I'm lucky enough there's an artist in my city who does wet felting and sells her excess fibre so I have somewhere I can go to see it in person and buy the exact amounts I want. Otherwise you're stuck ordering online in whatever colours and quantities you can find.

Hoplosternum
Jun 2, 2010

:parrot:

Organza Quiz posted:

You buy wool in the colour that you need!

Holy crap, how do you do such perfect detail!? Like the whites in umbreon's eyes. Wow.

Organza Quiz
Nov 7, 2009


Hoplosternum posted:

Holy crap, how do you do such perfect detail!? Like the whites in umbreon's eyes. Wow.

A very, very small bit of wool and a very sharp needle. Tiny details are actually really easy to do, if a bit fiddly and time consuming. For example, the umbreon's eyes are just red layered onto the black of the head, then black pupils layered on the red, then a tiny bit of white layered on the black IIRC. You can get much more detailed than the stuff I make, like the near totally realistic sculptures I linked in the OP.

HelloIAmYourHeart
Dec 29, 2008
Fallen Rib
I used to do wet felting, needle felting, and spinning, but I have since moved on to other hobbies (quilting!) and I have an absolute TON of wool that I will not use. Would anybody be interested in buying some for CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP? Like shipping and a few dollars cheap. You can cram a ton of this stuff in a pretty small package.



--a bunch of sunset colored roving
--some gray/green/blue stuff that is sort of greasy and curly, like a rawer sort of wool
--rust and olive
--mint and purple
--swirly sparkly stuff: yellow/orange, blue/black, purple, two blue/yellow/greens
--some ugly mixed color thing

This isn't even everything I have. I also have a bunch of special effects stuff, like sparkles you can mix in.

(if this isn't appropriate for this thread, lemme know and I'll move it to SA Mart)

Seabhac
Sep 12, 2009
Colour me intrigued. Can you get into the actual process a bit? I knit and I've seen people felt knitting projects by wetting them but this seems to be a completely different idea?

Organza Quiz
Nov 7, 2009


HelloIAmYourHeart posted:

I used to do wet felting, needle felting, and spinning, but I have since moved on to other hobbies (quilting!) and I have an absolute TON of wool that I will not use. Would anybody be interested in buying some for CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP? Like shipping and a few dollars cheap. You can cram a ton of this stuff in a pretty small package.

I'd be interested except I'm in Australia so chances are just the shipping would be more expensive than it would be for me to just go buy the stuff here :(


Seabhac posted:

Colour me intrigued. Can you get into the actual process a bit? I knit and I've seen people felt knitting projects by wetting them but this seems to be a completely different idea?

Yep, this is completely different. The process (such as it is) goes something like this, assuming you aren't using a wire skeleton:

1. Decide what you want to make
2. Break that thing down (in your head) into bodyparts/smaller shapes. For example, a cat is made up of a head, a body, four legs, two ears, one tail etc
3. Pick a bodypart, grab some wool, squish/roll/press it into approximately the shape you want and start stabbing until it's compressed and solidified
4. Add more bits of wool as necessary to parts that look like they need to be bigger or a different shape. Like you could stick some wool onto the head to be a nose, for example, or if the body looks too small you can wrap more wool around and stab it on until it's big enough.
5. Make the rest of the bodyparts. Try to leave some unfelted wool free at the end that will join up to the rest of the thing eventually
6. Join the parts together by putting them together and stabbing at the join until it's joined. You can also add some more wool to cover the join to make it more stable.
7. You made a thing!

If you want to save coloured wool, you can do most of that with cheaper undyed wool and then just put the coloured wool on over the top. I'm still learning the balance between layering on too much colour such that the parts get too big/bulky and not layering on enough so the white shows through. I think it's just experience.

Making something involving a skeleton is simpler in a way, just more fiddly because you have to make everything already joined together instead of separate bodyparts:

1. Decide what you want to make
2. Bend pipecleaners into a skeleton of what you want to make. It's up to you whether a particular part needs skeleton or not (like say for our cat example you might want the tail to have pipecleaner so it can be moved but you don't care about moving the ears so you don't bother). Chances are you're giving the thing a skeleton in the first place because you want it to have spindly legs that can hold it up properly, but everything else is going to be personal preference
3. Wrap wool around the pipecleaner and start stabbing, keep wrapping bits of wool around and keep stabbing until you've turned your skeleton into an actual thing. Try not to stab directly into the wire because it will blunt/break your needles
4. Swear loudly because you were being so careful not to stab the wire that you forgot to not stab yourself
5. You made a (possibly slightly bloody) thing!

There's a lot of video tutorials on youtube for various felting kits that you can check out too that will give you a sense of how it all works.

Seabhac
Sep 12, 2009

Organza Quiz posted:


3. Pick a bodypart, grab some wool, squish/roll/press it into approximately the shape you want and start stabbing until it's compressed and solidified


Haha so it really is just stabbing! I was imagining some sort of specialised technique :)

Organza Quiz
Nov 7, 2009


Seabhac posted:

Haha so it really is just stabbing! I was imagining some sort of specialised technique :)

Nope, the thread title is 100% literally accurate. I mean, there is a level of technique in knowing how much to stab it and which needles to stab it with, but in essence that's all you do.

Bananachin
May 1, 2010

HelloIAmYourHeart posted:

I used to do wet felting, needle felting, and spinning, but I have since moved on to other hobbies (quilting!) and I have an absolute TON of wool that I will not use. Would anybody be interested in buying some for CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP? Like shipping and a few dollars cheap. You can cram a ton of this stuff in a pretty small package.

How much to ship it to Japan because I adore that sunset wool but would divest you of the rest (particularly the earth tones) if you just want to get rid of it all at once.

HelloIAmYourHeart
Dec 29, 2008
Fallen Rib

Bananachin posted:

How much to ship it to Japan because I adore that sunset wool but would divest you of the rest (particularly the earth tones) if you just want to get rid of it all at once.

Looks like if I crammed it in a flat rate box it would be like $30-40? I think if I sent it all I'd need a larger box. And honestly I'd be happy to send it just for cost of shipping. I have a bunch more wool at my parents' house so I'll go get that tomorrow and go through it and see what all else I have.

So you would like the sunset wool, the olive/rust,some of the gray/green/blue rawer wool, and any other earthy tones I might have? Maybe some of the mixed color stuff for filler?

Organaz Quiz, if I sent you a ton of stuff for shipping do you want any? Also do you like sparkles and bright non earth tones?

Suspect Bucket
Jan 15, 2012

SHRIMPDOR WAS A MAN
I mean, HE WAS A SHRIMP MAN
er, maybe also A DRAGON
or possibly
A MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL TEAM
BUT HE WAS STILL
SHRIMPDOR
We have khatadin sheep at the farm I work at, and I've heard the only thing their wool is good for is felting. Is that true? I'd love to try and make some mini sheep :p

Bananachin
May 1, 2010

HelloIAmYourHeart posted:

Looks like if I crammed it in a flat rate box it would be like $30-40? I think if I sent it all I'd need a larger box. And honestly I'd be happy to send it just for cost of shipping. I have a bunch more wool at my parents' house so I'll go get that tomorrow and go through it and see what all else I have.

So you would like the sunset wool, the olive/rust,some of the gray/green/blue rawer wool, and any other earthy tones I might have? Maybe some of the mixed color stuff for filler?

Organaz Quiz, if I sent you a ton of stuff for shipping do you want any? Also do you like sparkles and bright non earth tones?

The sunset, olive+rust, and the stormy raw stuff sounds good, yeah. If nobody else calls dibs on all of that sparkly nonsense, I'm interested.

I've actually got a six-pack of what more-or-less amounts to tinsel bordering on choking hazard (I've used it so far for "reflections" in pupils), but would be interested in seeing what else you've got if it's not too much trouble to amass the rest of your collection :)

Organza Quiz
Nov 7, 2009


HelloIAmYourHeart posted:

Organaz Quiz, if I sent you a ton of stuff for shipping do you want any? Also do you like sparkles and bright non earth tones?

Thanks for the offer but I'm good, thanks. I am curious about sparkle wool, though. Is it just like roving with glitter embedded in it or is it more like strands? Does it work okay for needle felting? The artist I buy my wool from over here does wet felting and she uses strands of shiny silk in her work sometimes. She was skeptical that I could make it work with needle felting but I grabbed some for like a dollar anyway since it looks fun to experiment with.

Suspect Bucket posted:

We have khatadin sheep at the farm I work at, and I've heard the only thing their wool is good for is felting. Is that true? I'd love to try and make some mini sheep :p

I don't really know about specific breeds of sheep vs felting but as far as I'm aware it's a general property of sheep wool that it's good for felting (also some textures of cat hair which is how you get books on how to make fingerpuppets out of your cat. I have to admit I am kind of tempted to try and make my cat out of my cat sometime). You could try wet felting some of it to see if it felts together? That's probably easier than buying a felting needle just to see.

Organza Quiz fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Sep 2, 2016

HelloIAmYourHeart
Dec 29, 2008
Fallen Rib

Organza Quiz posted:

Thanks for the offer but I'm good, thanks. I am curious about sparkle wool, though. Is it just like roving with glitter embedded in it or is it more like strands? Does it work okay for needle felting?

A lot of it is angelina fibers which are very shiny, very tiny, and very soft. A bit of googling suggests that you can totally needle felt with it, and it's also heat bondable so even if it doesn't felt 100% you can use a low iron or hair dryer to fuse it. I have a bunch of pure angelina in about a dozen colors and a little bit goes a looooong way if you want me to throw some in a regular envelope and send it your way.

The sparkle batts were made for spinning, not felting, and they have other fibers besides wool in them (rayon, silk, polyester, angelina...who knows) but I know they work for wet felting because the fibers just get so drat mixed together.

flavor.flv
Apr 18, 2008

I got a letter from the government the other day
opened it, read it
it said they was bitches




I call dibs on all that sparkly nonsense.

I'd also be willing to take everything else, but I'll wait a while to see if anybody else wants in. I don't want to sabotage the fledgling career of a potential new felter with my greed.

HelloIAmYourHeart
Dec 29, 2008
Fallen Rib
There will be plenty for all, as it turns out I have an entire storage bin full of fiber. Tomorrow I will probably start an SA mart thread instead of clogging up this one.

Organza Quiz
Nov 7, 2009


HelloIAmYourHeart posted:

if you want me to throw some in a regular envelope and send it your way.

Okay that does sound pretty cool, I'd love to try some out and I think a regular envelope shouldn't be too exorbitant.

Comrade Quack
Jun 6, 2006
Witty closing remarks have been replaced by massive head trauma and general stupidity.
For lightweight stuff flat rate boxes are probably more expensive than per weight shipping.

HelloIAmYourHeart
Dec 29, 2008
Fallen Rib
You're probably right, this stuff is incredibly light.

Anyway, here's my selling thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3789045

HelloIAmYourHeart
Dec 29, 2008
Fallen Rib
Random Ferret, do you want anything else from the SA Mart thread other than the sparkly batts?

Bananachin, it's going to be much cheaper to send this to you than I thought, and I pulled out all the other earth tones for you.

Neither of you have PMs so I need to know where to send this stuff.

flavor.flv
Apr 18, 2008

I got a letter from the government the other day
opened it, read it
it said they was bitches




I sent an email to the account you use for paypal, let me know if you can't get those

Bananachin
May 1, 2010
Boof, sorry for vanishing. I'll take the coral roving, jade roving, blue/green swirl roving, dark red/purple swirl roving, dark green swirl roving, natural brown wool, pink jacob roving, orange jacob roving, and the gallon bag as well. I think that adds up to 30 USD, how much more would you like to cover international shipping?

HelloIAmYourHeart
Dec 29, 2008
Fallen Rib

Bananachin posted:

Boof, sorry for vanishing. I'll take the coral roving, jade roving, blue/green swirl roving, dark red/purple swirl roving, dark green swirl roving, natural brown wool, pink jacob roving, orange jacob roving, and the gallon bag as well. I think that adds up to 30 USD, how much more would you like to cover international shipping?

Not sure about the cost of shipping, let me box this all up and see how much it weighs.

The jacob roving is much thicker and coarser than merino and I don't know how well it will work for needle felting--do you still want it?

Bananachin
May 1, 2010
I'll give it a go - I've salvaged some dollar-store dross in the past and if it's absolutely unworkable, I'll just ship it to my mum. She spins as a hobby so she'll find some use for it.

Actually if you could add an envelope-sampler of those angelina fibers too that'd be rad.

HelloIAmYourHeart
Dec 29, 2008
Fallen Rib

Bananachin posted:

I'll give it a go - I've salvaged some dollar-store dross in the past and if it's absolutely unworkable, I'll just ship it to my mum. She spins as a hobby so she'll find some use for it.

Actually if you could add an envelope-sampler of those angelina fibers too that'd be rad.

Sounds good, email me at REDACTED and we can work out details.

Also if you make anything cool with this stuff you have to post it here for me to see.

HelloIAmYourHeart fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Sep 15, 2016

Bananachin
May 1, 2010
A Weekend Wool Worm.





I've finally completed this evolutionary line - Scolipede (the horse) was my first ever needlefelt project, and I whipped up Venipede (the grub) not too long after. I made Whirlipede (the pillbug)'s core body months and months ago, but I put off adding horns for ages until I made a craft date with a friend this weekend.





Organza Quiz
Nov 7, 2009


Bananachin posted:

A Weekend Wool Worm.

I've finally completed this evolutionary line - Scolipede (the horse) was my first ever needlefelt project, and I whipped up Venipede (the grub) not too long after. I made Whirlipede (the pillbug)'s core body months and months ago, but I put off adding horns for ages until I made a craft date with a friend this weekend.

Super cute! And yeah, I know how it is with putting the finishing touches on things. I have a couple of projects I'm mostly through but for some reason am putting off finishing. The current thing I'm making is a commission for a friend and it feels really weird just plain working on it until it's finished instead of switching between things and putting off doing certain bits of it.


HelloIAmYourHeart posted:

Also if you make anything cool with this stuff you have to post it here for me to see.

I got your envelope today! Thanks, there's more in there in more colours than I expected :D It's gonna be a little while until I have a chance to play with it since I want to get this commission finished first but I'm really looking forward to seeing how it works and I've already got some ideas in mind.

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flavor.flv
Apr 18, 2008

I got a letter from the government the other day
opened it, read it
it said they was bitches




My usual camera's broken, but I just finished this baby therizinosaurus and I want to show it off, so here's a shot from a five year old phone camera.



The claws are the most important part of a therizinosaurus, so I made them out of sculpey. This was my first time combining felting and clay sculpting, and I didn't really think things through. I wanted it to be in a more naturalistic pose, but the claws weigh more than the rest of it and this is the only position that doesn't fall over immediately.

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