How To Needle Felt

Are you tired of wearing those same old plain apparels? Do they occupy most of your wardrobe space rather than being donned on your body? Do not worry. You can beautify and embrace your clothes through needle felting. A form of knitting technique, needle felting attaches a piece of woolen felt with the help of needle stitches. The rough and notched edges of the needle force the fiber to move down and entangle with other fibers and wool on the cloth to create the felting. Many people are intrigued by the idea about using needle felting techniques to bring in new life to their old favorites lying in the wardrobe. However, needle felting is pretty simple and can be done on any kind of fabric. The plain felted knits can be embellished with assorted shapes and complex designs. With these simple tips and techniques mentioned herein, you can learn to create deigns on felt clothing and accessories. Read on to know them.

Needle Felting Tips & Techniques

Materials Required

Needle Felting Brush or Piece of Foam
Needle Felting Tool (single needle or a tool which has four needles inside a plastic sleeve)
Wool Rove or Wool Yarn (assorted colors)
Felted Swatch/Felted Knitting

Instructions

Decide the design that you want to decorate your fabric in. You can use simple stripes, dots, shapes or any other design as per your liking.
In case you are using a needle felting tool with sleeves, unlock them. However, if your tool has a single needle, you are ready to move on.
Place your wool rove over the fabric. Since the needles in the needle felting brush tool are extremely sharp, work over a brush or piece of foam to avoid damage caused to the table or working area.
Start off with placing the needle felting tool over the rove straight and move in an up and down motion with the needle. Move straight as much as possible. This would give you less chances of breaking the needle.
Start the needle at one end of the shape and proceed towards moving around it.
In case you are working on a larger shape, start needle felting from the outside of the shape and work towards the inside.
The longer and more punctures you make with the needle felting tool, the more fused will be your design.
In case you are working on a larger pattern, your entire project will not fit onto the brush. In such a case, work in sections by placing the portion of the piece you are working on the brush and moving accordingly.
Being an art form, decide when you want to stop needle felting giving your swatch a decorative look. Though you may be tempted to add on more basic shapes, stripes, polka dots, and cut-out shapes, make sure that the additions you make match the design already created.
After you are done with the needle felting, trim any leftover fiber from the edges of the piece, ensuring that they are firmly fused into the background fabric.
Also, you are likely to find errant strands that do not fit well with the needle felt. Either go back over them with the needle felting tool or trim them.

Additional Tips

Keep your finger away from the needle at all times.
Always lock your needle felting tool in case you are going to store it or leave it unattended.

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