Wool Felting: The 6,000 Year Old Fiber Art

Michief, Needle-felted Unicorn Music Box

What is felting?

Felting with wool fleece is the oldest form of fiber art, older than knitting or even sewing. As soon as people began domesticating livestock, they harvested wool to make sturdy and warm blankets, hats and boots. A simple form of felting is to boil fleece (or a knitted garment) until it shrinks and hardens into felt.

Needle felting is the art of sculpting wool with a special needle. Wool roving (unspun wool) is poked repeatedly, until it compacts into a solid shape. At that point, the wool can be sculpted with the needle. Generally, no gluing or stitching is needed.

What is so special about a felting needle?

A felting needle is a small (usually 3-4 inch) metal skewer. The tip of the needle is very sharp. It has tiny nicks that catch the strands of wool and draw them inwards where they get tangled with other strands of wool. Felting needles come in many gauges and shapes. The gauge tells you the thickness of the needle. Thin needles are for finer work and leave smaller holes. Needles come in 36, 38 or 40 gauge. The higher the number, the thinner the needle. The shape of the needle is also important. Some are star-shaped and some are triangle shaped. A star will have more needle surface than a triangle, so it will pull more wool.

 

What kind of wool is used for felting?

Roving is raw fleece from sheep, lamas or alpacas. Once the fleece is washed, dyed and combed, it is ready for felting. Each strand of wool has tiny barbs on it that get caught in the felting needle to be drawn in. For this reason, synthetic fibers, which are uniformly smooth, don’t felt well.

How to get started

Felting is fun for the whole family. Because the needles are very sharp, needle-felting is appropriate for ages 8 and up. But children as young as three, can enjoy the soapy fun of wet felting. As simple project is to make a felt bead. Dip a ball of roving (about the size of a golf ball) in warm, soapy water. Roll it between your palms, as if making a ball from clay. Keep dipping it into the water and rolling until the wool becomes firm. Rinse and let dry. You now have a bead made out of wool that you can string onto a necklace!

Here’s a video of my daughter and I making a needle-felted sheep:

Part 1: https://youtu.be/XijouQJyE4U

https://youtu.be/8nEhjPIs95M

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