Needle Felted Mini Pumpkins made with Reversed Spun Roving

Wool Pets
Making 20 Figures with Wool Roving and a Barbed Needle
By
Laurie Sharp, Kevin Sharp

Anyone can make cute and cuddly creatures from a handful of fluff and a barbed needle!

Needle felting is a new craft and is gaining in popularity. There are only a few books written on the subject and most of those focus on 'flat' needle felting on a surface. This book is about sculptural needle felting--creating 3-D animals and figures using the felting needle to sculpt wool.

This book shows the techniques and describes how the felting needle works with wool fiber to create felt, while explaining the differences between this art form and other forms of felting. You will learn how to hold the needle, what sort of materials to use, and why.

There are 20 complete projects including various birds, bugs, four-legged animals, and people--each one unique and irresistible! Laurie also shows the reader ways to display their felted creations as mobiles, ornaments, or arranged in shadow boxes.

Laurie Sharp is a full time artist and has been needle felting for over 5 years. She raises her own sheep, shears and processes the wool for most of her projects. She has been featured on HGTV’s 'That’s Clever'. View her web site: www.woolpets.com. Her work has been shown in a number of galleries in the Pacific Northwest, where she lives with her husband and business partner, Kevin Sharp. Kevin is a professional photographer, and provides both beauty and how-to photography for this book. His work can be viewed on www.sharpphotography.com.

I am really in the mood for fall and Halloween decorations. I'm not sure why but I'm not fighting it. I really like needle felting but I hadn't tried dimensional work as yet. So after savoring my copy of Wool Pets, I had to give it a shot. I decided to start small. 

Tiny in fact.

These little pumpkins are only about an inch to an inch and a half.

So the first step in all projects is gathering the tools and materials. In my case I did have felting needles and felting mat but not the roving in just the right shade of orange.

So I put my thinkin' cap on and this is what I did! I went out to the extensive yarn stash and found the most beautiful orange wool yarn called "Iceland by Crystal Palace" and I grabbed my pet brush and did a little "reverse spinning".

I carded (brushing) the yarn back into roving.

  

When I had a bunch of roving I followed the directions in the beginning of Wool Pets to make a ball.

I folded the sides of the roving in toward the middle.

I needle felted it first with the ball of roving on the felting mat because I was poking pretty far through the ball.

I then held it very carefully and sculpted the indents of the sides of the pumpkin. I then took a small scrap of green wool yarn and needle felted it to the top of the pumpkin for a stem.

Isn't this guy cute? If you need to make him, grab yourself a copy of Wool Pets
Making 20 Figures with Wool Roving and a Barbed Needle for complete instructions. And if you need to see more of Laurie's latest cuteness including these cool displays "Mr. Wool Pets" came up with check out this post over at her blog!

Comments

[Linda Lanese]

I did an article on Craft Gossip on your adorable pumpkins. I hope you enjoy it.

http://felting.craftgossip.com/2008/09/18/needle-felted-pumpkins/

Linda

[Cindy Lietz, Polymer Clay Tutor]

Those animals are really sweet! I love your idea for reverse spinning! Excellent post!

[Michelle]

These are ADORABLE!!!

[Glenda]

You did such a great job. Thanks for sharing. I love the book, Wool Pets, too.

[Tammy Aubuchon]

Oh my gosh! I FINALLY found a link that did what "I" did! I searched & searched online for turning roving "yarn" BACK into the wool used for needle felting. I found NOTHING, until I came across your site. Thank goodness! I thought maybe I was crazy & it was not a good thing to do, but I didn't know what else to do. (I find it easier, for me, to use "two" pet brushes, working the fibers off one & onto another, like spinners do with raw wool,) because the yarn fibers on the bottom of the brush are still in yarn strands & need to be worked off to expose them.

Thank you SO much for assuring me it "does" work, & I'll stop searching now! (Note: I went to a Pet supply store to get the brushes [at $12.00 each!] but wished I would have gone to "Target" to get what my daughter got for $3 or $4. It has a button on the handle that pushes up a plate to remove the hairs (or "roving" for us,)off the little wires! Man! So easy! But the Pet-- place didn't have those at all & I had forgotten where my daughter got hers. Phooey!

So, I just use a tool I got at JoAnn's in the needle felting aisle, that resembles a little tiny wire rake, with a single row of long wires with a bend on the end. You can turn the base at end of the handle to retract the wires for storage. To remove roving "fibers" you just made from the brush, I lift them right off the brush with that little rake thing. So easy! (A wire human hair pick might also work. I'm thinking up new ideas!)

I'm VERY new at this needle felting thing, but I'm LOVING IT! I saw some adorable animals (& funny too) in a zoo gift shop by "Woolbuddy." I watched his video on Youtube while he made a very funny frog. It looked very easy. So I ordered the "frog" kit, & a funny angler fish online the next day from his "etsy" site. (You get a discount if you buy 2 kits, or 4, from his etsy site.) I was "hooked!" I made a "baby" frog with the wool I had left over from the kit! I'm now making a rabbit, with NO pattern, no instructions, just ON MY OWN! He's going well! I used pics from other experts OL & their fabulous works of art. Signed, Sleepless in Seattle!

[stef]

Glad you liked the tutorial!
Stef