Wolly Ways

What Is It?
Needle felting is a simple dry-felting process of entangling fibers with each other or with a fabric base. Traditionally done by hand using a single- or multi-needle tool, the craft has recently become a popular machine option too, as major companies are now offering dedicated felters selling from $300 to over $1,000.

Hand needle felting can produce flat or dimensional pieces, and machine work is limited to non-dimensional items that will fit under the presser foot.

Tools Of The Trade
The tools are simple -- barbed needle(s) and fibers, and all the creativity your customers can bring to the table.

For hand felting, a protective base is needed to avoid damage to tabletops and/or laps. There are two types of bases -- dense foam and brushes. These allow the needle to repeatedly stab fiber into a fabric or other fiber substrate without damage (to the needles or to the felter).

Fabulous fibers are key to needle felting fun. Wool works the best since it’s scaled structure ensures secure fiber entanglement, but other fibers can also be used in combination with wool. Roving (unspun wool) and yarns are big sellers for felters, both in prepackaged color assortments and individually.

Fabric can also be felted to other fabric, so small pre-cuts of interesting wools, metallics and other novelties will add sales to the main fiber focus. Just as sewers need many colors of thread, felters need lots of colors of fiber and fabric!

Machine Magic
The following machine companies offer these felters -- Baby Lock Embellisher, Feltcrafts, Husqvarna Viking Huskystar ER10, Janome Xpression, Pfaff Smart 350P and Sewing with Nancy’s Fab Felter.

The dedicated felting machines all share common features: no feed dogs, no thread, no bobbin, no tension, a presser foot and/or protective finger guard, and most importantly, barbed needle heads -- from 5-to 7-needle groupings, depending on the brand. Some machines also offer a lint collector to capture the fuzz produced in the felting process.

Brother and Bernina offer conversion kits for some models of their conventional sewing machines to adapt them to needle felting.

All machine felting is done using free-motion techniques already familiar to many quilters.

Using a machine for needle felting allows for the use of some traditionally “non-feltable” fibers such as Angelina, Soy Silk, metallics and synthetics, as the consistent and deeper punching motion of the machine helps anchor these novelties when hand tooling may not.

Where To Begin
As a retailer launching into the needle felting genre, offer single needles and a multi-needle tool such as Clover Needlecraft’s 5-needle tool in two sizes. It has a compressible protective shield and needles are replaceable singly if your customer breaks them. The company also sells brush bases in two sizes. Colonial Needle offers single needles and multi-needle tools with wooden handles.

Pre-packaged wool roving offers your customers color options without a large investment in yarn inventory. Clover also offers these, as does Colonial Needle and several other vendors such as National Nonwovens, with their lines of ShadedWisps and WoolWisps.

Small skeins of needlepoint yarns are easy to stock and are available in a wide color range.

Don’t forget to create some store samples of projects for all skill levels, and also show needle felting combined with other crafts such as machine embroidery, appliqué, beading, etc.

Class Act
Teaching a Needle Felting 101 class will get your customers off to a good start, and encourage them to buy lots of fiber colors. Simply show the basics of the techniques and several samples, including an easy foolproof project such as a pincushion or needle case.

Once they’re hooked on the process and realize how simple it is, they’ll be in your store regularly buying more supplies such as beads and charms for felting accents, fibers and fabrics to make more projects.

Book Basics
There are many titles available on needle felting, but a new book titled Needle Felting by Hand and Machine (Krause Publications), covers the basics and includes instructions and patterns for 15 projects to ensure your customers’ success. The 128-page book offers details of fibers, tools and the needle felting process, both by hand using a single- or multi-needle tool, and using a felting machine. There is good explanation of various needle felting techniques for both flat and dimensional pieces, and an inspirational gallery of pieces from a variety of felters, in addition to the book’s authors.

Resources
Clover Needlecraft www.clover-usa.com
Colonial Needle www.colonialneedle.com
Krause Publications www.krause.com
National Nonwovens www.nationalnonwovens.com

Reprinted from SQE Professional, July 2007