First I thought I could make a crochet version, with perle cotton in the appropriate colors, but it was obvious early on that it wasn’t going to have the effect I wanted and I only half-finished it. For my second attempt I turned to needle-felting, buying 100% non-superwash wool yarn for the body color, and got along well until the end, when it was pointed out by my husband that the proportions were off enough that adding the red arms/ears/fins was not going to go well. For the third attempt I bought 100% wool flat felt and rolled up a strip of it to form the core, so I would have more control over the proportions, and that time it all went swimmingly!

(So it’s a little lopsy-faced. I’m okay with that.)

Note: This robot is not one of Mozilla’s trademarks, but the icon file is subject to the Mozilla Public License.

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One of my coworkers just had a birthday, and I thought it would be fun to find him a magnet of one of those creatures. Striking out of suitable magnets, I thought maybe I could glue a magnet onto the back of a small toy. Striking out on suitable small toys, I decided to needle felt one: the narwhal. 90 minutes later…

The magnet is embedded in the back side, and there is a doubled length of light wire running from the tip of the horn to the tips of the tailfins.

I have some other projects pending photos, so there will probably be a flurry of posts here eventually. Meanwhile I added a big batch of new photos to the Fun with Vintage Patterns album on Facebook.

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The idea: Lay some fleece out on a needle-felting brush, needle it until it can be transported without coming apart (5 minutes if you’re being careful, with flips), take it to the sink, soak it, rub it between your soapy hands for another 5 minutes (also with flips) and rinse – done.

For all of the smaller patches the fleece barely overhung the felting brush. My goal was thinner pieces of felt than the last time I made felt; those were too thick to expect to keep needles in. To that end I used thinner layers of fleece, which also meant they were somewhat irregular. I stuck some crewel yarn in several of them; in the photos it’s between layers but it can also be on top – just hold the ends down with your fingers while you needle-felt the middle until it’s stuck, and then needle-felt the ends until they’re stuck too. It takes a little more care than just fleece but it isn’t fussy. If you put it in between it may or may not show well.

To flip it helps to have a cat brush that you can get underneath the fleece through the felting brush bristles. I also tried to needle in the edges in particular so they wouldn’t get thin in the wet-felting step. You can see in the third picture below that the size has already decreased quite a bit.

I don’t have photos of the wet-felting step, but it’s straightforward: run warm water, soap up your hands (I tried glycerin hand soap and liquid dish soap and would recommend the dish soap), wet the fleece, and rub it between your hands – gently at first and then more vigorously when the patch shrinks enough to fit entirely between your hands. Flip and rotate it so you hit it from multiple angles. The patch will not be a regular square and I saw no way to influence the shape – it probably depends on what parts of the fleece patch were thicker to begin with.

The first time I tried to make a larger patch it was simply long – and not just that, long in what was already the long direction of the brush. I believe I did not make the fleece thick enough, but it was also quite difficult to wet felt because of how much larger than my hands it was. You can see in the photo below that it really didn’t come together at all.

The more successful larger patch overhung the felting brush some on all sides, for a total that was a bit smaller than the failed one. It had to be needled in sections: first the middle, then in thirds from end to end. The wet-felting was slower but the same idea. Unfortunately I ended up with some gaps in the finished felt (this happened to a much lesser extent with a couple of the smaller patches), so I needled some additional fleece over them and performed a second wet-felting.

You’ll see most of these patches again in upcoming projects. I’ve been crafting steadily; it’s mostly been on things that wouldn’t be interesting blog posts, but there are a couple more photogenic projects in the pipeline!

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But this post has nothing to do with him. I have a couple of friends who have adopted “Just keep swimming” as a mantra, and that inspired me to make a small plush regal tang (also called a blue tang, but that name is used for multiple species) for a keychain.

After looking at Google Images for a while, and then through my fabric stash, I went to the store, made a couple of versions, and ended up with this:

An amalgam of craft techniques are represented. Although the felt is acrylic, I needle-felted the tail and fins onto the body, with some extra wool on top. The eyes are shank buttons pushed through a small slit in the body felt, with a second button on the inside of each to keep them from pulling out again. I had to hand-sew the region nearest the eye, but the rest of the perimeter was sewn by machine. After trimming my seam allowance –perhaps past the best point– I painted the navy blue details and dripped some Fray-Check on the stitching that wasn’t painted. I opened a small hole for the keyring with a large needle.

It’s pretty substantial for a keychain, but it could be hung up elsewhere too.

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Partly because I was having trouble making a flat piece with nothing under it, and partly because I am curious to experiment with nuno felting ideas, my next project was to needle felt colorful wool onto a piece of unbleached cotton muslin. I decided to add black wool in between, since I love stained glass, and after a trip to White River Yarns to acquire some, I immediately sat down and had this:

I love how fuzzy the back is, but I’ll be applying some wet felting techniques to make it both more secure and thinner overall. I wish I had taken a picture before I added the leading so you could see the huge difference in appearance.

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The stem is one-third of a length of cord (the cord I used for Stumpy’s belt when he was dressed as an Assyrian king); the rest is llama fleece. I am fairly pleased although it is a bit shaggy (and I even gave it a haircut). I acquired a three-needle pen but the needles were a bit fine for catching the smooth, slippery llama fibers, so then I got a set of heavier needles and made this little guy:

I started out trying to make a teddy bear, which is why he’s dark brown, but I couldn’t get the shape right so I changed direction. His eyes are coarse sheep’s wool, which was much easier to work with than the llama fleece, but the llama was easier on this one than the previous one. I think I’m getting the hang of the necessary manipulations.

After looking at an online preview of The Complete Photo Guide to Felting, I’m going to try to smooth the penguin-creature a little. She suggests four approaches: felting densely, applying the needle almost parallel to the surface, wet-felting by hand (dip your fingertips in warm water and rub the surface of the item until the loose strands are felted in), and giving the creature a haircut or a shave (with an actual safety razor). I think the middle two options are my best bet, especially as I already tried the haircut option. You’ll see him again in a while!

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I was nervous about diving right into the loose fibers, though, and after looking at some projects online I thought I’d try needle felting with acrylic felt, the sort that comes in sheets. It works pretty well, although I expect the fleece will be easier to work with, in part because the fibers are longer.

Here’s my first try:

Here’s the second:

Here’s the third:

For that third one, I felted the orange squiggle down from the top, and then the hot pink backing up from the bottom. That gave it its hot pink hairs.

Earlier this week I went to White River Yarns for a needle felting pen, with three needles. This was partly so I can work a bit faster when I start on the actual fleece, and partly because I’m pretty sure the acrylic felt is ruining the original two needles.

It’s ruining the original backing material also, because I have to stab really hard!

As a final acrylic try before moving on to llama fleece, I wanted to try to make something three-dimensional. I started with a square that I rolled into a cone, and it reminded me of the paper that’s rolled around bouquets. I thought I could make my husband a bouquet – he brings me quite a few – so with a long thin strip I rolled a rose. That was enough to fill the tissue paper by itself, so I felted it into place and left it on Matt’s place at the dining table.

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