How-To: Make A Painless Needlefelted Christmas Decoration

Hi! I am Morgan, a.k.a Ewes Your Imagination, a proud member of the NFEST team and the Felting Forum. I asked my mom if she would be the guinea pig for this tutorial, and she happily agreed! About 15 minutes into the project, we had already altered some things, and she was quickly tiring of the stabbing process! Now that I think about it, Dr. Phil was on, and she seemed to be listening less to my instructions and more to the television. I came home and realized there was no way of simplifying all the changes we made, so I sat down and start to finish did this tutorial like I originally planned.

If you have ever pulled out your wool and needles around people who haven't heard of needlefelting, you probably get the same question I get, "Can you teach me?" My answer is usually "No," not only because I am a lousy teacher, but also knowing how much damage a sharp, downward-barbed needle can do to one's fingers. So I hesitate to let the interested kids (and some adults!) I know start stabbing. How do you share the joy of your craft, without sharing the pain?

I wanted to make a Christmas ornament with my mom, who doesn't have any needlefelting experience yet, and thought a good template, or stencil, would be a cookie cutter! I remembered all the fun cookie cutters we used growing up, most of them in Christmas shapes. So we found the standard Gingerbread Man cookie cutter and started stabbing away! The high walls were perfect to run the needle straight up and down without having to put your digits in harm's way.

So if you want to get someone with tender, innocent fingers started in this fun and addictive craft, try some things you have in your house first, and in no time they will pick up the basics of needlefelting.

1) What you'll need: felting needle (I used a size 40), foam,
cookie cutter with no bar across the top, various colors
of wool roving depending on what you are making.




2) Put your cookie cutter on your foam work
surface, and start laying wool over the top, being
sure to lay wool over the edges, and in different
directions.

3) Push the wool down, and keep adding
more wool until the cookie cutter
is loosely filled with the roving.

4) Start pushing the needle straight up
and down along the perimeter of the
cookie cutter, and continue all the way around, leaving the middle for later.

5) Before you go any further, it's good to
lift up the cookie cutter, and pull the wool
off the foam, so it doesn't get too stuck in
the foam. If you've felted all the way
around the inside edge, it should
hold it's shape well.

6) Now, push the wool back into the
cookie cutter and felt all the wool
in the middle down until it is uniformly felted.

7) Now you can remove the cookie cutter and you should have a semi-firm felted shape.






You can start adding details any way you like, I chose to use
the standard Gingerbread Man embellishments.



You could embellish with beads, sequins, embroidery, or anything you feel like! To make these into hanging tree ornaments, simply sew a loop of thread near the top and tie a knot. Metallic thread looks good for this. The snowman at the top of the page was made using the same cookie cutter, but my mom added some length to the legs after step 6, then gently wet felted, dried and shaped the whole body until it was what she wanted. Then she and I added the carrot shaped nose, and the black eyes and mouth. It resembles a primitive snowman doll she found a while back, and I can't wait to make more!

Also, if you are helping teach someone who is either really impatient, or just really young, you could skip most of the time-consuming steps, and just have them trace the body from a piece of pre-made felt, then just needlefelt the details. They would make good easy hanging ornaments, or even special tags to adorn presents. Happy Felting!

09/17/08 NFEST Meeting Results

Our first team meeting was a big success! We had about 10% of our group that were able to make it. Gina, the team founder, had a video debut in the Etsy Virtual Labs. At this time, there is no way to record the video portions, so she just said hi and then went to texting. We took minutes for those who were unable to make it or for those who would like to review them over time. You can read our first meeting minutes at the Felting Forum under the topic NFEST 091708 Meeting Minutes

There were many topics and not enough time, it seemed. But, we managed to get through the topics and some excellent suggestions were touched on. Due to the time constraints some of the suggestions require a meeting of their own in order to fully delve into. Those meetings will be announced in the future.

First and foremost, we got comfortable in the new environment of the Etsy Virtual Labs. We spun, laughed, threw hearts, lips and paper airplanes at each other. Featherheart stayed upside down. Someone pushed poor little gnomey out of the room (by accident) LOL. Even WhimsicalMom started throwing cookies! Delicious. But, no time outs were necessary, the gnome magically re-appeared, and the meeting forged on. Needlefelters were felting during the meeting, too. I'd love to see the creations worked on during the meeting, sometime.

We covered several topics; team communication, treasury exposure, team site management, trunk shows/craft shows, and flickr team profile.

Communication - ALL team information is found on the Felting Forum Needle Felting ETSY Street Team Section. Our team has its own little section within the larger Felting Forum. Kay Petal of Felt Alive just bought the forum and will be helping us to make this section even more organized and team information easier to find in the near future.

Sara of Sara's Texture Crafts suggested we RSS the team forum updates over here to our blog side column. I don't really understand the Near Circle WebRing that Rebecca of FaerieRebecca set up, but this also shows updates. I sent a request to her to see if it is possible to add this. If anyone knows how this might be done, please come forth and share your wealth so keeping in the information loop will be easier for all of us.

We made the transition from Google over to the Felting Forum in March of 2008. Due to team mates being deployed or otherwise unable to join the forum at that time, all team information has been duplicate posted in several places such as the google group, twitter, flickr, etc. Now, information will only be posted on the forum and links to that post will be spread to the various sites. The many other sites and projects that our team is involved with will stay open as outreaches to people who may never have heard of needlefelting and for places where individual team mates may decide to add to their own shop's exposure outside of etsy. For example, google gave us the ability to create pages about our shops with pictures and links. The google site gets many hits a day. So, while we will not be using it for team communications, it will still be open to provide the outreach and exposure for our shops.

List of Projects and Team Leaders

Dawn of Gnome Garden brought up the idea of a re-orientation letter going out to everyone on the team since there is so much information and it's been confusing to know where to go to stay in the loop or to help out.

Erin of Fufu Kitty asked if there is a way to see the most recent posts in the forum. There are two ways to see new posts. First, you will see a yellow blob over on the left hand side of the topics if there have been new posts since your last log in. To go directly to the new posts in a long topic, look all the way to the right hand side and click on that little piece of paper.

Treasury Exposure - Forum Treasury sharing link was brought up as the place to post the link to treasuries featuring needlefelt that we create or see. If everyone can go check this thread when they have time and then click on every picture in the treasuries and leave comments, this drives that treasury to the top of the HOT lists and is more likely to make a front page. Some treasury hunting techniques were shared, but due to time constraints, it was suggested this topic have its own meeting in the future. Orit of Orit Dotan Dolls has offered to share her successful techniques with any who convo her. WhimsicalMom of Whimsical Mom shared this Storque Article on Treasuries

Team Site Management - Our team has many group sites across the internet that operate as social networks as well as optional areas for additional exposure of each of our individual shops. List of Projects and Team Leaders This is a list of all the places we are. If any team mates spend a lot of time on one of these social networks and would like to take on the minimal task of monitoring/admin for our team group site, please convo Gina at RoseThistleArtworks or RoseThistleRanch@aol.com There is not much activity on these groups, but that may be due to the amount of attention they receive right now.

Erin of Fufu Kitty volunteered to be an admin for our Indie Public Needlefelters Site

Trunk Shows/Craft Shows - Trunk shows and craft shows were an unexpected topic, but a good one brought up by Lisa of Poor Lulu who went to the Renegade Fair in Chicago and saw the Plush Team had set up a booth. (This wasn't in the meeting but Etsy offers 2 Team Grants per year for teams to use as they wish. Maybe, either an online virtual trunk show or a live craft show may be the way we all decide to use one of our two grants this year?)

Virtual trunk shows were explained a bit since our meeting room is also where virtual trunk shows are held. The meeting rooms enable us to display item cards that show a picture of the item, description and a link back to the item and shop. In virtual trunk shows, the participants each get a chance to display their items this way to everyone in the room. These shows are heavily promoted within and outside of etsy, so buyers are present. Other teams have done these and have said the shows are successful. Organizing can be done by any team member. This was another topic that it was decided would be good for a future meeting to really delve into.

FLICKR Team Profile - This is our Team Flickr ID Every team member who has a flickr account should be listed as a contact with our team ID. Treasuries and features of team members are uploaded to this site and then sent out to various FLICKR group sites.

Also, we have a FLICKR Needle Felt Group Site where everyone is encouraged to join and share their photos. Also, add the tag "nfest" to all your needle felt items so they will be featured on our slideshow here on the blog.

This brought up discussions on FLICKR's rules. The rules are that NO SELLING is allowed in picture descriptions. You CAN put your link in your profile only. Do not put your shop link, "for sale", or "see my profile" in the descriptions or FLICKR can and WILL delete your account without notice. It's been a very traumatic way for people to find out. If you search the etsy forums, you will see this has happened more than one time. As long as you consider FLICKR a place to share your art and do not "sell" there, it is a lot of fun to meet people from all over the world and share the needlefelt love. People on FLICKR know to look in your profile if they like your style and are interested in buying from you.

We then ran out of time. So, stay tuned for more meetings where you can share your thoughts. And thank you to everyone who was able to make it and share your great ideas!!

If you'd like to add your thoughts to the meeting discussion, please post them as replies here at the Felting Forum

New Felting Forum Admin

I want to extend a big thank you to Marie over at the Felting Forum for establishing and maintaining such a great site for felters to come together. And for creating a space for our team to share in all the warm fuzzies.

And congratulations to our team mate Kay Petal of Felt Alive on becoming the new owner/admin of the Forum! We know you will do great.