Needle Felted Flowers

The last couple of weeks Ellen, my lovely boss, has been kindly sharing her knowledge of needle felting with a group of us at work by showing us how to make our very own needle felted flowers.

The reason for showing us this technique is to make flower brooches which can be sold as part of our charity craft event running at the beginning of April to raise money for dementia. Realising of course that these would make lovely mothers day gifts we have been given the opportunity to donate up front and take our lovely creations away with us.

The process of needle felting is actually very simple (and can be a great stress reliever!). You start of with some pure, dyed, unspun wool known as 'roving'. This can then be mixed together using a method called 'carding' so you get a mottled effect, or single colours can be layered on top of each other, both creating beautiful effects. You then use a felting needle to repeatedly stab the wool which bonds the fibres together allowing you to create shapes. The needles have little notches on them which is what helped the fibres to fuse together. For creating flat shapes it is easier to work on a piece of sponge or foam, repeatedly turning, but you can hold the piece (being careful not to stab yourself) to make 3D shapes and sculptures.

I think these turned out really great, especially as a lot of us had never used this technique before.I would really urge you to have a go at this if you are able, its a really satisfying and quick little project. I also had a quick go at machine stitching over a felt shape to make this little leaf (which was meant to be a feather but still!) I think its really cute and effective.