Felting

Felting is a rather bizarre form of art, in my opinion, but I do enjoy it. I used two types of felting techniques for this unit: wet felting and needle felting. Felt is the oldest known fabric making known to man, but you can read more about that in my previous post.

 With felting, every art piece is a surprise, because you really only have a small amount of control of what it is going to turn out like. It is an unpredictable form of art that is different every time. I am very happy with the way that my picture below turned out, and I had a lot of fun making it.

 

I started with the background of my art piece, in which I used wet felting, and I will list the steps that I did below.

1. First I took a sheet of bubble wrap and spread it out with the bubbles facing up. I then took the colours of wool roving that I needed (when I say "wool roving" I mean balls of colourful fluff meant for this type of art) and pulled out little thin bits of fluff and laid them out on the bubble rap. More than one layer is needed, and you must change the direction of the felt with each layer ( one layer horizontal, one layer vertical, etc.).
2. Then you must sprinkle soapy water on the felt and fold the bubble rap over it. It works best if you also wet the top of the bubble rap with water, and maybe some soap to make it slippery enough.
3. In order to create the friction that will fuse the wool fluff together, you must rub the wool through the bubble wrap in all different directions (horizontal, vertical, diagonal, etc. etc.) Continue this for a while until the wool has fused together.                                                               ( Feel free to add more layers or colours after or before the wool has fused together.)

4.     When the felt is to your liking, scrunch it into a ball and rinse it out, so that there is no soap left in it. Then dry it as best you can by folding it in a tea towel, put it on the floor, and step on it ( My aunt says that this is the best way to get the water out of it) Don't feel confined to just stepping on it though, jump on it, do a jig, or whatever :) .
5.     And voila! You have a lovely felted piece of art! But my project didn't stop there...

Needle Felting

For the tree and the owl on my art piece, I used a technique called needle felting. I took fluffs of wool rovings and used a felting needle to "poke" it into the place and shape that I wanted it in. The felting needle is just like a large sewing needle, but if you look closely you can see tiny hook-like notches near the end of it, which are used to sort of catch the wool and pull it down through the felt/fabric so that it will stay in place. To do this I had to place the art piece on a piece of foam  ( the inside of a pillow or something will work too). When you are done, the art piece will stick to the foam, so you have to pull it off. And there you go, the lovely piece of felt art is complete!

 

 

All the information that I used for this post came from my Aunty Colleen, and my wonderful cousins Mika and Estee, who introduced this type of art to me.