Have you ever try needle felting?
Needle felting is a popular fibre arts craft that creates felt without the use of water. Special needles are used by the artist as a sculpting tool where it has notches along the shaft of the needle that grab the top layer of fibres and tangle them with the inner layers of fibres as the needle enters the wool. Since these notches face down towards the tip of the needle, they do not pull the fibres out as the needle exits the wool. Once tangled and compressed using the needle, the felt can be strong and used for creating jewellery or sculpture. – Taken from Wikipedia
Whenever I see those adorable little felt toys displayed in gift shops or markets, I have always thought that it will be nice to learn needle felting so that I can actually make something that I actually like without having to source around for them. So I jumped at the chance when my friend mentioned whether I am interested to go for needle felting workshop which was organized by Han’s Art. It was Groupon deal, and it was group buy among 3 of my other friends!
The workshop was conveniently located near few bus stops away from Bishan Interchange, and the trainer was quite friendly too. The class was small-sized with probably about 20 people in the room. And on the table, the materials and supplies needed for the workshop was all nicely displayed out as well.
My friends playing around with the wool
Instructions given!
Supplies and materials needed for the project later
The trainer started off by introducing herself and showing us some of her creations she made. I apologize for the lack of photos for that but she made mostly animals because she likes animals and there was one cute felt poodle she made where she actually used real poodle hairs for her felt poodle’s hairs! And all her toys she showed were all exact replica of real animals that she referenced to.
Then the start of the needle felt session began!
The main thing about needle felting is to keep poking wool to get the desired shape that you want
We were tasked to make a small bumble bee so we all started with yellow wool and we used a special kind of needle to poke the wool to help “interlock” the wool together inside and eventually forming it into shape, getting a yellow body. Next, we used black wool for its stripes before using white wool for its wings. The eyes were created using two black pins before making our preferred “hanging” shape.
The finished product!
For me, I choose “K” because it is the initial of my mother’s name as I planned to give it to her as a birthday gift.
Proudly posing with our bumble bees!
And can you imagine that the whole process took me about 3 hours? It is actually quite tedious and it can tend to get boring. But thankfully, with my friends around, the whole atmosphere was hyped up and we chatted while we work so it took the boredom away!
Overall, I feel that needle felting can be fun if you doing it together with friends because it can get really tedious and boring after awhile if you do it alone. It is pretty easy if you know how and which direction to poke or the way you roll your wool. 🙂
Hans Art
279 Bishan St 24
#02-58
http://www.hansart.sg/
