I so love foxes. For many they are a real pest and I can understand how heart breaking it can be for a fox to take a beloved chicken (we live with 3 beautiful chickens and are often on fox watch!). However I will never stop being amazed at how in the UK we actually have wild dogs (almost mini wolves) roaming around. Not only that, they are a vibrant orange colour that matches the autumn leaves! I don’t know about you but I think they are stunning animals!!
Back in September I was so delighted to receive a commission from a lovely lady in California to needle felt a curled up fox. My second ever felted animal was a fox but I have learned so much since then and couldn’t wait to get started.
This photo of a beautiful real fox was my inspiration.
Fox fur is far from being one colour but a mix of brown, cream, yellow and orange tones which are accentuated by black and white. I love to make my wool sculptures as realistic as possible so I chose and hand blended a lovely colour palette in merino and corriedale wools.
I started off with a wire armature and wrapped corriedale wool over it using fox anatomy and skeletal pictures on line for reference. I then shaped the head, added the ears, eyes and nose and then added the paw pads to the feet. Then, using the long fur technique, I attached the foxy coat. I used black horse hair for the whiskers!
I hope you like this sweet little fox. Here are some photos of the finished sculpture. Such a bushy tail 🙂
Perfect autumnal (fall) setting for this little needle felted fox made by its new owner in California. Can you spot the fox? 🙂
This week has been an exciting week. The needle felted pipistrelle bat I created was mounted and given as an award at the Palace of Westminster to MP Helen Hayes as she is the species champion for the common pipistrelle and won best parliamentary species champion at the Species Champions Annual awards ceremony. Well done to Helen for all her hard work!! It was presented by BBC Journalist Frank Gardner.
I am so happy that my artwork became something so special for an amazing project. The project is run by the Rethink Nature partnership, a group of seven wildlife organisations working together to make a difference to species conservation. (Amphibian and Reptile Conservation, Bat Conservation Trust, Buglife, Bumblebee Conservation Trust, Butterfly Conservation, Plantlife and the RSPB).
The little bat took many hours of sculpting through the art of needle felting. His body is made of core corriedale wool. His wings, legs and tail are wool wrapped over wire. His beautiful brown coat is made of a blend of corriedale and merino wool. His eyes, nose, ears and tiny feet are made of wool too.
The common pipistrelle as its name suggests is the most common bat that you might see flying in your garden on a summer night! Yet like all our bats in the UK they need our help and protection to ensure their numbers don’t decline again. They are so important to our environment! I love bats but some people don’t and this is usually as they don’t know much about them and bats are so misunderstood.
When you look at a bat close up they are actually very tiny and many times smaller than the size of my needle felted one. In fact a real pipistrelle bat weighs about 5g and their forearm length is less than 35mm in length. One of these tiny creatures can eat around 3 thousand insects in one night – how amazing is that!? Due to destruction of their natural habitat many bats now need to roost in houses and churches and rely on people to preserve these roosts.
Each bat usually has only one pup each year and too often that little pup will become lost or get caught by a local cat and so many each year don’t survive. The Bat Conservation Trust has a fantastic helpline if you find a bat in need of help. You can also find out how to support their work 🙂
Here are a few work in progress photos of my needle felted bat…
Having worked for 12 years at the Bat Conservation Trust I have quite a good knowledge of bats but it was still a challenge to get the anatomy right. Bats are so fascinating and detailed with their tail membranes and wing membranes! I wanted to give the illusion of fully formed wings that could spread out but tucked in as if it has landed. I hope I did it justice.
As with all my needle felted animals I used lots of photos of the real animal at every angle for reference. Thankfully no needles were broken but I did remake his face at one point and a good deal of patience and chocolate rewards were needed along the way!! This aside I really did enjoy making him and I was so overjoyed to see the smile on Helen Hayes’ face too when she received him as her award !
Finally after many weeks I have finished “Paws”, an adorable and realistic looking Tabby kitten, looking up at you with those big green eyes and in need of a forever home. His little paws playfully protrude out of the picture. He has been lovingly hand-made and is ‘fit to be loved’. As you can see from the photos he is in a black frame with green insert to compliment his eyes.
The frame measures 9 inches wide by 7 inches tall perfect for fixing to a wall or standing on a table/chest of drawers. It has taken many hours of hard work and love to give him his playful character through the art of needle felting.
His beautiful soft fluffy fur is a blend of merino sheep’s wool (non-mulesed) from South Africa and British Corriedale wool. His nose and eyes are made of wool too, so no glass or plastic. He even has cute brown wool paw pads when you look underneath! His core is made of undyed mixed rare breed sheep’s wool from Scotland with a wire frame inside his legs for extra support. His white whiskers are made from horse tail hair for a realistic finish. He has a little collar with gold coloured heart pendant.
He is a cute and unique gift for the animal lover in your life. Or why not treat yourself? Paws is now for sale in my Etsy shop. FREE UK delivery. Will also ship internationally.
Here are some photos of the needle felting process.
With real cat photos as reference, I started sculpting the core wool to make the head, then filled in the eyes and added layers of grey, black, brown and white wool to resemble cat fur. I added nose and mouth detail along the way. Once the head was complete I wrapped more core wool over a wire armature and sculpted the legs and torso. After attaching the head I layered coloured wool over the top of the body and legs to give that soft fluffy cat fur look as well as the paw pad detail. Finally after tying a collar round its neck with a gold coloured pendant, I threaded the horse hair whiskers. As with all my long haired sculptures I went over all the furry layers with a tiny needle to separate fibres and ensure no fluffing or matting and then trimmed any excess fibres that stuck out.
For more info about how to add long fur to needle felted animals, please do follow the tutorial here.
If you are looking for a simple and effective method to needle felt some lovely looking leaves then this will hopefully give you some inspiration.
I recently felted some leaves for ‘Hazel’ the sleepy Dormouse and took some photos of the process for you along the way.
There are many ways to make needle felted leaves e.g. using leaf-shaped cookie cutters or felting sheets of wool and then cutting out the leaf shapes.
I decided to experiment with sheets of wet wipes (just cheap every day baby/hand wipes are fine). I found that not only are they a nice thin base to felt the wool onto for natural looking leaves but you still end up with sturdy pieces that keep intact and don’t easily fall apart. Having leaf shape cut-outs ready to work on made the process nice and easy too!
You can draw leaf shapes straight onto the wet wipes or you can (as I did) draw on to paper or card first to try out a few sizes and variations and choose the shapes you like best.
I looked up oak and maple leaves in a tree identification book and copied them freestyle onto my paper. You could also sketch leaves whilst you see them on a walk or collect them to draw when you get home. If you aren’t confident to draw them freestyle then why not trace over a book or computer/tablet screen image.
Here are my four sheets of wet wipes and I have cut out my leaf shapes (oak on the left and maple on the right) from paper ready to use as templates to draw round.
It is best to use a pen to trace round the leaf shapes rather than a pencil to make sure the lines show up clearly. Don’t worry about the wet wipes still being slightly damp as they will soon dry.
When it came to cutting I used small scissors as it was easier to cut the tiny jagged edges.
You can make as many leaves of however many species you like. I stuck to just the oak and maple and made two of each; a ‘spring/summer green’ version and a ‘changing to autumn’ version.
Here I am making a start on my first oak leaf.
For the ‘spring/summer green’ versions I chose a mixture of some beautiful vibrant green merino wools.
If you want to felt flat pieces quicker, a four needle tool is perfect. Triangle or star needles are great for this.
Continue to add more wool and firmly needle felt it into place. A single thinner needle (star or triangle) will help to define the edges and keep the wool to the shape of the cut-out.
If you are gluing or sewing the leaves onto a picture/collage you won’t need to felt the other side as well. For my dormouse nest however I wanted to be able to take the leaves out the nest as separate pieces of art so I decided to felt the other sides of the leaves too.
I used brown wool for the protruding stem of the oak leaf.
To ensure the surface of the leaves don’t look holey or to carefully brush the fibres in one direction for hairy leaves (make sure you have firmly felted the wool first before attempting this), use a spiral/twisted needle.
For the upper side of the leaf, carefully felt the stem and leaf veins with a thin (preferably a spiral/twisted) needle. Alternatively you could stitch on this detail using embroidery threads.
Here are a few process pictures of the maple leaf.
For my ‘changing to autumn’ versions I added thin layers of varying shades of green, yellow, orange and red merino wool to give a lovely blended finish before adding the stem and vein details.
You can really use your imagination when it comes to colour. When you look at real leaves no one leaf is the same as the next. I just love going for walks in the countryside and admiring the leaves on the trees or those in the autumn around my feet that have fallen. They are so amazing!
For really flat leaves, steam iron them for just 10 seconds each below a cotton sheet/tea towel.
I hope you found this step by step photo guide helpful for making your own needle felted leaves. Let me see how your leaves turned out!
Here are some final pictures of the leaves once they were finished. They look great on their own or with a woodland creature! 🙂
May I present to you ‘Hazel’ the sleeping hazel dormouse. She is snuggled up on her needle felted leaves in a wool nest I crocheted.
She is a mix of merino and corriedale wools with a wire in her tail and has horse hair for whiskers. Her tiny toes are all wool – I think they are the tiniest I have made yet and were very fiddly but certainly worth every minute of the process.
Hazel was such a joy to make while I have been recovering from a life changing operation. Curling up into a little ball just like she is doing in her cosy nest is something I have felt like doing a lot the past few weeks as I have needed so much sleep.
I hope you like her. I will be posting more about how I made the leaves soon too.
Here is my first attempt at a needle felted bumble bee. I gave it to my sister for her birthday last week. My sister’s name Melissa means ‘honey bee’ but she loves bumbley bees as they are so fluffy looking! I was brave enough to let it sit on my hand without any worries about being stung. Good job as it is much larger than life size!
I started off using black pipe cleaners as legs and antennae. I twisted them together in the middle to form the base for the body. I trimmed the pipe cleaners with small angled nail scissors to accentuate the leg segments and added tan coloured wool..
I tightly wound yellow, black and white merino wool tops over the middle section to form the head, thorax and abdomen and added more and more of the merino on top to build up the height. I needle felted the body with a barbed needle to sculpt into a bee shape. To create a furry bumble bee look I then used a reverse felting needle to pull out the fibres and added a layer of rusty orange over the yellow to give the colour more depth. (Note I didn’t use a cream colour core wool for this piece to ensure that only the pure colours I wanted came through when I used the reverse needle not any underlay of core wool fibres).
I had to get really creative for the wings. I searched my stash of crafty bits and ended up cutting out wing shapes from a silvery coloured organza bag and then hand sewed the pattern on each wing by hand with white embroidery thread.
Here are a few photos of the work in progress of how I started.
I am so pleased that my sister adored him!!
******You can now order a bumble bee for yourself here******************
My first ever needle felted animal back in 2013 was a sweet little white bunny holding a carrot.
He seemed to just emerge out of my wool the moment I started stabbing away and sculpting with my barbed needles! From that day I just knew this was the hobby for me!
It has been a journey of joy in creating, therapy and relaxation through the tough trials that life brings and through my own experimentation it has hopefully helped others as I journal and share my techniques as tutorials.
Needle felting is such a wonderful art form as it enables you to just go for it with whatever you want to make, with no need for a pattern or sewing, just your passion and imagination. If you make a mistake it doesn’t matter – it is forgiving and each time you create something new the result brings a smile!
As some of you have come to know, I love to improve and challenge myself. This last few weeks I set myself a challenge to make an animal with fur that has been reverse needle felted. At the moment we are staying in a lovely house in the countryside next to open fields of corn and wild flowers and we often see the cutest bunnies popping up from their burrows and skipping and playing in the sunlight. They are a delight to watch, especially when they hop away with only a flash of a white fluffy tail to be seen.
So what better animal to choose to have fluffy fur than a cute baby bunny rabbit! To me they are a real sign that spring has arrived and summer is on its way!
I would like to introduce you to ‘Blossom’!
You can see from the photos that she is the perfect size to sit on your hand just like a real baby rabbit. She is 15cm tall from the top of her head down to her cute bunny paws.
As with all my needle felted animals, it took many hours of hard work and love to give her that playful character. Her core is made of undyed mixed rare breed sheep’s wool from Scotland. Her beautiful soft fluffy fur is a blend of merino sheep’s wool (non-mulesed) from South Africa. Her nose and eyes are made of wool too, so no glass or plastic. Her whiskers are made from Shetland pony horse tail hair.
She even has pink paw pad detail when you look underneath her!…and look at that fluffy tail! 🙂 aw!!
Here you can see that I made the front and back feet individually and left a tuft of core wool on each for easy attachment.
You might be wondering what reverse needle felting is?
Firstly I used normal barbed felting needles to sculpt her shape with the core wool and add the colour with the merino wool. Once I had added a layer of white merino wool over her body I then added a layer of ‘pewter’ (dark grey) merino wool. I then took a reverse needle (which has barbs going the opposite way to a normal barbed needle) and as I stabbed at the wool it pulled the white wool fibres (and some of the core wool) through the grey. This resulted in a fluffy light grey colour. I carefully used an eye brow brush to brush the fibres in one direction to mimic the look of baby bunny fur.
She is ready to hop into your life this spring time!
Feel free to comment and let me know what you think and if you have any questions about reverse needle felting.
I am very excited to present to you my greatest needle felting challenge yet. He is modelled on a beautiful young Shetland sheepdog (Sheltie) called Schubert (Schubie)! The real dog is very much loved by his human mum and dad and his dad wanted a surprise gift for his wife (Schubert’s mum) for Christmas!
I rarely do commissions as I try to avoid the stress of it but having spent quite a bit of time admiring the real Schubert I had been wondering how it would be to needle felt a mini one and quite fancied a stab at it! 🙂
Schubert has so many tones to his luxurious fur so I spent quite a bit of time blending wool colours. He also has very long fur so I really put into practice my ‘adding long animal fur’ techniques.
I started off wrapping corriedale core wool over a wire armature. Then I added paw pads and then some detail on his face before starting on his belly fur and working from his tail end towards his neck with merino wool. I did his wispy feet hair and tail last. Please see the work in progress videos for more info.
In an attempt to keep him as authentically ‘Shetland’ as possible I managed to include some brown Shetland sheep wool in his coat and his whiskers are made of black Shetland pony tail hair all the way from Scotland.
As with all my creations it took many hours of needle felting and love. I am very pleased with the way he turned out and I hope you like him too 🐶🐕😆
Here are some photos and a short video. I hope to get some photos of him and the real Schubie together soon too!
Here is my latest needle felted animal known as “Freckle”!
She is an adorable baby Tiger Quoll (a wonderful and unusual looking marsupial from Australia). She is sound asleep all curled up, be careful not to wake her!! Why Freckle? I posted her on facebook and asked for name suggestions. There were so many great ideas but I decided that the name ‘Freckle’ really suited her. I had freckles across my nose as a kid. My nanny (my mum’s mum) used to say to me that freckles were sun kisses. How sweet! This creature is sweet and certainly has quite a few freckles!
She has been lovingly hand-made and is ‘fit to be loved’. As you can see from the photos she just about fits onto your hand like a real baby quoll.
Her core is made of natural undyed corriedale sheep wool from New Zealand. Her beautiful spotted fur is a mix of brown corriedale and soft merino sheep wool (non-mulesed) from South Africa. She has a wire through her tail.
As with all my wool sculptures it took many hours of hard work and love to give her her character. I used the adding long fur technique as well as trying out my new reverse needles to ensure her fur looks as realistic as can be.
Her nose and eyes are made of wool too, so no glass or plastic. Her realistic looking whiskers are made from horse hair.
I hope you like her 🙂
*************** Freckle is now for sale in my Etsy shop! -update on 7th Dec 2018 – Now sold. So very excited to announce that Freckle will be going to a lady in Australia! *********************
My latest needle felted project has been a challenge (nothing is ever simple with me!) but it has been so worthwhile to see the finished butterfly in its frame.
I have always loved butterflies and if you spend more than a minute with me you will notice that I have many items that are butterfly themed; stationery, cards, blouses, my wedding was adorned with feather butterflies and as you can see my Fit to be loved logo has a tiny orange butterfly.
I came across the Mazarine blue butterfly (scientific name Cyaniris semiargus which is pronounced sy-an-EYE-riss se-mee-AH-guss) over a year ago as it stood out to me not only for its beautiful markings and vibrant blue colours but also I was saddened to read that it was last recorded in the UK in 1904.
I envisioned what this beautiful creature may look like if I were to make it out of wool and to have it framed. It would be amazing to bring back an extinct butterfly with the art of needle felting!
I set myself this project and though I started a year ago with a few wing shapes and lots of imagination, life took a bit of a different turn.
Some of you who follow my Facebook posts may know that 2 years ago this week our worlds changed forever as our twin girls, Chloe and Grace, were born still at 24 weeks. Since then life has had its ups and downs as I have journeyed the hills and valleys of grief. Throwing myself into my long term full time job as a Manager of a charity helpline in South London as a way to distract from my thoughts has been a coping mechanism but this kind of life can only reach burn out. Also some of my passions including needle felting took back stage.
In April this year I realised I needed to make a change, to face my fears, start afresh, take a break. I also wanted to dare to follow my dreams of helping others on a new career path and so my husband and I decided to move out of London and I made a huge step of leaving my job. So here I am in Lincolnshire (back to my birth town of Grantham) after moving home 3 weeks ago. I have space to think, to breathe, to heal, to be, to create!
You will be pleased to know that my new career choice has enabled me to gain some free time to invest more in my needle felting.
I hope you like the Mazarine blue butterfly which I have finally been able to complete. It has been lovingly handmade with soft merino wool over wire and mounted in a deep box frame to keep it dust free.
Butterflies are often a symbol of hope and life. This one is certainly the start of something new in my life. A path of hope.
What passions could you bring back? What hobbies can you start or revive? Where is your life taking you? What are you hoping for?
Just finished needle felting a beautiful black and white dog called Poppy. I wanted to capture the smiley faced playful character of the real dog Poppy who loves to fetch a ball, go for a swim and have lots of fun on her walks, sometimes with legs splashed with mud!
I am not sure what breed she is but she looks like a spaniel/collie cross.
She was a delight to make. She is made from core wool over wire and then merino wool layered over the top. Her eyes, nose and even her tiny collar with a paw print disc is made from wool. Her layers of long fur were added with my usual technique (click here for tutorial).
Once needle felted I was able to pose her with head slightly tilted, front leg bent and tail ready to wag……
So back in November some of you voted for the animal you wanted to see me needle felt next and the red panda came top!
I agree red pandas (Latin name; Ailurus fulgens) are tremendously cute creatures and they have such vibrant colouring.
She was not at all easy to make with her long fur, markings and ringed tail (apparently in the wild they use their big tails as a wrap around blanket in the cold mountains of Nepal, Burma and China) – but then you know how much I love a challenge!
She took a while to make and a lot of patience and I have to say I did leave her half done for a few weeks at a time with lack of motivation at one point… however she was worth it in the end.
I decided she was a ‘she’ early on as her eyes stared back at me with a kind of sparkling prettiness about them..
A lady in Yorkshire fell in love with her after spotting her on a facebook forum while she was just a mere face and so she is now being loved and cuddled by this lady at her new home 🙂
So here is a photo montage of my red panda to show you the stages of how I created her as well as an indoor and outdoor (garden) photoshoot of her once finished.
It is set to a beautiful piece of music called ‘rain’ that will hopefully inspire you. For me I feel like I am being transported to a distant land where maybe you would find a real red panda! 🙂
Hope you like her 🙂
So, what on to next?? a lion, a wallaby??
If you would like to know in more detail how I add long fur to animals my needle felting tutorials can be found over on my tutorials page
Don’t ever miss out on my latest tutorials! Insert your email address and click the ‘Follow’ button on the right hand panel to receive notifications of when the next post is up..:-)
Visit my Etsy shop today to see my latest creations. Or like my facebook page to see what I am making next.
Would you like to watch techniques for creating a detailed and realistic long fur look on your needle felted animal?
You have likely seen my photo tutorial with basic techniques for adding long wool fibres onto a badger. Well here is a video for those who learn best by watching how it’s done. This is far more in depth with more techniques and tips along the way!
‘In this full length (1.5 hour) diary-style tutorial, I demonstrate how to add layers of wool to a miniature donkey. These techniques can be adapted for any long furred animal. Join me on my journey from preparation to finish; starting with carefully ‘needle brushed’ leg fibres, then fluffy tummy and long textured back fur. You will also see how I create a middle parting on the donkey’s muzzle, add a long fluffy fringe and a beautiful flowing mane.’
Watch the preview below
The full length video tutorial is available to
buy for just £3.75!
(Watch live multiple times or download it- it’s up to you!)
Difficulty ranking: Intermediate level or beginners looking for a challenge.
The result: Amazing detail; the look of a real animal with layers of fur.
Skills you will master:
Simple hand blending of wool roving for natural, textured colour tones
Preparing wool lengths and a test/sample piece
Knowing how firm to felt your core base
Two easy methods to firmly attach various lengths of wool fibre
The art of layering and trimming fibres
Specific skills for adding fur to various body parts including legs, tummy, back, ears, tail, face and mane
How to prevent over felting or flattening of long fibres
Finishing techniques for defining strands or fluffing them up
Chapter start timesfor easier video navigation.
0:00 Introduction
1:00 Overview; what techniques will I learn?
2:07 Where to start?
3:35 Preparing and blending wools
12:03 What tools do I need?
13:25 Shorter fur – layering on the legs (the basics of the two techniques)
28:28 Soft tummy fur (technique 1)
34:05 Continuing the tummy (and a few ways of blending colour)
38:10 How firm should the core wool be?
40:05 Lots of thick fur layers (across the torso) (technique 1)
45:00 Tips for preventing fluffing up and positioning animal whilst felting
46:14 Adding fur on rump (techniques 1 and 2)
49:45 Long fluffy back fur (technique 2)
57:40 Ears and tail (brief overview for ideas)
59:12 Fluffy textured muzzle and fringe (very long fur pieces) (technique 2 plus other tips)
Don’t ever miss out on my latest tutorials! Insert your email address and click the ‘Follow’ button on the right hand panel to receive notifications of when the next post is up..:-)
Don’t have time to make one but would love a one of a kind needle felted animal by Fit to be loved for yourself or for that special someone? Visit my Etsy shop today to see my latest creations. Or like my facebook page to see what I am making next.
I would like to introduce you to a gorgeous needle felted guinea pig called ‘Teddy’.
As you can see he has a cheeky little face and I really tried to make sure his autumnal orange fur tones ended up looking as fluffy and soft as possible just like a real guinea pig.
He is now on his way to France to live with a lovely lady who will take good care of him.
Bon Voyage little guinea pig! You were a pleasure to create and I hope you have a wonderful life at your new furever home x
His core is made of natural undyed Corriedale wool from New Zealand. His beautiful soft fur and detail on his cute piggy paws, ears and face are of soft merino wool (non-mulesed) from South Africa (Cape). His toes have been sculpted by wool wrapped delicately onto wire.
His eyes are made of wool too, so no glass or plastic.
You can see he is life-sized from the close up of me holding him in my hand.
Hope you like him 🙂
Would you like to know how to make a guinea pig? (click on the photo to get started).
Making a needle felted animal and need some help adding layers of wool to achieve a realistic long fur look? (click the photo to learn more…)
See here for a variety of tutorials, tips and ideas to suit your project
Here are some other needle felted guinea pigs for more ideas.
