How do I give my needle felted animal cute detailed feet or tiny toes?
This tutorial will hopefully inspire you with some ideas for how you might tackle felting animal feet and a step by step guide to making individual toes using wool wrapped over wire.
Basic feet
For some of my felted animal sculptures I decided not to give their feet too much detail. Here you can see that my hare and fox merely have simple dark rounded feet. Their sitting or standing positions mean that you only really see the top of their feet. Of course I could have spent more time on them but I didn’t want to over emphasise their paws and was satisfied with how they looked as they are. Their expressions and character come through enough in their faces and other cute features.
A bit more detail
When it came to the mouse I made for my mum; his little feet were pink and would have looked a little bare with no detail. Again he is standing up so you don’t see his paw pads anyway for his back feet but I decided to add some tiny threads of wool fibre with a thin needle to show that he has separate toes. I also stabbed away to sculpt obvious paw shapes for his ‘hands’; one holds a beautiful flower and the other is pressed against his humble mouse heart to say ‘I love you!’
Cute paw pads
Sometimes though you will want to do so much more! Have you ever looked in detail at the underneath of bunny paws and considered how absolutely small, perfectly proportioned and adorable they are? When making my bunnies and badgers I just couldn’t resist felting the little details that make them look so much more like real paws and make your friends want to say ‘squee’ 🙂 especially as these sculptures are laying on their backs with feet in the air ready to be cuddled or tickled.
To get ideas for how these should look, google images of paws or look at photos of your own pets. All I did with my bunny here was to just felt little blobs of lighter coloured wool onto the underside of the feet and then add some darker fibres on top as shading/ furry bits to make them look more natural. So simple but effective!
Why not have a go? As you can see in the pictures below, leaving their feet as just rounded shapes would not have had the same affect!
Tiny toes that bend
For some animals you may want to take it a step further and make some tiny toes. If you have enough patience you can carefully sculpt the toes from making long sausage shapes that you felt firmly together. You can see I did this with my Christmas owl.
I have found however that using wire makes this much easier, the toes don’t flatten or fray as much, they are stronger, take the weight of the animal’s body better and it also means you can bend the toes to the position you want them to stay in.
Those of you who already make your animals from wrapping wool over a wire armature will likely already know how this is achieved but please do read on in case there is anything you find useful. Those who prefer not to use a wire armature for the main body can still use wire for the feet , why not mix it up a bit?
There are several ways to wrap wool over wire to make tiny toes; one way is to wrap the wool over bare wire (See my video tutorial afterwards to demonstrate this). This works really well especially for animals where you really want the toes as thin as possible and make them taper at the ends or for projects which are on a very tiny scale. (Some people use hot wax to fix the first layer of wool)
Another simple way (and far less messy if using wax!) which I will demonstrate in this tutorial is to felt wool over a pipe cleaner to ensure it says well (which is basically a very thin piece of wire already wrapped in a layer of material such as cotton or chenille). These can be used for feet where toes can be a bit thicker and for medium or larger projects. I used this method for my guinea pig and Chestnut, my red squirrel. You can see that I also added a bit of paw detail on to the guinea pig afterwards.
Step by step guide for felting feet with tiny wired toes
I will demonstrate here how I made Chestnut’s feet. I decided that each foot would have four toes. My guinea pig however had three toes at the back and four at the front like a real guinea pig. You can decide what you think looks best!
What you will need:
- Pipe cleaners (I bought 30cm length cotton ones)
- Scissors to cut the pipe cleaners to size
- Wool (I used merino wool which felts well and is soft to touch)
- Barbed needles (thinner ones are best for tiniest toes)
- Felting pad/brush (to prevent you from stabbing your knees)
- Lots of love and patience and time – this is worth the effort believe me! 🙂
1) Cut two lengths of pipe cleaner for each of your feet (I measured one twice the length of my index finger and the other slighter shorter) It is easier to make two toes from one piece. Prepare these for both feet at the same time.
2) Take a thin piece of wool measuring at least one and half times the length of the pipe cleaner and roughly a finger’s width.
3) Tightly wrap the wool over each length of pipe cleaner; keep the wool flat and wind around, carefully overlapping the previously wrapped fibres all the way along. You can start at the end but I prefer to go from the middle and work to each end.
The tighter and smoother you wrap the less felting will be needed later on to fix it in place.
4) On reaching the ends tightly fold the fibres over the end, hold a finger over the end to keep in place whilst overlapping the work you have done very tightly for a few wraps back the other way towards the middle until you reach the end of your wool. Pull off any excess wool if you find you have too much (you don’t want to make the toes too thick).
5) Using your barbed needle, stab the fibres in place along the length of the structure and especially at the ends to secure them and prevent them from fraying, taking care not to break your needle by hitting the wire as you go.
6) Bend the pieces in half and then overlay, squeeze and slightly twist the bases of the two toe pairs together, the two longer pieces will become the two centre toes.
7) Wrap some thicker wool over the twisted section to form the rest of the foot. Spread out the toes into the position you wish them to be in.
8) Add more wool and felt onto the foot on both sides to shape the foot, and ensure you fill in between the toes and make the ‘knuckle area’ thicker. See how your tiny toes are becoming reality ? 🙂
9) Build up layers of wool. Your cute little feet are beginning to really take shape!
For the hind feet you will see I kept the toes and foot fairly flat and long and built up a heel. One of the toes ended up a little longer but I quite like this; gives a more natural look.
For the front paws (which will be holding a felted acorn) I kept them daintier and shorter and curled the ‘fingers’ into a gripping position, and added an ‘arm’.
10) Keep going and ensure you have left some loosely felted wool where the foot/leg will join onto the body. See here for a tutorial on how to add head and limbs to animals.
and …. SQUEEE!
Did you find this tutorial helpful? What would you like to learn about next? Please leave comments. Why not post a photo of your own creations?
For more tutorials like this please visit my Tutorials, tips and ideas page.
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Fit to be loved 
Really well done tutorial! I especially liked the foot detailing – the badger feet are definitely “squee” worthy. 🙂 Thank you for posting all the photo photos of in progress work too. I now feel like I can try hands, when I’ve not dared to try before. Maybe I’ll finally try doing the mermaid that has been in my brain forever!
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Thank you for stopping by and saying. I’m so pleased it was of help to you. Ooh a mermaid. I’ve never attempted people / people type creations. Let me know how it goes 😊
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Muchas gracias. ?Como puedo iniciar sesion?
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Thank you so much for this tutorial it’s going to be very helpful.
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Thank you for such a thorough description along with pictures! You did an amazing job and I cannot wait to try making my own little paws!!
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Luv it luv luv. Always luv your work Amanda 😉 amazing👍
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I am so nervous. I am attempting my first, semi-detailed project. It is a mouse. I have felted pictures on to scraps of felt and onto a purse. In terms of actual 3D soft sculptures, well, thus far I have only made eggs, egg-shaped rocks, egg-shaped sheep… I am definitely a newbie. But I really really REALLY want my mouse to have little, maybe even POSABLE toes and feet. Therefore, though it will almost certainly end in disaster (partly because I am new and partly because I recently got diagnosed with a disorder that causes tremors and seizures. I am in my 30s and disabled already, this just adds a pile of suck to things. My only hope is that I see older ladies who have shaky hands needle felting, so we’ll see I can follow their example!), thank you for this fantastic instructable! If it works, you will be my hero. Don’t worry, though, if it doesn’t work, I won’t hold you responsible! 💛💜🖖🤓🖖💜💚
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Bless you for writing on here and Thank you for being so honest. I think it’s amazing that you persevere though it’s a struggle. I hope it works out and that you enjoy it. Let me know how you get on 🙂 🙂
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You seem to have success with the duck feet. I am doing fine with the single toes and little chickies but cannot figure out to make a passable duck foot. Help !!
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Hi Ruth I haven’t tried a duck foot before but if I attempted one I would start off wrapping over wire in the usual way but then lay thin pieces of wool over the whole foot and shape the in between toe sections to become the webbed foot part.
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Amanda, thank you for the reply. I find that this felting is an addiction and often fall asleep or wake up thinking about a perplexing problem. This sounds like it has both merit and strength. I will try this later today.
Ruth
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Amanda FELTING DUCK FEET
Okay I think I have it. I used a medium thin piece of wool, lightly felted it all over, just enough to have it hang together and then I wove the fiber between the claws (talons) I had already made with wire and wrapped wool around, worked well with a few additional stabs at the end.
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Great help! Thank you! Where do you find cotton covered pipe cleaners?
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Glad it was helpful Linda. You can usually get them on ebay or amazon. You can use other pipe cleaners as they work well too.
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Love your felted animals! especially the skunk.
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Thanks Amy. He is a badger but I know they look quite similar to skunks 🙂
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I loved this. So simple and well explained. Thanks so much x
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Thank you
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Thanks for the tutorial. You did such a good job explaining it. I can’t tell you how this has helped me. Do you use the larger pipe cleaners for the necks of like a giraffe?
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Thanks bunches! I had purchased ‘flocked’, I’m assuming it was florist wire, but it was a larger gauge therefore stiffer wire. The pipe cleaners have been the best so far as the thicker gauge is difficult to bend. I have made smaller people and animals and will continue my search as the hands, especially, just look out of proportion. Thanks so much for sharing!
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Thank you for sharing this! Do you find that the toe-tips stay sharp after you have coated them?
Once, I tried using wet-felting to coat bare wire with wool for the thin parts of a needle-felted dryad sculpture. The end result was satisfactory, but it took so many tries to get that result that I decided I would look for a new technique. I have since found that pipe-cleaners (sometimes sold in the USA as “chenille sticks”) are much easier to needle-felt with than bare wire.
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Yes I often use pipe cleaners too but for the tiniest toes they need to be as thin as possible. You can thin out the pipe cleaners by trimming them too. To stop the wire showing it does take some practice.
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Thanks for the tip!
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Your tutorial is very clear, I saw the picture of the little toes in PININTEREST but I didn’t realise till recently how to open the tutorial, and didn’t realise you used pipe-cleaners. My efforts are always too big or the end sticks out. I thought you had divided one end into four toes and then felted them separately. So that is what I tried, My toes started out too long but doubling the ends back rounded the toes and made them the correct length and they become quite solid with careful needling. I made a big pile of legs/arms before they were small enough and I had two matching pairs. Then I made the body and head to fit. By some magic a perfect little mouse appeared. That was my third attempt to make something so no-one was more surprised than me. I have attempted lots of animals since but many of them have been abandoned because they will never be right till I learn more. I have no sense of proportion and making tiny armature is something I may never master. I will have to try your pipe cleaner wrapping technics when I try to make some birds. Thanks for making your pictures available so I can see how a real artist can make furry little creatures come alive from a mass of fluff.
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So pleased you kept trying and that little mouse appeared. 🙂 thank you for posting such a lovely comment. Please do come back when you make your birds. I am slowly making a sparrow right now in between other projects. Tiny creatures are hard to master. Worth it in the end though. 🙂
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Wonderful tutorial!!! Thank you😊
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Thank you for the comment Terry. Glad the tutorial helps. 🙂
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Thank you so much ! I am just starting out and need all the help I can get. You have made this so clear 🙂 Great tutorial !!!
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That’s is an awesome tutorial. Thanks it helps so much. I am needle felting a few months now and I’m improving bit by bit. I have a Facebook page that encourages me to keep making. I hope to do a market. I just know that lil toes will go down a treat. 🙂
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Thanks Mary. Glad the tutorial is of help. Let me know how the market goes. Not done one of those yet.
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Great tutorial, can’t wait to try some toes! So far I have had plain paws or mittens on hands.
Thank you! Donna
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wonderful tutorial! I’m so glad I discovered your website. Thanks so much. I just a beginner
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This is great! Tiny feet are really hard to do, I’ve been using plain wire underneath and it keeps poking through, might try to switch to pipe cleaners 🙂
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Yes it can be tricky. Let me know how it goes with the pipe cleaners. What are you working on at the moment?
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been making snails, so they don’t have a toes problem! Going to make a hare soon though, just need to find a supplier for pipe cleaners
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Perfect! You should write a book because your instructions are far better than anything else I have read. Keep them coming!
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Ah thank you Sally. Maybe one day I will. 🙂 as long as it is useful to others I am happy.
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Another great tutorial – well done Amanda !
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i love you and want to be your student. thank you so much for taking the time to teach!
Donna
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Aw that’s so sweet of you. I am glad you like the tutorial. Please do let me know what you would like me to teach next.
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Thank you for this tutorial. I have been struggling with making toes. I have tried starting at the end of the wire without much success. I have switched to pipe cleaners too but would also like to make some very delicate toes. I really appreciate your sharing you expertise.
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They can be fiddly but trying from the middle worked better for me. Let me know how you get on especially with the more delicate ones 🙂
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Thankyou very much for the tutorial. I found it very helpful.
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