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Luna the Needle Felted Hare

Posted on October 9, 2021 by Amanda Adebisi

I am so excited to present to you my needle felted hare. She could be a moon gazing hare or maybe she is simply gazing up at you with those endearing eyes for some cuddles. I thought Luna was a sweet name which also means moon in Latin.

She is 100% wool except for her whiskers which are made of horse hair. Also I had some fun experimenting with wax that melts in the warmth of your hands to twist some of the wool between my fingers as a way to define the rugged and wavy texture of the hare’s fur around her neck and chest area. The wax was really effective to shape the tiny pieces of wool that I used for her claws as well.

I really love how hares have such long ears so I made these extra long for her body size, but I think that makes her even cuter, don’t you think?

The process?

I started off making the basic shape of a hare head and body with carded core wool batts and then for her top coat I added a variety of brown carded slivers and some merino wool tops using the long fur placement technique.

This sounds strange to be using this technique with carded wool but having tried it it works well to give a rough fur coat look rather than lengths of straight wool.

I also pulled some of the core wool through with my ever faithful reverse felting needles to lighten areas (especially on the limbs) and to blend some of the colours.

I left some parts free from the top coat where I would attach the ears, limbs and tail.

Next I made the ears and attached them, followed by the hind legs and then the front legs. Using 2 needles at once with my Clover pen style needle holder really helped to flat felt the ears and to quickly attach body parts..

Then I completed the top coat and added a tail and finally some whiskers.

I really enjoyed making Luna. I particularly loved making her as realistic as I could by taking my time to twist the wool and mimic the wavy and tousled look of the hare’s back fur.

I am pondering if to make another one and create a detailed tutorial as I go along.. I’d really value your thoughts..:-)

I have included links for where to source needle felting tools and materials. Please see Links disclaimer in the right side panel for more details.

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Needle Felted Bumble Bee Tutorial

Posted on April 16, 2021 by Amanda Adebisi

Would you like to create your very own Mr Bumbley Bee?

Now you can with this beautifully illustrated and detailed, step by step tutorial with over 250 instructional photos across 108 pages to show you 7 stages to create your own giant bumble bee.

He’s a giant fluffy gorgeousness that you can be brave to have him sit on your hand as he’s made of wool and much too much of a gentleman to sting you. His body is made of soft wool tops and his legs and antennae are shaped with pipe cleaners. His wings are made of organza with hand sewn stitching with white embroidery silks.

You’ll learn techniques including: basic armature making, reverse needle felting, long fur technique, wrapping wool and embroidery of wing patterns.

Includes Bee Anatomy diagram, Size Guides with wing template, Felting safety advice and Care instructions for your finished bee.

Mr Bumbley Bee – Needle Felting Tutorial – PDF download

Step by step tutorial to create your own giant bumble bee.

Pay by PayPal, Debit Card or Visa.

You will be taken directly to the download page when checkout is completed.

1 Digital PDF Download – ÂŁ9.60

You will learn how to:

–         Twist pipe cleaners together to form a basic armature structure.

–         Emphasise the leg segments and antennae by adding small pieces of wool to them.

–         Wrap wool over the armature and build up layers of wool to sculpt a bee shape.

–         Use a reverse needle to create fluffy bumble bee hair.

–         Create the bee’s white tail using a long fur technique.

–         Add depth of colour to the yellow bands.

–         Make wing shapes from organza material and hand sew a pattern and attach wings.

Here’s a preview of some of the pages you’ll find in the PDF tutorial;

Please contact me with any questions. I hope you have fun making your very own Mr Bumbley Bee!

I would so love to see your bee creation, so please post a photo of him on Instagram with #mrbumbleybee.

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Needle Felted Tabby Kitten

Posted on July 20, 2019 by Amanda Adebisi

“Paws”, an adorable and realistic looking Tabby kitten, is looking up at you with those big green eyes. 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 I used measures 9 inches wide by 7 inches tall perfect for fixing to a wall or standing on a table/chest of drawers. It took 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.


Here are some photos of the needle felting process.

  1. With real cat photos as reference, I started sculpting the core wool to make the head,
  2. I then filled in the eyes and added layers of grey, black, brown and white wool to resemble cat fur.
  3. I added nose and mouth detail.
  4. Once the head was complete I wrapped more core wool over a wire armature and sculpted the legs and torso.
  5. 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.
  6. Finally after tying a collar round its neck with a gold coloured pendant, I threaded the horse hair whiskers.
  7. 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.

After making him I went on to make a Tabby Birman cat head and made a needle felted cat head series for you to enjoy, see the videos list here.

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How to needle felt leaves

Posted on July 6, 2019 by Amanda Adebisi

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! 🙂

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Needle felted butterfly – bringing back the extinct (and hope) with the art of needle felting

Posted on September 25, 2018 by Amanda Adebisi
Needle felted butterfly – bringing back the extinct (and hope) with the art of needle felting

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?

     

   

Blessings always xx

Amanda

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Bon Voyage little guinea pig!

Posted on October 16, 2015 by Amanda Adebisi

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.

6-Needle felted guinea pig (6)

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

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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.

2-Needle felted guinea pig (2) 8-Needle felted guinea pig (10) 9-Needle felted guinea pig (8)

1-Needle felted guinea pig (1)

Hope you like him 🙂

Would you like to know how to make a guinea pig? (click on the photo to get started).

Needle felted guinea pig

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…)

Felting long animal fur

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.

Needlefelted guinea pig (2)  Needlefelted guinea pig (24)

Guineapig Guinea pig (37) Needle felted guinea pig (1) Needle felted guinea pig (38)

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As quiet as a mouse!

Posted on August 25, 2013 by Amanda Adebisi

So I really have kept ‘as quiet as a mouse’ about this one!!

I made this little mouse as a surprise birthday present for my mum (who I love beyond words).

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Yesterday my mum, dad and sister came to visit Ade and I for the day all the way from Lincolnshire and we celebrated my mum’s 65th birthday! She wasn’t too pleased though at receiving cards with ’65’ on them. …Mum you are beautiful and do not look your age at all, you have a young heart and I love you!

Mum just loves seeing the odd picture texted to her of my needle felt creations as I usually can’t wait until the final finished product to show her how I am getting on. She often sees my latest creations not looking like very much and often without ears and legs or fur… but loves them all the same.:-)

When making her mouse it has been so hard not to tell her or show her a photo. She didn’t expect it and of course was so excited to be given a box on her birthday and find this cute (in her words) little mouse inside!

Her little mouse is saying ‘I love you’, with a flower in his right hand and left hand on his heart. He is lovingly hand-made from 100% wool.

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Mum really does love him and to see the teary but smiley look on her face has made the wait and the time to make him all worthwhile..

It was her and my dad who gave me my name Amanda which means ‘fit to be loved’. The journey of accepting and growing into the meaning of my name was the inspiration behind the name of my needle felting business ‘fit to be loved’ and my hope is that all my felted creations like this little mouse are as the name suggests ‘fit to be loved’. Read more about me and the name here.

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His core is made of natural undyed Corriedale wool from New Zealand. His fur and detail on his cute mousey paws, ears and face are of soft merino wool (non-mulesed) from South Africa (Cape) – chocolate brown, mink, raven and coral. I used coarser wools in purple and grass green for his flower to contrast with the soft contours of his body. You can see his size from the close up of me holding him in my hand. His eyes are made of wool too, so no glass or plastic but all 100% wool!

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Do you have a birthday for a loved one coming up? need a gift idea to say ‘I love you’ ? You can buy one just like him or another bespoke animal of your choice from my etsy shop.

To follow my blog and receive email updates about latest fit to be loved creations and tutorials, simply enter your email address on the top right panel of my ‘find out more’ page.

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How to needle felt bunny ears!

Posted on August 17, 2013 by Amanda Adebisi
How to needle felt bunny ears!

See here for more pictures or to order one just like him

See here for more pictures or to order one just like him

Now that I have revealed my latest needle felted bunny in my most recent post, I can share with you how I made his cute bunny ears. The real bunny, owned by Pete and his wife, had the most incredibly gorgeous long ears and I really wanted to take the time to detail their every curve and beauty. As I created them I took pictures at each phase to document how I made them for my own reference when making other ears in future and also to share with you now on my blog..

For those of you who have some experience of needle felting I am sure you have your own preferred technique but please do take a look – your ideas are very welcome as I am still fairly new to this and so far it has been trial and error but most enjoyable. For those who haven’t tried yet , I hope this inspires you to have a ‘stab’ at it!

This is specifically to show you how to create ears for the bunny I made above, but some of the methods are very similar for other animal ears so feel free to follow them for other projects..

To get started you will need:

  • Foam pad or felting brush base (so not to stab your knees and to provide a firm base to work on)
  • Felting needles of various sizes; wider for initial shaping and finer for detail later on
  • A needle holder; this is optional but for making basic shapes it saves time to use 2 or 3 needles at the same time. In the pictures you will see I use the 3 needle holder pen by Clover.
  • Wool to felt with; I used natural corriedale wool to make the basic ear shapes as I find it felts well and ends up nice and firm (especially to keep in alert bunny position). I then used merino wool as the top coat as it’s soft and comes in some lovely animal fur colours. I buy my wools at a very good price from World of Wool.
  • Finally…   some time, some love, some patience, a drink and bar of chocolate for long sitting periods, perhaps some music (not tv as you may be distracted and stab your finger) and don’t forget a photo or drawing of what you would like to make…

So…. on to the tutorial!

By the way….. the point at which I am about to felt the ears I will already have my head sculpted, I can then at any time measure up the ears to the head to ensure I am getting the right proportion.

Step 1: take two equal lengths (and density) of your core wool (corriedale in this case). Bear in mind that you will need the two ears to end up the same size so keep comparing them. I find it works better if I do a bit on one then do a bit on the other as I go along rather than finish one and then start the other afterwards.

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Step 2: fold the piece in half in an oval shape (you can see already this is forming a long  ear shape before you even use the needle!)

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Step 3: using the thicker felting needle/s start stabbing the wool to go through to the other side as well as shallower stabs to the first few barbs of the needle in many directions (ensure you lift the needle in the same direction as you placed it so not to break any needles). Then turn over and do the other side

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Step 4: now you have a basic flat shape you need to make it more 3d and ear-like so roll the sides in to form thicker edges and stab at 90 degrees but also inwards at an angle keeping the edges rounded where the ear edges need to curve. Do this on both ears as you go..

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Step 5: Use fingers to knead the wool and stab with your needle/s and give shape on both sides. NB I have left a long unfelted end at the bottom of my work to make it easier to fix my ears on to the bunny head later on…

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Step 6: keep pulling edges in and hollowing the middle section with your needle/s

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………and turn over to felt the other side as you go…

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…. remember to turn your work and use various angles to insert your needle/s to mould the wool into the desired shape.

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Step 7: Keep felting and keep checking your photo or drawing to see how big the edges are and which areas should be flatter.

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On a real bunny one edge of the ear is thicker than the other so I had to make sure this was the opposite way round on the other ear (as it is in real life) for a mirror effect. You may want to use one needle or just two needles to make more defined lines..

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And there we have some bunny ears (err… minus some colour and texture!)

So then comes the exciting part …..have your finer needles and bunny fur colours at the ready for the final step….

Step 8: carefully shallow felt the ears with your coloured merino wools (just to a depth of first 1 or 2 barbs on your finer needles) to fix the wool in place but not allow the wool to go through to the other side. You don’t want the darker colours to be seen through the lighter colours on the other side! and vice versa  (it would be a medley of pink and grey in this case).

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……..where needle holes can be seen – you can use fingers or a normal sewing needle to gently fluff up fibres

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…. add different shades of colour to give a more realistic look. I mixed my greys and blues to get the bluey-grey colours. Then I  used a mink colour for the middle of the ear with lighter pinks around the edges. Finally a strand of grey down the very centre for light and shadow and 3d effect…

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Then your ears are ready to fix on to your bunny head for full bunny character!!

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I hope you found this useful. Let me know what you would like me to write about and what you would like me to make!

My next post will be a photo gallery of how I made my bunny creation from start to finish….so you will get to see me fixing the ears in place…!

Please enter your email address here for notifications of new posts to my blog and follow me on facebook, twitter, pinterest to see what I am up to next! 🙂

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What is needle felting?

Posted on July 29, 2013 by Amanda Adebisi

Are you new to this amazing form of art?

So was I back in 2013, but we all need to start somewhere. Once I started I just couldn’t stop and no doubt you will feel the same way too as it is very addictive.

You have probably seen some of my needle felted animals in my Gallery but what is it that I do to get from a piece of wool to a detailed sculpted animal?

Here I will show you the basics..

Have you ever had a woollen jumper? … loved it, worn it ..and then oh dear..washed it in too hot a wash and failed to read the washing instructions properly? or maybe you have heard of others doing that…Well that happened to me when I went to uni and didn’t have my mum to show me how it should be done!. My new favourite jumper shrunk to about a 5th of the size it started out as!!. Lets just say my teddy bear (I know I took a teddy to uni!) had his very own jumper which fit him perfectly… sadly though it would never reshape back to my size..

Needle felting felting is not putting wools in the machine or adding soapy water (although there is a technique known as ‘wet felting’ which does just this!) but the concept of how wool fibres latch on to each other and don’t want to let go is what I am trying to demonstrate here.

With needle felting you use a single barbed needle or several at the same time to cause the wool to felt..

First of all you choose your wools. These are some of the delicious coloured merino wools I used to make a fox.

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You pull off a piece (pull sections with hands far apart rather than too close).

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Roll or fold your wool tightly to form the shape you need. Here I am forming a spherical shape to demonstrate. You can take the wool off of the foam pad (used here to ensure I don’t stab myself) and roll in a ball in your hands too if you like – just like a piece of play dough as the ‘squishing’ action helps bind it into the shape you need as well.

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Then using your barbed needle you stab away at the wool hundreds of times in various directions, turning as you go (avoiding your fingers as the needle is extremely sharp) and as you do the wool fibres hug each other tight and don’t let go 🙂

Make sure the needle exit at the same angle as it entered so not to bend to bend or break it. start off slow at first until you get used to it and you will speed up in no time.

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The more you stab (which is quite therapeutic by the way after a hard day at work) the firmer and more compact the wool becomes so you can sculpt shapes. 2013-07-29 14.22.13

It is like modelling clay but with wool and a needle. Instead of moulding an area with your fingers you work it with a needle.

What I love is that there is no sewing involved (all the facial features such as eyes and noses can be needle felted too!) you just stab wool into shapes and add shapes to other shapes… and hey presto!! you have an animal.

There is of course a lot more to it than this. If you take a look at my Tutorials, tips and ideas page you will find further techniques.

Some animals can be made by simply needle felting basic body parts and felting them together.

For some you could felt the wool onto a wire armature to give the animal more structure and poseability (is that a word?). For example for the fox, cat, dog and donkey I  wrapped the wool tightly around wire which I had first prepared (after looking at photos of skeletal structures) and used my needle to fix the wool in place, firm up and blend in loose edges. Then I added more wool shapes to build up anatomy parts onto the base structure.

Here I have just started to give the fox his shape before adding his head and fuller tail and torso.

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I tend to start off with core wool (usually corriedale batts) using my thicker needles to get started. Then for adding layers of realistic looking fur and to get the colours I love I use a blend of soft merino wool roving. Thinner sized needles are used for needle felting the details especially for the face and ears. I use no beads or buttons for eyes and noses…. just beautiful 100% wool!!

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 please visit my Tutorials, tips and ideas 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..:-)

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.

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