Felting little critters

Supplies

• Finger gloves
• Needle
• Pad
• Core wool
• Colored wool (not shown)

How

Basics of felting

How does it work?

Strands of wool get poked with a needle that has some barbs, which interlocks the fibers. More poking leads to denser wool. More wool can be added, and poked, to build up more complicated shapes and add features.

Building up shapes

1. Start by rolling up a bit of wool into a tight roll. You can always add more later, but removing material is harder, so start small. Just big enough that you can hold the balled up wool in your fingers, but not much bigger than that.
2. With finger gloves on (I promise you're going to accidentally stab your finger a few times), take a needle and poke into the wool a few times, trying to stay perpendicular to the wool. Rotate periodically and keep poking. If you're making a cylinder, keep rotating it like a log, but if you're making a sphere, you should rotate all around.
3. Keep poking, seriously. Most people mess up by not poking enough.
4. You're done poking when it springs back like the meat at the base of your thumb. If you don't poke it enough, you're going to have a hard time adding additional color or facial features without deforming the shape.
5. Add more wool to areas you want to build up and poke them in. Repeat until you have the shape you want.

Adding color

1. Grab some colorful wool and pull it so it is in shorter strands. Lay that across areas you'd like to add color to and poke it in. Keep adding more bits of wool until the color is as consistent as you want it to be.

Adding facial features

1. To add eyes or a mouth, ball up a small amount of wool and poke it into the rest of the felt.
   
2. You can also add other features, like spots, in this same way.
3. Have fun!