How to Needle Felt

Are you new to this amazing form of art?  Needle felt work is a fun and creative sculptural and design craft that has quickly gained in popularity.

What is needle felting?

Needle felting begins with unspun wool, also known as roving. The craft involves sculpting shapes or making designs using roving and special felting needles which are barbed. 

With just a few supplies, this technique enables the artist to create amazing figures, such as 3D needle felt animals, and 2D designs.

Each of the wool fibers is covered in overlapping scales.  The orientation and direction of the scales are random. When poked and prodded with the barbed felting needles, these scales connect the fibers together, forming a secure bond during this felting process. 

What supplies are needed for needle felting?

There are very few supplies needed for needle felting:

• Wool: Needle felting is most often done with a kind of wool called roving, but other forms of wool can be used like batting or fibers from animals other than sheep.
• Felting needles: Felting needles are longer than sewing needles or tapestry needles and have sharp, barbs on them that are designed to push and pull the wool fibers together. Felting needles are quite delicate and break easily if used incorrectly.  
• Felting surface: A special felting surface is necessary to avoid the poking of fingers.  Both sponges and felt pads work well for needle felting.  It is important that the surface be several inches thick. Special felting mats can be purchased for this purpose.

Check out our felting supplies and tools page for purchasing these items.

What can you make with needle felting?

Needle felting can be used to create both two dimensional and three dimensional works of art. 

There are links below to two dimensional needle felt projects.  One such project is making needle felted designs on mittens. Various colors of wool are felted onto woolen mittens to create leaves or a roller skate design.

3D needle felting involves the same principle as 2D felting, but the piece is built up as a sculpture, forming the main body and then strategically adding wool to other wool pieces that will then be added to the main form.  

Wire is sometimes used for stability. Needle felted animals, characters, and plants are just some of the sculptures that can be made.

The articles below include tutorials on how to needle felt both 2D designs and 3D figures.  There are also several beginner needle felting tutorials for easy projects in order to get started.

Learn basic needle felting techniques along with how to needle felt basic shapes that can be used to form 3D art.

You will become a needle felting artist in no time!

Once the technique is learned, please visit our free needle felting projects page for loads of inspiration!!