Tag Archives: needle felting

pet monster

i started making this guy on friday… i thought he looked a little rodent like so went to the pet store and bought him a toy for inspiration.

he needed a rodent like tail, so i lightly felted a long piece of wool.

i wanted to get cartoon like ribbing on the tail and but needle felting each “rib” would have taken a very long time and i am sure i would have stabbed myself repeatedly. so i put rubber bands down the length of the tail, wet felted it, let it dry and then dyed it pink.

the tail did’nt come out exactly how i envisioned it, but i do love it.i added wire before i attached it so it would be posable. awww, my new pet monster with his toy! but he still needs a name…any suggestions?

Hurri-crafting

6 Replies

what does one do when there is no power for 2 days? well, you craft of course…and then you clean your craft room. lucie is a needle felted puppet that i never finished because there was always something about her that i didnt like…her face, her mouth…her ears.

then along came hurricane ike and a desperate need for another battery operated light source. i rummaged through my unorganized craft room, found some lamp parts and then i spied lucie!

lucie was needle felted hollow because she was intended to be a puppet—perfect for a lampshade.

i wanted to spruce her up so that once all went dark she would be pretty to look at so i gave her a felt rose for her hair, eyelashes and teeth.

lucie giving me light to sketch by + a guitar playing husband made having no power not so bad.

Kiyoshi 淳 ! needle felted umbrella bat

12 Replies

Meet Kiyoshi 淳!

last week i set out to needle felt a bat with wings made with umbrella parts. his wings turned out better than i thought they would because they have a full range of motion despite the wool. when i was almost done felting him,i decided to try a cabbage dye to give him a blue-ish grey color.

FIRST i chopped up some pretty red cabbage

i let it boil for an hour and drained it. i didn’t want to use alum to set the dye, so i added vinegar to the cabbage water and the color instantly turned from a deep blue to a bright pink.

i added mr. batty.

he was very pink and looked very unhappy. i let him boil for 5 minutes.

‘mmm smell that cabbagey, wooly bat soup.

thankfully, once i rinsed him there was no smell cabbagey smell at all but he was drab – very drab.

not at all the pretty blue-grey that i was going for.

in order to save mr. batty from his drabness, i mixed blue raspberry kool aid and black cherry kool aid until i got a very deep blue. i closed my eyes, hoping this would help and not hinder mr. batty’s color situation, and dunked him in the pot of blue. i boiled him for about 20 minutes to let the dye set and woila! the perfect shade of muted purple i love it!

i hand dried him with a blow dryer so that the metal umbrella parts would dry quickly then i lightly needle felted him all over to tighten up the loose wool. this morning i made him some socks and freckles and gave him a name…

淳

Kiyoshi which means the quiet one in Japanese.

Batty

6 Replies

i went a little batty yesterday when i got sick of making sugar foots. i have been wanting to make a bat for a while now, but i wasn’t sure how i would approach it.

should he be sweet or mean? white, black or some random color? i still don’t know.

i did know that i wanted to use umbrella parts for the wings so they would open and close, so i went to the dollar store, got an umbrella and took it apart.

then i searched flickr for some plush bat inspiration.

i have looove sotosofties work, especially her bats, like freddie here.