Making a needle felt picture is a great way to start needle felting. You only need a small amount of wool roving, a mat & needle felting needles. Use simple images around you as inspiration or take photo of a landscape on your phone to copy. A postcard size picture is a good size to begin with, but of course you can use the same technique to make any size or shape picture you wish.
How to create a Needle Felt Postcard Picture
You will need:
- A needle felting mat
- Medium size needle felting needles (38 regular red tip), use a Clover needle felting tool with 2 needles, or you can use 1 needle without the tool
- A fine needle felting needle (40 regular blue tip) for adding detail
- Prefelt cut to the size of a postcard (14cm x 11cm)
- A selection of coloured merino roving wool
- Wool locks to add a 3D effect (optional)
1. Lay different coloured roving wool on to your prefelt a little at a time & needle felt the wool into the prefelt. Make sure your wool covers the whole of the prefelt & covers the edges. You can turn your prefelt over & needle felt the edges of you wool into the back of the prefelt.
Tips
If you are using individual needles without a tool always hold them by the coloured tip. Always keep your needle/s straight when needle felting to prevent bending or breaking them.
Make sure you lift your prefelt off of your mat every so often to prevent it sticking to the mat.
To see if there are any gaps in the prefelt when you are adding the wool, hold the prefelt up to the light every so often, you will be able to see the gaps & where the wool is unevenly spread.
2. Once you have covered your prefelt with your background colours, you can add detail using a single fine needle, eg. shapes like they yacht sails or texture colour effect using tiny amounts of wool spread out on top of your base layer colours.
Tips
If you are creating a building or sail of a boat for instance use small pieces of wool to make an outline & then fill in the centre with wool (as seen in the creation of the yacht sails).
Adding locks to the foreground of the picture will give depth & a sense of a 3 diamential image.
Your picture can be glued to card with fabric glue.
For more information or to purchase equipment & materials for your project, or book a workshop contact Lynne: