Woollie Creations

Last weekend the weather forecast was bad - really bad (the fact that it didn't turn out that bad is just typical of weather forecasting here in Scotland) so on Saturday I invited a couple of friends over for a crafting afternoon on Sunday (so we could stay out of the rain). The necessary materials were purchased at Twist Fibre Craft on Saturday morning - fibre in various colours, pre-felt, wire and beady little eyes and soup made on Sunday morning ready for a mid crafting lunch.

Andrea , Louise and I were working on creating a felt creature from the book "Felted Friends". I chose to make the punk porcupine, Louise a cat and Andrea a bird. In the book, the creatures all look perfect, making them look that way in real life was not so easy.

Each creature requires a skeleton made of pipe cleaners followed by a pre-felt wrap. Louise and Andrea's creatures were starting too look a lot like Egyptian mummies at this point whilst mine was looking more and more like a potato. After the pre-felt, comes the outer layer of fibre. We were using icelandic roving in a variety of colours. Mine continued to look like a potato on legs as I wrapped it in brown fibre......

 

After the fibre comes the felting, soaking the creature and gently rubbing, with or without bubble wrap to felt the fibre .... we also discovered that a great deal of needle felting was required to make the creatures look smooth. After the initial felting, it was time to dunk the creatures in boiling water followed by cold water a number of times to stiffen the felt. Mine continued to look like a potato.....

  

It wasn't until I added the spikes of roving that my creature started to look like a porcupine, but it's the big black, glass bead eyes that really make them..... Andrea's bird ended up making the perfect penguin and the little knitted hat and scarf are great!