Simple Crafts

A craft for everything & everything in a craft.

Folky Needle Felted Christmas Tree

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For a very easy needle felted Christmas project, you can try making ornaments that can hang from a tree or in the window or from a bunch of artfully arranged twigs. I have to buy my artful twigs, though this does mean they are fake, with lights in them and last for years, so it isn’t all bad 🙂 A few ornaments like this would keep the kids quiet for a while without taxing the brain too much and they look gorgeous too.

It’s nice and simple. Needle felt a triangle of dark green fleece to a moderately spongy flattened shape, then make a small brown rectangle in the same way and felt it to the back. That’s your basic Christmas tree shape. We just used ordinary cheap wool to blanket stitch around the edge, which make it look a little more ‘finished’ and then glued some buttons on to be decorations. Glittery stars etc would work just as well. If you stitch a loop to the top, you can hang it from wherever you choose.

Joining in with Festive Friday.

Needle Felted Squirrel

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If you don’t fall instantly in love with this little creature, then I don’t know what to do for you! This is Maddy’s needle felted squirrel and I think he’s just divine. As usual, she had a picture in her head and far exceeded what I imagined she would do with the idea. This squirrel pretty much ties up the autumn themed crafts for this year too and what a way to finish!

Our felting box contains plenty of scraps of colours and this is made from what is left of a ball of brown and some flesh beige fleece. My favourite shops for buying felting supplies are World of Wool and Sara’s Texture Crafts. You can pick up a bargain on ebay too by looking for felting supplies. You’ll need some needle felting needles too and a sponge or foam pad (unless you don’t value your knees much).

At some point we’ll feel well qualified enough to do a tutorial; until then, read this 🙂

As you can see, the squirrel is constructed in a series of discs and when flat and solid enough, they are attached to each other with more needling.

Little paws, feet and ears are added with small shaped pieces of felting.

Once all his bits and bobs had been attached, he just needed detail adding with some back stitching in black (or dark brown) embroidery thread. The stitching and the button eyes really made him I think . Maddy Makes amazing craft projects, don’t you agree? (She’s very proud of him and only 12, so I think she would love some likes and comments to tell her he’s great 😉 )

Felted Flower Picture.

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A few weeks ago a visit to a re-enactment day and the girls loved the idea of wet felting. We’ve needle felted before but not wet felted so we pulled out our trusty supplies, looked up how to do it and had a go. In the few relatively nice days we had this summer, the girls sat on the patio with soap and water and blended fibres and got wet and messy but clean at the same time!

Being a little slapdash and short on attention, their desire to create intricate pieces was fairly short lived. They did enjoy the process and the fun of making up blends of colours but were short on patience at making really flat felt. This left us with lots of pieces of felted wool in a variety of fun mixes and nothing to quite do with them so we hit upon the idea of a collage style picture.

We cut leaf and petal shapes from all the different pieces of felt and then needle felted (it was raining!) some blue and green blends together. Then we stuck some linen on to the board at the back of a large 30″ picture and stuck the sky and grass backing on to the linen.

Once they were no, we arranged petals and central circles on to the scene and stuck them down with tacky glue. The felted stems were twists of fibre needle felted into shape and stuck down. Once completed we put a dark wood frame on it and got it ready for the wall. You’d have a picture of it there if I hadn’t smashed the frame carrying it out to take this picture!

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Needle Felted Christmas Tree

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A few years ago the girls and I had our first experience of needle felting. It’s not a craft for the fainthearted since the needles are barbed, hurt if you stab yourself and break easily. That said, it has been a craft we’ve enjoyed at various times and 3D modelling is greatly enhanced by halves of tennis balls to hold the item in as you stab at them.

needle felted tree

This was a really simple Christmas Tree made out of scraps of felted wool left over at the end of a long day of needle felting. I balled all the green together and lightly stabbed it until I had the basic shape. I deliberately kept it lightly felted, rather than making it very solid, for the texture of a tree that I wanted. Then I fashioned a trunk out of brown, making it into a cylinder and considerably more solid than the green element and holding the two pieces together, stabbed it until they held into one piece. I did have to be careful of stabbing my fingers though! It’s been in our Christmas box for a couple of years now though and still looks very cute.

I buy my felting wool, when I can, from Sara’s Texture Crafts. She has a good range of accessories too and is very friendly. I’ve also just discovered World of Wool.

I have random Felting ideas collected on Pinterest.

Required: For this craft you need some felting needles and scraps of wool to felt. For more information on getting started, see the Felting Resources page.

Simple Craft Rating: 3/5