Felted cats and bear cubs, original felt beads and earrings - all this and much more can be created with your own hands if you master the simple felting technology.
Felting wool does not require complex tools or a large working surface. All you need for this is unspun wool, special needles for felting, padding polyester and a thick foam sponge.
Specialized stores sell wool of any color. If we want to make a red squirrel like in the picture, we will need terracotta, red and black.
Felting woolen products is quite expensive, so most often the base is made from synthetic padding polyester, and only the surface is covered with wool. The volume of the source material should be about a third larger than the future toy, since it shrinks when felting.
So, let's make a squirrel. Take a lump of padding polyester and profile it a little with a large needle (No. 70 - 90). Felting needles are very sharp, so you should never pierce the material while it is hanging! This is why you need a thick sponge, like for washing cars. We put the padding polyester on it and pierce it with a needle, holding it perpendicular so as not to break it.Gradually the fibers fall off under this influence.
To make the squirrel colored, we cover the body with small thin-layer pieces of wool, laying them perpendicular to each other. When the padding polyester can no longer be seen through the wool, we begin felting again with a large needle. After the fibers no longer separate from each other, the surface should be leveled with a needle No. 45 - 50.
Next, we make a transverse recess in the place where we want to separate the head and torso. With a large needle we make punctures along one line. In this case, you can bend your neck a little, setting the desired angle of the muzzle.
For the ears you need to take two identical strands of wool. Separately, bend them in half and, holding them by the tip, make a circle. Then file it further in the middle so that the shell takes on a curved shape. The paws and tail are made in approximately the same way, but not round, but in the shape of a roller. A connecting strand remains at the end of each piece. We fluff it up and attach it to the body.
We make indentations in those places where we need to mark the shape of the muzzle and body. The tummy and cheeks need to be additionally treated with red, and also the eyes and nose should be felted from black wool and attached to the face.
That's all, our toy is ready! Such a squirrel can be obtained in 3-4 hours of work. And if you gain experience, you can try to create larger and more complex things, like this huge hedgehog with soft needles. Felt will take any shape that your imagination tells you!
