Felted Farm

My friend Annmarie introduced me to felting a few months ago, and since then I’ve made some wet-felted beads, Easter eggs (see my article and audio slideshow on my tutorial page) and a few needle-felted animals, including a hummingbird that my son thought was either a seal or an airplane. So I wasn’t particularly confident in my abilities when I decided to try a needle-felted playscape, but I’m really happy with the results. The biggest challenge was figuring out how to make the barn and fence since everything else is really just stabbing bits of wool roving into various lumps. For the barn, I ended up making paper templates for the walls, side and roof, then cutting out pieces of acrylic felt in those sizes. (I’m sure purists would use wool felt or needle-felt the whole thing, but I used what I had on hand). Then I needle-felted over the shapes, reinforcing the sides with pipe cleaners, sewed the walls together at the corners and needle-felted the whole thing to the base.

Click on the pictures to see more photos and detailed descriptions of some of the other steps.