Hi all,
Better late than never - as promised here is the Felted Flower Tutorial I promised I'd put onto my blog for those of you who would like to make your own flowers out of wool fibres.
You will need:
A Felting needle
Calico
Wool Fibres
Large piece of thick foam (at least 3" thick)
Embroidery hoop
Firstly a word of
WARNING - the Felting Needles are very sharp and barbed so please be careful not to stab yourself when making this flower. Always place the hoop onto a table covered with a cutting mat (any solid craft cutting mat will do) - Please DON'T make this flower on your lap..... you will stab yourself if you do this....
Step 1.
Place the calico inside the Embroidery hoop . Put a small piece
wool onto the Calico and begin to stab at the wool with the felting needle. Make sure that the foam is underneath the calico as you stab at the wool (make sure the needle goes all the way through and into the foam underneath) Continue to stab a the wool pulling in the sides of the wool with the needle and shaping it into a petal shape as you go.
Step 2.
Add another piece of wool to make a second petal.
Continue to shape the petals as you go. Check underneath the Calico and you will see that the wool goes all the way through. Keep adding wool to make further petals until you have five in total.
Step 3.
Once you have 5 petals in total, add a second different colour into the centre of the flower and continue to stab (felt) the wool, shaping it into a circle forming the centre of your flower.
Step 4
When you have completed the first flower, you can make a second flower on another piece of calico then cut the second flower out with scissors and add it to the first flower by felting the two flowers together. (See the first picture above)
Place one flower on top of the other and stab through both flowers. This will join them together at the centre and you will have a three dimensional flower to use either on the calico or to cut out and your flower as an embellishment to a cushion, hat, hairband etc.,
This way of felting is called the Dry Felting method.
There is also another method of felting wool fibres together to make sheets of felt which can be made into all sorts of crafty creations. This method is called the Wet Felting Method using water, soap, heat caused by friction and lots of hard work if making this type of felt by hand.
I'll add some more images of my felted creations on here for you to see soon......
The tube was covered in fabric paper with glittered leaves and tissue flowers added to decorate the front. Somewhere for all my paintbrushes now so no excuse to leave them lying around the house. 
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