Why You Should Try Needle Felting
Why is needle felting so amazing? Because you can literally make anything—the techniques all apply the same! It’s one of those mediums where the only thing to hold you back is your own imagination. Felt can be used around an armature or on its own, depending of the complexity or size of the shape you’d like to create. It’s really easy once the basic principles are learnt, and the supplies are simple (wool, felting needles, and pads). I’m going to briefly walk you through two of my favorite things to needle felt: cacti and landscapes.
Access the full lesson with vocab, supply list, teacher instructions, and step-by-step visual student instructions to use it with your classes!
Making cacti is fun because there are so many types and colors that students can be creative while learning the same basic felting techniques. They learn how to make large shapes (cactus bases), thin lines (cactus spines), and small details (flowers). They also learn how to connect shapes together!
One the cacti are created, I like to have my students paint small terracotta plant pots inspired by the Mexican Talavera style, and place the cacti inside. We use sand or rocks to fill in the space (dirt won’t keep the felt cacti in place) and then they’re finished!
Another lesson I love doing is landscapes, which also requires loose felt as a base to start the “felt painting".
Access the full lesson with vocab, supply list, teacher instructions, and step-by-step visual student instructions to use it with your classes!
Students learn about Thomas Cole and visit a National Park through Google Earth to find a picturesque location to recreate in felt. Again, this project is quite simple and a good for beginners. In order to recreate a landscape, students need to pay special attention to color matching and detail. So, there is less room for creativity because the goal is an accurate depiction—I find that students that are brand new to felting really love this because they are just focusing on using their needle and gaining the skills.
Once students choose the place, they build colors from the background to the foreground. The size you choose to create these in will determine how much detail can be added to the scene. I often choose sizes that are around 5x5.
To display, these can easily be pinned to a board (it’s also fun to have students make labels and put the location next to the felt painting).
These have been super fun for me, if you try them let me know how it goes for you!
