Needle Felting Embellishments and Applique

Both embellishing and appliqueing can be a lot of fun. I tend to really like to have a lot of color and lots of different things to embellish with. And I found that what I was doing was neglecting my negative space or my backgrounds, and I decided to come up with some ways to make the backgrounds more interesting. So in this wonderful little garden piece you can see that I've put in a very interesting background. There's lots of play happening.

And what I did was I needle felted it first before I put all the embellishments and the applique on. So let me show you how you can do this to your next project that you're going to applique or embellish. What you're gonna need is something to use as your base. Something that you're going to needle felt into. And here I have a couple of options.

This first one is a really heavy interfacing it's called Pelltex, and I've painted it this wonderful red violet color. And then this is just a piece of plain cotton batting that I dye painted also. And you just dip it into some paint. The paint I use is Dynaflow. Ring it out, lay it flat to dry, and when it's dry, you can use it.

It felts the batting sort of. So it's like using felt which is what most people use when they needle felt. They start with a felt base, but you can also use just any woven fabric so that as long as it's woven than the particles or pieces that you needle felt on top can be pushed through it. I've also got some cheesecloth that's been hand dyed and it's pretty loosely woven. So you can see how loose the weave is.

Then I've got some silk hankies and these are called silk hankies because they're the size of a lady's hanky. Now, as you're using silk hankies, be careful to make sure that there's no cocoons left in them. And on this one you can see that there's a cocoon right there and a cocoon right there. Those are gonna be really hard to felt through so you want to remove those before you use these to felt. Then I have some wonderful wool fibers that are dyed in bright colors.

And then this is some silk waste, which really looks icky, but when you go to use it is really fun to do. So let me show you how to do this. You're gonna need a few tools, and I like to use a multi needle tool. So this tool has five needles. You want to be very, very careful with these needles.

Not only are they very, very sharp, but they have barbs all along the side that will catch in your skin. They're very hard to remove, so don't run one through a finger, your finger. Then I also like to use single needles, and these are best for using when you're putting down a fiber, like a string of some sort. So the single needles are just like the multiple needle but they have a little metal handle. You can get some that have a heftier handle too but I really like to use these.

You'll need something to felt into. And I generally use two inch foam. And you can just pick this up at an upholstery store or at a hobby store. So let's kind of get started. Before I start the actual needle felting, I simply lay out a few fibers where I want them to be.

Now this silk has lots of hankies in it. So you have to pull those apart and you can see how wonderful and luminescent it is and also how sheer it is. And so what I want is some of this sheerness and I'm just gonna lay this across the surface. And you can lay it however you want it to impart the color that it is. So I can just lay it there to begin with.

Then I'm going to add a little bit of this really weird silk waste, and it has more texture than the silk hanky does. And I'm gonna kind of shred it apart a bit so it's somewhat sheer, and I can felt these at the same time if I put them in the same area. So I'm gonna go ahead and put that there. I'm also going to use some of this wonderful cheese cloth. Now the cheese cloth is an actual fabric sort of, and it has a weave in it.

And what you're gonna be pushing in is part of the fabric in the weave when you do the felting. It's got lots of fine areas here. Now it does not tear well, but I like to have a kind of a natural edge to it, so I kind of just rough cut it. And then I'm gonna cut that at an angle so it's not so rectangular. And what I don't want is for it to be neat.

Now you can play with how you lay things out but I tend to lay and play pretty quick. I'll put it into position and not try to rethink about it because if I rethink it, then I'll change my mind. And all I've done is changed my mind. I haven't necessarily made it better. I've just made it different.

So I kind of like the way that's looking and it will all pretty much stick to the surface while I pick it up. It's not gonna fall off. And I'll start in one area. I like to start where there's lots of different fibers and then just kind of work in lightly the fibers that are there. I tend to make a V with my fingers to hold things in place and then put the tool in the middle.

So you're simply going to push and you want to be working going straight down. If you go at an angle you're gonna break your needles and they're not cheap, so you don't want to have to be replacing needles all the time. Now I'll make my V in a different place. Again, be careful not to go through your fingers. It will be a day that you never forget if you do.

Now, you can see these holes that are being made, that's the needles pushing the fiber through to the back. And here we can see the fibers coming through to the back. So we know it's working. We're just gonna move to another area now. Now, all these little holes that are being made will steam out.

So if I steam this from the back when I'm done, I can steam out most of the holes, then I'll steam it from the front and then all the holes will be gone. And I just steam it with a steam iron. I was really amazed the very first time I ever put cheese cloth down and tried to needle felt cheese cloth because I wasn't sure if it was gonna work, but it works wonderfully. And you can see that it's working because we're getting little bits of that cheese cloth come through. It takes a little bit more work than the other fibers because it's actually made from smooth threads, not barbarous threads.

The silk is a natural fiber that has little barbs on it too, just like wool does. And so they needle felt very, very easily. Whereas non-barbarous fibers take a little bit more work but here you can see that all those fibers coming through. It's easy to tell where you've worked and where you haven't because where you haven't worked you can't see any holes. Now, when I'm done with this, I'm going to add some line to this negative space by adding some wool fibers, something that you would have left over from knitting or crocheting, those would all work.

Now I would needle felt this a lot more before I used it but I think you kind of get the idea. So things are held in place now. they're not gonna come off. And back here you can see all the fibers being pushed through. Now, when I'm done with all the needle felting, and I'll needle felt this a little bit more, like I said, then I simply put a piece of iron-on adhesive on the back.

You can put an iron-on stabilizer on the back. And what that does is simply holds all of those fibers in that have been pushed through thus making it very, very permanent. I put the iron-on adhesive on the back so that I can then stick it to whatever I'm going to stick it to, killing two birds with one stone. So let's see how we put down the line, the fiber lines. So I'll take a thread or a fiber.

And again, using a natural fiber is best. Using a animal based one is even better. So this is wool. And I'm gonna put, now remember this is a background, so I'm not necessarily gonna add any decorative elements. I'm simply going to put something in the negative space.

And this is adding some really bold color running through here. So I'm going to be using the single needle this time. And this stuff is really hairy. It just catches on everything. And I use the single needle because this way I'm not wasting any of my momentum here with those five needles that aren't really going through the fiber at all.

So this time I can really concentrate on being right there on the fiber. Now I hold the needle like this so that only about, oh 3/4 of an inch to an inch of the needle is actually going into the foam. Otherwise, if I held it up here I'd be hitting the table all the time and you don't want to do that, not good for the table, but really not good for the needle. So you want to kind of control how far it goes down. Plus this way I can move faster.

I have more pokes and they're not taking as long. So you're just gonna work directly on that fiber. And again, you want to be going up and down, not at an angle. And it's easy to control exactly where that fiber is going to go as you do it. And again, you want to make sure you keep those fingers out of the way.

And I'm just kind of following a line that was made by one of the previously put on fibers. And you kind of get used to keeping your fingers out of the way the way you would when you're chopping an onion, curving them under is always a good idea. So once I poke it into place, I can go back in and really get it in there. So this of course is fabulous television activity. You can't really watch the TV, but you can certainly listen to what's going on.

And sometimes I will leave my fiber as a tail in case I want to use it for something else when I'm designing the applique. So that's what I'm gonna do with this guy is just leave a tail here hanging loose in case I want it to do something else. Now you can see how well that fiber came through. And that's a really good way of making it really secure. So on goes our stabilizer, our iron-on stabilizer, or our iron-on adhesive, and we're ready to use this now wonderful piece that has much more interest than it did before.

So here was it before. Interesting, but not all that interesting. And here it's much more interesting. So if we put appliques and things around it it's gonna give us some beautiful, beautiful negative space. So give it a try.

Try some needle felting in your negative space or your backgrounds before you applique or embellish. I think you'll have a lot of fun doing it.