My needle felting

I used to make a lot of jewelery with silver and gemstones. That involved noisy hammering and concentration when handling the gas burner.

When my daughter was born, that was impossible to do. So I was looking for something I could do anytime anywhere and was easy to drop any second.

During my pregnancy I did some crocheting. l made blankets for my child and dolls where some ended up being a mobile which my daughter loved when she was 2 to 6 months old. Even though she never really ended up laying in this nice cot…

But after a while I needed something new to explore. There was one thing I didn’t like about crocheting so much; you had to do it correctly, you could not add or take away a bit in the end when it just didn’t look quite right.

That’s what I always loved about working with clay, shaping a form is so easy by building up and taking away bits. But you have to fire it to make it durable and it’s hard solid material – not so suitable for a young child to cuddle with.

I heard about needle felting but never tried it before, I considered it as being not as valuable as wet felting. Don’t ask me why it seems ridiculous now as I know the pleasure of doing it. I guess wet felting was just an established thing and needle felting was kind of new on the market.

That is my own fault that I kept it away from me for so long, as it is truly an amazing material to work with.

It is soft, colourful and easy to shape a form and add wool. So the perfect material to make inspiring dolls.

The wool I use is from Switzerland and New Zealand, both dyed and carded in Switzerland. I remember as a child that I saw the whole process of shear the sheep, card the wool and dye it with natural plant colours. After that we used it to spin and make wool thread with it. And from there it probably got knitted into something, I don’t remember that part. I remember I was deeply impressed that you can do such great work with what grows on a sheep without killing them.

The basic shape of my needle felted dolls are made out of only white wool. After that a layer of skin colored wool is added to the parts which will most likely be seen as skin in the end and not covered by clothes. Though I also use the same colour to form the feet and the butt even though it will probably be covered later with trousers and shoes.

When I start out making dolls, sometimes I know what character I want to create, sometimes I have no clue what it’s going to be.

I like the fact, that I can work wherever I am, it doesn’t need many tools or a special bench. The only thing is I have to reclaim it from my daughter every now and then, but that is why I make a few dolls simultaneously so when my daughter grabs one or two to play with, I take the next one to work with. If I would work on just one doll at a time I would fight with my daughter and that is not a fun idea, so with this solution we are both happy.

When the basic shape is finished I make a quick drawing of the idea in my mind. The ones I haven’t yet a decided what they are going to be I look at the doll and get inspired by their shape. So I also do a quick drawing of what the doll should represent in the end.