Feltmaking is an ancient technique. You add warm soapwater to the wool, press and rub the wool and the fibres will tighten into a felted textile material.
With my felt techniques you can felt sculptural objects by building up a form from dry wool using the felt needle to fasten the wool. You can then either finish the object only by needling the surface until it is strong which is how I mostly do, or you can wet the surface of this form with soap water and only felt on the surface while the inner part stays dry. This makes it possible to make a very moveable object (like a doll).
Here are some examples of how the sculptural technique can be used:
Pipe cleaner dolls
The pipe cleaner doll is made of a needled body-skeleton. Arms and legs are made of pipe cleaners on which I am winding wool in a way that makes it possible to shape them and needle them onto the body shape with all the details you can imagine.
Needled dolls and animals
With this technique you can build a figure, where all the parts of the body are needled with the felt needle and then needled together to a fixed position where the figure can sit, lie, crawl, dance etc.. It gives possibilities of making funny and special little personalities and animals.
Reliefs
With this technique you can needle a basic layer and on that you build a relief by sculpting shapes down on the bottom layer. You can also use a whole fleece that is already felted on the backside and build the relief on that. That could be animal faces or human faces.
Fantasy figures
Can be made in two different ways: Either the figure is made of accidental shapes that are put together and worked on, with ideas that come while you work. Or the figure is made by learning to make a face, that is good to act with and a body that has special proportions.
For all these techniques the felting needle is a very good tool – it makes it much easier to create details.
For a long period I have now been working with new techniques that I have developed. Here I needle on different transparent material.
