https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOejyXlDgcw

I am introducing my junior high school students to dry felting for the first time this week.  Needle felting is all about using a barbed needle to tangle or fuse wool fibres together. You can sculpt 3D shapes (spheres are often popular for beginners) or build up layers of fibre to create beautiful flat images - which is what we will be doing. In our felting unit of work we are intending to create a collaborative felting artwork of Van Gogh's Starry Night painting. I have divided the magical Starry Night painting into sixteen sections, giving each student are piece to base their dry felting on. But first .... we will create a simple felt sample colour gradient and introduce the equipment used for this technique. I created a short video tutorial for my students to follow the steps of this intro to dry felting. I showed this video to my students first, then played it again and stopped a various intervals. The main point I kept making throughout this lesson was not to press too hard or too fast with the felting needle! It is quite fragile and can easily snap!

What You'll Need:

Wool Tops / Wool Roving: Wool Tops or Wool Roving is the type of wool I’ve seen most often used for needle felting.

Felting needle: Felting needles are not tapestry needles, nor are they sewing needles. Felting needles are a special needle that have very sharp, barbed blades on them. This is what helps agitate the wool.

Foam Block (Felting surface): A felting surface, such as a foam block, will stop you from poking your leg or other body parts. Sponges and foam blocks work well for this. Just be sure your surface is several inches thick. I’m using the foam block pictured above.

Felt Square: For this technique I will be felting into a piece of fabric. I'm using a cut piece of felt for this example.Our supplies were purchased from Zart Art.