Alright, alright. Maybe that post about the little horse ornament who couldn’t was a touch…negative. Well I’ve tried again, and I took a ton of pictures so I could walk you through the process. So read on, intrepid souls, if you ain’t a ‘feared of no barbed needles…
Needle felting works because each needle has tiny barbs that tangle the fiber as the needles pass through it. I start with the legs. I fold a few lengths of fiber, and use my needles to felt it into a tube. To do this, I roll the fiber as I repeatedly stab it with my felting needles. It’s cathartic!
Yes. Those are LEGS I tell you. When I’ve got four little legs, I overlap the unfelted fiber at their tops and felt them together in the proper shape. At this point, I generally stick the needles through my fingers at least once. I don’t put that on the product information sheet. Ultramarathoners, crab fishermen and lumberjacks can all proudly say they put their blood and sweat into their jobs, but it’s weird when crafters make the same claim. Bit of a turn off.
Anyhoo! I add fiber to rump and neck, as needed. The figure shrinks as the fiber tightens, so the neck and head look too big in the picture, but they will condense to be the right size.
My cookie minions are going to take over the world.
When the figure is finished, it’s time for cookies. Seriously, at this point I got up and made a batch of cookies. I’m totally focused on what I’m doing at all times. Then, I ate cookies.
Zombie dog does not approve of your color choices.
THEN, I picked out the embroidery floss color I wanted to use for the embellishments. Notice how my threads are arranged by color family. When the school councilor distributed aptitude tests, I checked the “I like organizing things into different boxes” question.
I did lighting on the left foreleg, for strength and speed, and an eye on the right side of the rump, for wisdom. Yellow represents…bravery. Well, actually, death. But that also wouldn’t sound great on the product info sheet.
So, what do you think of the new and improved horse ornaments?
Cliff House Alpacas 