Useful Information

Here are a few tips to help you keep them looking great!

Needle felted sculptures and wool paintings are easy to take care of.

Do not display your piece in direct sunlight. Strong sunlight can fade the color of natural and dyed fibers just like it fades paintings and fabric.

Try not to disturb the surface of your fibre art. Felted pieces are meant to be displayed, not handled. Place them out of the reach of children and pets.

Long fibres should not be combed, brushed, or pulled on. Any stray long fibres can be carefully trimmed off.

If you need to dust your piece, consider lightly blowing the dust away or using a soft clean paint brush to remove any dust particles.

Cleaning it with a cloth or hand vacuum is not recommended, it will damage the felted surface.

Apart from the visual qualities of a piece, if you are looking for something that will last, you need to ensure the felting is high quality.

High quality, well needle felted items are firm and dense. It takes a lot longer to create a dense needle felted item and they are often more expensive, but they will last.

Firm, dense pieces are less fragile and are easier to clean.

Felting is the process of entangling, condensing, and pressing fibres together to produce, a textile or fabric.
Felt can be made from natural fibres such as wool or animal fur, or from synthetic fibers such as acrylic, bamboo, rayon.

Natural fiber felt has special properties that allow it to be used for a wide variety of purposes. It is "fire-retardant and self-extinguishing.

There are two basic felting techniques, wet felting and dry (needle) felting.

Needle felting is a technique that uses specially designed, notched needles to manipulate fibres. The notches on the needles catch and entangle the fibre. The repeatedly poking of the needles into the fiber creates a dense, sculptural material. However it takes thousands of pokes to achieve each sculpture.

Felting has been used for centuries to create fabric. But needle felting (using a notched needle to manually
manipulate fiber) is a new technique that dates back to the 1980s. The
technique was adapted from industrial felting by David & Eleanor
Stanwood. They took needles from a wool factory and used them to create
handmade felt without the use of water or soap.

Wet Felting has been used for centuries and felt from wool is one of the oldest known textiles.

In the wet felting process, hot water and soap are applied to layers of
fibre, while repeated agitation and compression causes the fibres to
hook together or weave together into a single piece of fabric.