Needle Felting
/Felting is absurdly fun, whether it’s creating owls and labyrinths or Porgs and droids.
ARTEMIS ASTRONAUT
Winner, Needle Felted Work Category, 2023 Vermont Sheep & Wool Festival Fiber Arts Contest.
For the 2023 contest, I touched up a creation that had been ready to go right before the 2022 contest. When Queen Elizabeth died, I got inspired to do Paddington and her corgis in its place, which is sad and hard to look at but I’m glad I did it.
I’m a massive space nut and was surprised to realize I’d never felted an astronaut. I chose an approximation of the Apollo suit, because the new moon-suit prototypes look kind of goofy and they haven’t been to the moon yet anyway. I made a flag with the Artemis logo and then created a moonscape that would serve as a good sturdy balance for the astronaut and the flag.
I had so much fun creating shadows and light with different types and shades of wool that I might just felt the entire moon someday.
PADDINGTON AND THE CORGIS
Winner, Needle Felted Work Category, 2022 Vermont Sheep & Wool Festival Fiber Arts Contest.
My entry for the 2022 Sheep & Wool Festival was originally very different, and I had very nearly finished it when Queen Elizabeth died. I put that one aside because another subject came to life fully formed in my head: Paddington Bear—who did a video with the Queen last summer—comforting her Corgis Muick and Sandy, who attended her funeral procession.
Learn more about this project on Paddington’s page.
APPLE TREE OF LIFE
Winner, Needle Felted Work Category; Winner, Fibershed Favorite, 2021 Vermont Sheep & Wool Festival Fiber Arts Contest.
I made this Tree of Life for my husband as a nod to the lovely old apple trees in our yard.
BABY YODA
Winner, Needle Felted Work Category, 2020 Vermont Sheep & Wool Festival Fiber Arts Contest.
For this contest, there was no way I was going to do anything but Baby Yoda, from the TV series The Mandalorian. Check him out on his own page.
BB-8 STARTLING A PORG ON AHCH-TO
Winner, Needle Felted Work Category, 2018 Vermont Sheep & Wool Festival Fiber Arts Contest.
This was a fun project because I got to create a bird, a droid, and a mossy stone wall. (Including all six of BB-8’s equipment panels.) It was a bit tricky, as his body is only about 3” wide, but it sure was fun.
They also had their screen debut in the title sequence to the documentary series Looking for Leia.
BIRDS
CONWAY
For my husband’s birthday, I made him a 12" felted wool figure of the late Conway, the one-winged peregrine falcon he used to handle at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science. She's perched on a dried root I found kayaking some years ago.
Conway won first place in needle felted fiber arts at the Vermont Sheep & Wool Festival in 2019, but she was also the only entry, so… yeah.
CONVOR
Also in the Star Wars theme, I created a convor (a kind of owl-beastie) for my daughter, who perches in her room when she’s not off being a good omen to galactic heroes. (The convor, not my daughter. Although really, who can say.)
BIELEFELTED HEN
For my husband on Valentine’s Day, I created one of our Bielefelder chickens on a yarn nest. (Not to scale. Bielefelders are the size of emus.)
Fireside
I made a cave covered in ivy. Inside is a wise woman telling stories around a fire to her four grandchildren (who bear a passing resemblance to her four Vermont granddaughters) and a mother bear and cub. It was for my mother, who sculpts similar things in clay.
Flat Felting
TREE OF LIFE
I made this earth goddess/tree of life for my mom.
OWLS
These barred owls are standing in the hole in the wonderful old apple tree in our yard. Our chicken coop and woods are behind it and the owls are peering out (it was a Father’s Day present for my ornithologically inclined husband).
GODDESS LABYRINTH
This is the first of many labyrinths I made. Creating a dinner plate-sized labyrinth out of earth-toned wool was so therapeutic that I ended up making more than a dozen of them.
CELTIC TRISKELE
The triskele, a variation on the labyrinth.
