Needlefelting

The Leicester Longwool

Wobbly Pins Needle Felting , , , , 0 Comment

Over the last few years I have had a growing interest in felting and taken more interest in where our wool is coming from. At country shows one of my favourite areas besides the Poultry is the sheep and the breed to recently catch my eye has been the Leicester Longwool.

This breed is now listed on the Rare Breeds Survival Trust as Vulnerable along with the Lincoln Longwool. They are just so chic looking with their coat of curly hair that a lot of ladies would be pleased to have!.The breed produces a natural and white wool in colour but is also know to dye easily and great for felting projects.

Just chillin

Is it just me or do some sheep just give an aura of being chilled? The Leicester Longwool is known to have a docile nature and they always look to be calm and collected as they saunter around waiting for their twice yearly haircut.

Any way enough musing I am of to order some wool to add to my needlefelted sheep collection, might even make it a christmas hat..

 

 

 

Autumn Hues & Spooky Moods

Wobbly Pins Needle Felting , , , , , , 0 Comment

As we approach the autumn term the last few weeks at Wobbly Pins headquarters have been somewhat hectic. – we managed to the child back to school safely with uniform and books intact and labelled and now we are suddenly approaching half term.

As I am writing this update I can see the trees outside my window in glorious colour and a lot of hues of brown green and gold, we may moan about the weather in the United Kingdom but I think autumn is my favourite season for the changes and colours that it brings.

The needle felting theme at the moment has definitely been autumnal and bordering on spooky as the evenings become darker quicker and we approach Halloween.

I have made a few pumpkins last week and this week will be finishing a few orders for witches- each with their own grumpy personality ready to fly off to a new home.

I am now off to make some pumpkin soup….and find that witch.

 

 

 

Bear Necessities

Wobbly Pins Needle Felting , , , , , , , , , , 0 Comment

Sometimes you just need the bare necessities in life and sometimes you need to have an afternoon needle felting.

This afternoons choice of needle felted collectable was a little teddy bear. The difficult part of the process was selecting the wool to use. Bears come in all shapes and sizes and colours, however today I wanted a more traditional colour so I selected a  wool top from John Arbon Textiles. The Barley Harvest Hues is a perfect mix of mottled browns. with gives the bear some definition.

Core wool, Zwartbles & Merino

To give the bear a firm start in life I added some white core wool and then topped up the body with the Barley Hue which is a mix of Zwartbles and Merino, it is lovely to work with and has a lovely shine that catches the light.

Body Parts

When felting a bear there are several methods, I prefer to make all the body parts separately and then joint then together, this means I can take my time and change the character of each bear as I go.

So once I have jointed the next step is to add the eyes and the nose, this gives each bear a different character and facial expression from sad to happy to surprised.

Great British Bake Off

This afternoons bear has been preparing himself for the new episode of Great British Bake Off – he has a cake ready and over the next 10 weeks is hoping to get a Hollywood handshake – so watch this space for an update.